The Big Question: Is Slovenian Cooking Healthy?

Is Slovenian cooking healthy?

That was the big question I faced, at the beginning of the new year.  As usual, I had a few holiday pounds to lose.  Beyond that, I wondered: How much of my newfound taste for Slovenian food could I incorporate into our regular diet during the coming year?

I had already started to think (and write) about this question in the fall.

Back in November, I argued that traditional Slovenian cooking was much like other cuisines that develop in times of scarcity, when people did hard physical work. They used what was at hand and were limited to whatever was in season—or whatever they had managed to preserve.

I conceded that many elements of traditional Slovenian cooking present a challenge to the contemporary health conscious cook. The cooking is heavy on meat, especially pork. Fats are not what you could consider heart healthy: lard, cracklings, bacon fat, and butter.  And many of the favorite treats are based on white flour.  I had made them all: potica and strudel, homemade noodles and dumplings, struklji and zlikrofi.  But I had also started to do healthy makeovers.

Now, six months later, I would add a few other arguments in defense of Slovenian food.

First, whose culinary traditions are we talking about? European peasant farmers in the 19th century? The upper classes?  The Slovenian Americans who wrote my 1950s cookbooks?  Contemporary Slovenians?  Eating patterns varied and they evolved over time.

my mother's family, Cleveland, 1930s

Slovenia,1890s

American cookbook, 1950s 

In reality, the diet of peasant farmers was healthier than you might suppose. It revolved around whole grains and legumes: Buckwheat, millet, cornmeal, and barley.  Dried beans and lentils.  The daily bread meant whole grain, not refined white flour.  Meat was eaten sparingly, by today's standards. Fresh vegetables and fruits were highly prized. Slovenians never forgot their rural roots, in Europe or in the United States.  Even in big American cities, families kept gardens.  In the past, it was all Slow Food.  Local, natural, and unprocessed.

Another important point: Ethnic specialties were just that: Special dishes. Delicacies. Served on holidays, special occasions, and to guests.  Not daily fare.

Heavy on carbohydrates, by today's standards?  Yes.  But not inherently unhealthy.

In fact, the traditional Slovenian diet of the past was probably healthier than many other European cuisines. Consider British food. The typical Slovenian of today probably has a healthier diet than the average American, if obesity rates are any indication.

I already knew that healthy makeovers were possible. From the beginning, I had substituted olive oil for other fats and had cut down on quantities.  As the year progressed, I began to use turkey instead of red meat.  I tried low carb experiments, like cauliflower instead of rice, in stuffed cabbage, or a turkey-kasha filling in stuffed peppers.  More than half of my November and December dinners were healthy re-makes of dishes I had tried earlier in the year.

stuffed cabbage with beef-cauliflower  filling

stuffed peppers with turkey-kasha filling

Finally, many of the core ingredients and unique flavors in Slovenian cooking are quite healthy. Cabbage. Coleslaw and sauerkraut. Dandelion greens.  Green salads with light, tart dressings. Buckwheat. Pumpkin seed oil.  And seasonings like paprika, cinnamon, and marjoram are calorie-free.

My conclusion:  Slovenian cooking could be part of a healthy diet, with some modifications.

The only personal challenge I faced was limiting the carbohydrates, if I wanted to keep my weight down.  But that just meant sticking to the healthier ones: Vegetables, beans and legumes, with modest portions of whole grains. It wasn't a terrible hardship to limit breads, dumplings, noodles, and potica to special occasions.

My husband isn't as weight-challenged as I am, but he does need to watch his cholesterol and his blood pressure. Although he was a great supporter of my Slovenian cooking adventure, he did occasionally remind me that we had eaten more meat, especially pork, in the past year than in the previous decade!

So I figured we would go back to poultry as our mainstay, including all those locally-made chicken and turkey sausages we previously enjoyed.  Pork, beef, and lamb would be an occasional treat.

I thought I had covered all the bases.  But I forgot about one.

Salt.

A new chapter was about to begin.

The New Year Begins: Pausing to Reflect. (When in Doubt, Think Soup!)

It was the second week in January.

New Year's Day had been celebrated.  Our sons had flown back to their respective homes.  We were back to our regular work schedules.   Life returned to normal.

