Slovenian Dinner Week 42: Sweet Beet Soup + Potato-Spinach Dumplings (Njoki)

Menu
Sweet Beet Soup (sladka pesna juha)
Potato-Spinach Dumplings (njoki) with Gorgonzola-Gouda Sauce
Fresh Tomato Garnish
Coleslaw


I was in the mood for some healthy, not-too-meaty Slovenian food.

I had a couple of ideas, both appealing.  One was borscht, or beet soup.  The other was gnocchi, or njoki in Slovenian.   Since I couldn't choose, I decided to make them both.

It was a labor intensive dinner.  So let's consider the beet soup first.

Months earlier, I had noticed a curious recipe in the Progressive Slovene Women's cookbook.  It was called sweet beet soup, or sladka pesna juha.   Definitely the sweet-and-sour type, with plenty of sugar and lemon juice, along with tomatoes and onions. But I didn't know what to make of the eggs.  What was this, a dessert or a soup? So I dismissed it.

But I got to thinking about borscht again, when we visited our favorite Polish restaurant and ordered their version of borscht, which we had enjoyed in the past. It was a clear red broth, with slivers of beets and large flat white beans.  The last time, it had included beef, which seemed to be missing this time.  And I was reminded that this Polish take on borscht was much more savoury than the sweet-and-sour Jewish style I knew best.

Now I was really intrigued by the myriad possibilities borscht can offer. Including that peculiar-sounding Slovenian recipe with the sugar and eggs.   And when I discovered a couple of beets in the refrigerator, that clinched it.  I had to give it a try.


Sweet Beet Soup

2 beets (½ bunch)
½ c. fresh tomatoes, cut up and seeds removed
¼ lb. beef stew meat, cut into small pieces
1-2 c. water
1 T. lemon juice
dash salt
2 T. sugar
1 egg, beaten

Cook the beets, using whatever method you choose.  When they are done, peel them and cut into strips or cubes.

(I used the microwave.  I put the whole beets in a covered dish with ¼ cup water.  I cooked them on high for 12-15 minutes, stopping every 5 minutes to turn.)

Combine the cut-up beets, water, tomatoes, onion, and beef in water.  Simmer 3o minutes.  Add lemon juice, sugar and salt.  Simmer 30 minutes more.  Taste and adjust seasonings.  Beat egg in a separate dish.  Add a little hot soup gradually, stirring to prevent curdling.  Add to the pot of soup.  Do not allow to boil.

I had many misgivings, but this beet soup was a delicious surprise.

My husband loved it.  He thought it was among my best dishes so far.  “This is in the top twelve!” he said.

I was convinced it would be too sweet.  But it wasn't.  And it was just the right amount of beef.

The egg was the real puzzler. Because of my doubts,  I had cut the egg down to half of what the original recipe called for.  I wouldn't have wanted more, but in this quantity the egg worked out just fine.  The egg flavor was not overpowering, and it lightened the broth to a delicate pink.  It didn't seem too different from adding sour cream, a common way to serve Jewish-style borscht.

So why the eggs instead of sour cream?   My husband and I can think of only one reason: to avoid combining dairy and meat, in order to observe Jewish dietary laws.  But that would not be an issue in Slovenia, where the population is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.

So the recipe remains a puzzle.  But there is no doubt: This sweet beet soup was a winner!

For that matter, so was the rest of the dinner.  To see the the recipe for those delcicious njoki, go here.

Slovenian Dinner Week 21: Rižota with Mlinci and Coleslaw

Menu
Rižota (Risotto)
Mlinci (Baked Noodles)
Coleslaw

It was early June, almost half way into my year of Slovenian cooking.  I had started to worry that I might be running out of new recipes to try, at least if I confined myself to my three vintage cookbooks.

At first, I overlooked the recipes for Slovenian-style risotto, or rižota.  Each one of the cookbooks had a version.  Sometimes the meat mixture varied, but otherwise they were all fairly similar.  Not too exciting, I thought.  They seemed like simplified, less rich versions of the classic Italian dish.  None of that slow stirring so that the rice gradually absorbed the liquid.

But I decided to give rižota a try.  I stuck pretty closely to the version offered by the Progressive Slovene Women of America.  I substituted beef for veal and used a little less pork.  I upped the tomatoes slightly and, as usual, substituted olive oil for fat or lard. Naturally, I used frozen peas instead of canned.  (Maybe I'll try fresh next time.)  When it came to the rice, I used the long grain variety we had on hand.  Short grain, like arborio, is usually recommended for risotto.


1 lb. beef stew meat
1/2 lb. pork stew meat
2 large onions, diced (1 red, 1 white)
olive oil