My year of Slovenian cooking had come to a successful close. Fifty dinners.  So many kitchen adventures.  New family stories had emerged.  It had been quite a journey.

But I felt at a loss.  What next?

It seemed like a good time to pause and reflect on what I had learned.

It was also time for my traditional post-holiday belt tightening.  So a short break from traditional Slovenian cooking seemed in order.  Dumplings, noodles, homemade white bread, strudel, and potica wouldn't be of much help if I wanted to  get rid of the couple of extra pounds that always seem to accumulate during the holidays.

But I wasn't ready for The Austerity Kitchen.  And I wanted to carry the Slovenian spirit into the coming year, even if each week didn't bring a full-blown traditional dinner.

When in doubt, think soup.  That was one lesson I had learned from my year of Slovenian cooking.  I had just spotted a tempting recipe in Smitten Kitchen, a wildly popular cooking blog that recently evolved into a cookbook.

It was called Lentil Soup with Sausage, Chard, and Garlic.  The recipe, not to mention the photos, looked wholesome and inviting. I figured I could make it even more diet-friendly.

To reduce the fat,  I used less oil for browning and skipped the sizzling oil and garlic finish altogether.  Turkey sausage would be a healthier choice than Italian sausage.  I used the kale option instead of chard, simply because we had it on hand.  And parsley and mushrooms show up in so many Slovenian dishes, so why not add them, too?

And here was the one serendipitous touch.  I had already started the soup when I discovered the brown lentils I thought we had had in the pantry were actually whole buckwheat groats.  I had never heard of buckwheat or kasha in soup but it was too late to turn back.  And with the addition of buckwheat, this soup would definitely qualify as Slovenian-inspired!

The verdict?  It was delicious.   Healthy and hearty.   And if not exactly traditional, it was in the Slovenian spirit.  A good start to a new year of cooking: Slovenian-inspired, but lighter and healthier.  I had no idea what was in store!

Sausage, Kale and Buckwheat Soup (a Slovenian-inspired adaptation from Smitten Kitten)

1 medium onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

olive oil, 1-2 T

2 celery stalks, sliced

2 medium carrots, sliced

1 cup mushrooms, sliced

2-4 links turkey sausage (or klobase!)

salt and pepper to taste

pinch of cayenne
handful of parsley

1 cup whole buckwheat groats, rinsed

2 bay leaves

1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes

6 cups water

3 to 4 cups kale, thinly sliced

grated Parmesan and more parsley to garnish

Brown the onion and garlic in olive oil.  Add celery, carrots, and mushrooms and continue to brown. Add sausage and cook a few more minutes.  Add buckwheat, parsley, bay leaves, seasonings, tomatoes, and water.   Simmer until the buckwheat is tender, 30-40 minutes.  Add kale toward the end of the cooking period.  Taste and adjust seasonings.  Garnish with grated parmesan cheese and additional parsley. 

Slovenian Dinner Week 50: Spinach Cheese Pie for Christmas

Menu for Christmas Eve

Zeljanica (Spinach Cheese Pie)
Green Salad
Christmas Cookies and Eggnog


Menu for Christmas Day
Klobase with Red Pepper and Onion
Pecan-Crusted Salmon
Zeljanica (Spinach Cheese Pie)
Green Salad
Potica Three Ways
Shortbread Three Ways
. . . And Many Other Goodies!

The last Tuesday of 2012 fell on December 25th.  That meant that Christmas would be the grand finale of my year of Slovenian cooking.

It seemed like a fitting way to bring my culinary adventure to a close.

Just one problem:  All all-Slovenian Christmas dinner would have violated too many family traditions. I didn't even consider it.

Instead, I decided that Monday night, Christmas Eve, would be the official Slovenian dinner.  It was be small. Just my husband and me, our older son (a vegetarian), his girlfriend, and our younger son. They had all flown in for the holidays. For Christmas dinner, we would be joined by my mother, my brother, and another young friend.

I needed to come up with a vegetarian entree that would do double duty.  The main dish on the first night. And with enough left over for Christmas dinner, where it would share the spotlight with two other entrees:  pecan-crusted salmon (my husband's Jacques Pépin specialty) and Slovenian klobase made by San Francisco's Jelenich Brothers.

The dish had to be festive, simple, and meat-free. Something in the Slovenian spirit.

I thought immediately of filo dough.  I'd had good luck making meat pita and cheese-filled burek.  But I hadn't yet tried a Yuguslav-style spinach cheese pie.

Full disclosure: Spinach cheese pie is more closely associated with the cuisine of Serbia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. But in recent years, it has become popular in Slovenia.  I even found a recipe on the Slovenian cooking site Kulinarika.

Americans tend to be most  familiar with the Greek version, spanakopita.  I'm no expert, but the Yugoslav approach seems to be a moister dish, with more dairy products in the filling and an added measure of cream or yogurt poured over the top before baking.

"Ah, that's zeljanica,"  said my younger son, the journalist.  "It means green pie."

He said it like this: zel-yan-eet-tsa.

That's what they call it in Kosovo, where he now lives and works.  It goes by a few other names in different parts of the Balkans.

Whatever you call it, this is a forgiving dish, with many variations.  I stuck pretty closely to the version I found in The Yugoslav Cookbook.  At least that was my intention.  I took a few liberties, planned and unplanned.  But it all worked out in the end.

Zeljanica (Spinach Cheese Pie)

1-1/2 pounds feta or other salty cheese, crumbled
16 ounces kajmak (clabbered cream) or labne* (a rich, strained Middle Eastern yogurt)
4 eggs, separated
9 ounces fresh spinach, finely chopped
3/4 c. milk
3/4 c. cream
salt and pepper to taste

olive oil and melted butter, mixed

1 package filo dough


* Note: Kajmak is hard to find in the United States, although you can try to make your own.  I had better luck locating some labne.  Greek yogurt, cottage cheese or sour cream, alone or in combination, would also work.



For the filling: Combine feta cheese, kajmak (or substitute), chopped spinach, and milk. Add salt and pepper to taste.  Add beaten egg yolks and mix well.  Fold in beaten egg whites last.

Oil two square or rectangular baking pans.  Add 3-4 sheets of filo, brushing each with some of the oil-butter mixture.  Now you begin to alternate layers of filling with a few sheets of filo. You can keep it simple, with just a couple of layerings, or aim for more. Just be sure to end with 3-4 layers of filo on top.

Before putting the dishes in the oven, pour a little cream over the top.

Bake at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until firm and brown.  Let cool slightly before cutting into squares to serve.

With the zeljanica in the oven, I pondered my missteps and considered a few lingering questions.

Should I have pre-cooked the spinach?  I had used it raw, as some recipes directed.  It is certainly easier that way.  But the recipe I had chosen as my guide, I suddenly realized, called for cooked spinach. Oh well.

Another problem:  I had mixed the cream into the filling, right along with the milk, instead of holding it out for the final step.  So I had to pour a little more cream on top.  Perhaps my filling would end up too liquid.

The verdict?

Those two zeljanica tasted as good as they looked.  Brown and crispy on top, delectable and moist inside.  A little more of a pudding texture than Greek spanakopita.  Rich and tangy, with all that feta.  Just the right amount of spinach.

A success, all of it.  The zeljanica, which reheated beautifully.  The three varieties of potica I served the next day, at our Christmas Day dinner.  The rest of the dinner.  And the company, of course.

My year of Slovenian cooking had been a success, too.

I felt sad to see it coming to an end.

What next, I wondered?

Stay tuned!

Slovenian Dinner Week 49: Chicken Ajmoht II with Latkes

Menu
Chicken Ajmoht II (with red wine)
Greens
Latkes (Potato Pancakes)

It was the third week of December.  Right between Hanukkah and Christmas.  My thoughts drifted back to a dish I had made in January, at the very beginning of my year of ethnic cooking.

Slovenian Dinner Week 3 had been quite an adventure.  I had attempted two traditional dishes that were completely new to me. Žganci, a giant boiled buckwheat dumpling, didn't quite work out. But the main dish, a tangy stew called chicken ajmoht, had been a success.

Chicken ajmoht, sometimes called obara, is a simple stew or ragout. Its special tang comes from a dark roux, something that my mother recalled from her childhood.  For my first attempt, I had used a simple recipe from the Progressive Slovene Women of America.  This time, I wanted to add some additional vegetables and seasonings.

For inspiration, I consulted a couple of traditional sources.  The Food and Cooking of Eastern Europe had an obara recipe with a few more vegetable choices.  Slovenian Cookery included a recipe for chicken stew with cviček, a unique Slovenian red wine.

So I added a few new touches to my earlier recipe:  Carrots and leeks. Lemon peel and red wine.  For quicker cooking, I used boneless, skinless, chicken breasts.

For the result, read on.

Chicken Ajmoht II  (chicken ragout, kurji ajmoht, obara)

1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut up
2 T. olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2  ribs celery, chopped
1 leek, bulb and a bit of green, soaked well and sliced
1 c. baby carrots, whole
water to  cover
peel of 1 lemon, grated
4 T. fresh parsley, minced
1 T. fresh marjoram, minced
peel of 1 lemon, grated
roux, made with  1T. flour, and 1 T. olive oil, mixed
salt and pepper to taste
red wine to taste

Heat oil in a Dutch oven. Add onion, celery and leeks.  Brown vegetables.  Add carrots, chicken, and seasonings and continue to brown.  Add water to cover and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes or until tender.  In a separate pan, make a roux, cooked to medium brown.  Add to the pot and stir well.  Add remaining water and red wine and adjust seasonings.  Simmer about 15 minutes more.  Sprinkle with additional parsley.  To be traditional, serve with noodles, polenta, or (of you are feeling bold!) buckwheat žganci.

The verdict? Even better, the second time around!  And chicken ajmoht goes perfectly with my husband's special latkes, a traditional Jewish favorite, especially during Hanukkah.

Just one thing would have improved the dish: some genuine Slovenian cviček!

Actually, one member of our family did get the chance to try cviček.  Right at the source. And we think the winemaker might have been a distant cousin!

Go here to read an article by our journalist son, who paid a visit last year to the Kozlevčar Winery in Slovenia.

Slovenian Dinner Week 48: Lentil Soup

Menu
Lentil Soup (Lečina Juha)
Coleslaw
Rye Bread

It was the second Tuesday in December.  I was in the mood for soup.

Should I continue with my string of makeovers?  The soups I had prepared earlier in the year didn't seem to need much tweaking.  So I decided to try something new.  But what? I had covered most of the traditional Slovenian favorites.

Finally, I had it.  Lentil soup.

The Progressive Slovene Women had a recipe for lentil soup.  A little checking online reassured me that this was indeed a traditional Slovenian dish called lečina juha. The soup looked easy, even when I incorporated a few additions from an Internet source.

Simple and straightforward seemed like an especially good idea, right about now. I had barely started my holiday baking, so that would have to be the focus of my cooking energy for the next few weeks.

I even took a few shortcuts with the soup recipe: canned beans and no pre-soaking with the lentils.

For the result, read on.

Lentil Soup (Lečina Juha)

1 cup lentils, rinsed and drained
1/2 large onion, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 rib of celery with leaves, sliced
1 bay leaf
4 T. parsley, chopped
1 carrot, sliced
12 oz. can of navy beans, drained
2 chicken-apple sausages, sliced (6 oz)
salt and pepper to taste
6-8 cups water
more parsley for garnish.

Brown onion and garlic in olive oil and set aside.  Bring water to boil in large soup pot or Dutch oven. Add lentils, browned onion and garlic, and remaining ingredients.  Simmer 1-2 hours, adding more water if soup becomes too thick.  Taste and adjust seasonings. Before serving, add a sprinkle of parsley on top.

The verdict: Just as I had hoped, the lentil soup was hearty and delicious.  And very thick.  The sweet, mild flavor of the chicken-apple sausage, though not the traditional choice, worked well.  Obviously, any number of meat choices (sausage, bacon, ham) could be used instead.

We enjoyed the soup with a couple of traditional accompaniments, coleslaw and rye bread.  And a not-so-traditional dessert:  caraway-buckwheat shortbread, a holiday baking experiment I had taken to a dinner party over the weekend. Nothing like a little Scottish-Slovenian fusion!

Slovenian Dinner Week 47: Stuffed Cabbage Low Carb Makeover: Beef-Cauliflower Filling

Menu
Stuffed Cabbage Makeover: Beef-Cauliflower Filling
Green Salad

Stuffed cabbage was the first dish I tackled, back in January of 2012, when I launched my year of Slovenian cooking.  I was happy with the result. The next time, I planned to make the filling more highly seasoned—and to cook the cabbage rolls on a bed of sauerkraut.

Suddenly, it was December. My year of ethnic cooking was in the home stretch, and I still hadn’t gotten around to trying stuffed cabbage again.  But now I had another agenda:  how to do healthy makeovers.

For a healthy version of stuffed cabbage, I figured on skipping the pork and using just beef. But what to do about the added starch in the filling?  I could substitute buckwheat for the rice, as I’d done with my stuffed peppers makeover. But this time I wanted to go even lower carb.

So I did an Internet search and discovered a fascinating alternative to rice: finely diced cauliflower.  I found plenty of examples, including two or three recipes for meat fillings with cauliflower instead of the usual rice or bread crumbs.  What an intriguing idea! I already knew that pureed cauliflower worked well as a mashed potato substitute, but I'd never come across the idea of using it in place of rice.

The recipes I found used used raw cauliflower, chopped or grated, in the meat filling.  I figured I would go one better.  I would brown the cauliflower bits with the onions and garlic, to reduce some of the moisture and make it harder and more rice-like.

I made a few other changes in my original stuffed cabbage recipe. To make the filling spicier,  I increased the onion, garlic, salt, pepper, and paprika.   I decided to skip the fresh mint and the spoonful of crushed tomatoes. As planned, I used sauerkraut instead of cabbage to line the pan.   Finally, I decided to make the dish in the oven instead of on top of  the stove.

For the result, read on.

Stuffed Cabbage Makeover with Beef-Cauliflower Filling

1 c. onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T. olive oil
1 c. cauliflower florets, finely chopped
2 t. salt
1 t. pepper
1-1/2 t. paprika
1/2 c. fresh parsley, chopped

1-1/2 lb.ground beef
1 egg, beaten

1 large head green cabbage
sauerkraut

beef broth and crushed tomatoes, mixed, to make about 3 cups of liquid
salt and pepper to taste

For filling:  Brown onion and garlic in oil.  Add cauliflower florets and brown, then add seasonings, parsley and mix.  Let cool.  Mix in beef and egg.

For cabbage: Cut out core of cabbage.  Cover in hot water and boil for about 5 minutes.  Drain and separate leaves.

To make the rolls:  Cut out the tough rib of each cabbage leaf.  Place a portion of meat on the leaf.  Roll up securely, envelope style.  Secure with toothpicks.

Put a layer of sauerkraut in the bottom of large greased oven-proof dish.  Put cabbage rolls on top, packing tightly.  Add liquid, almost to cover.  Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 1 hour.

The verdict:  Pretty good.  The filling was still a little mild.  Next time, I will go back to using tomatoes and maybe the mint, as I did originally.  And I might add some seasoning to the  tomato sauce, too. No, cauliflower does not provide the same firm texture as using rice—or for, that matter, buckwheat groats.  But it is a viable alternative when you are cutting carbs.

Who says Slovenian food can't be healthy?

Slovenian Dinner Week 46: Polenta Meatball Makeover

Menu
Meat Polenta II: Polenta Meatballs with Tomato Mushroom Sauce
Whole Wheat Spaghetti
Green Salad

The last Tuesday in November was shaping up to be a busy day.  An appointment in the morning, volunteer tutoring in the afternoon.  And I was in the final stretch of a month-long writing project.

So I needed to find a dinner entree that was easy and, if possible, make-ahead. Once again, I figured that the best solution was a makeover of a dish I had tried earlier in the year.

Meatballs seemed like the perfect choice.

I had three candidates.  The most successful were the caraway meatballs I had made back in June.  In July, I had tried an odd one, called uštipci, from The Yugoslav Cookbook, that I didn't feel like repeating.  Those solid, fatty squares of uncooked bacon mixed in with the ground beef never did cook properly.

Then there was an intriguing dish called meat polenta, from the Progressive Slovene Women, one of my most trustworthy sources.  They were made from a paprika-spiced mixture of beef and cornmeal.   Quite a lot of cornmeal: a full cup added to a pound of meat. The finished product turned out dry and granular, because the uncooked cornmeal didn't soften.

Only afterward did it occur to me: Maybe "cornmeal" meant cooked polenta. If I made this dish again, I resolved to try it that way.

So perhaps this was the time.

I did some Internet research to see if I could find any other meatballs made with cooked cornmeal.  Mostly, I found Mexican meatballs, with small quantities of dry cornmeal added.  So maybe this meat polenta recipe wasn't even Slovenian.

But then I found something: A Slovenian meatball called mavželj. It sounded like one of those traditional novelties that isn’t made much anymore.  For good reason, since it starts with a pig's head.

To make mavželj, you start out by boiling the pig’s head and scraping off the meat. A few other organ meats are added, like the brains and lungs.  Then the meat is chopped, seasoned, and mixed with polenta. Seasonings can include onion and garlic, salt and pepper, cinnamon and bay leaf, according to the modern Slovenian master chef Janez Bogataj.  (His recipe seems to be mostly polenta.)  The mixture is shaped into balls and wrapped in pig’s caul, then baked.

So this dish wasn’t the product of some Slovenian American cook’s imagination.   It was simplified and sanitized, perhaps, but the chopped meat-polenta combination, heavy on the polenta, seemed to be well grounded in Slovenian tradition.

Well, I wasn't about to go shopping for a pig's head, much less a pig's caul!

I decided to stick closely to my original meat polenta recipe, but with cooked cornmeal, rather than dry.  Much as I was tempted to do a meat makeover, this was not the time for more turkey leftovers.  I would stick with a beef-pork mix, with a little more onion. The simple tomato sauce had been good the first time, but since we had some fresh mushrooms I decided to add those.  And this time I would bake rather than simmer the meatballs.

For the result, read on.

Meat Polenta II: Polenta Meatballs

Meatballs:

1/2 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb. ground pork
1 cup cooked polenta
2 eggs
2 t. salt
1-2 t. pepper
1 t. paprika
4-5 T. minced onion, browned in olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced

Sauce:

26 oz. organic diced tomatoes
1 small onion, browned in olive oil
2 c. sliced fresh mushrooms, white and crimini mixed
1 clove garlic, minced
1 t. paprika
1 t. marjoram
salt and pepper
pinch of sugar
4 T. parsley, chopped
splash of wine or mosto


For sauce:  Brown diced onion well in olive oil. Add sliced mushrooms and garlic clove.  Add remaining ingredients and simmer for thirty minutes.

For the cooked polenta, prepare according to package directions.  I used the quick-cooking variety, which called for 4 tablespoons polenta stirred into 1 cup of boiling salted water, then cooked and stirred for about three minutes until thick. Let cool slightly.

To make the meatballs: Combine cooked, cooled polenta with remaining filling ingredients.  Knead until well combined. Form into 12 small balls. Mixture may be loose.

To bake: Put a little sauce in bottom of medium rectangular dish.  Place meatballs in dish.  Add more sauce.  Bake at 375 degrees for about 1 hour.

Serve over spaghetti or noodles.  Sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese.

My heart sank when I saw yellow polenta oozing out of the meatballs, after they had been in the oven for awhile. But I poured more sauce on top.

The verdict: Amazingly, it all worked out.  The meatballs were tasty, even if the fat and some of the polenta did leach into the sauce. And there were none of those hard cornmeal granules, this time around.

As we were eating, my husband and I got into a long discussion about caul.   I had seen photos of caul-wrapped foods in a couple of my  European cookbooks. It looks liked a spidery white net. But what was it, exactly?

I thought it was similar to a traditional sausage casing. Part of the intestine. My husband thought it was related to the placenta, a sort of film or veil than can cover a baby mammal at birth. He'd heard about this from watching Jacques Pépin on television.

Turns out out we were both right.  Not the most pleasant of dinner conversations!

Still, the dinner was a success.

“There is something about the flavor,” my husband said. “I could smell it when I was up on the roof, cleaning the gutters.”  (We'd had heavy rains that night.)

What is that elusive flavor?  No cabbage in the dish tonight.  Was it simply tomatoes and paprika? Tomatoes without oregano and basil?

Central European umami or Slovenian soul, I guess.  Whatever it is, the smell and flavor are unmistakable. I had found it once again.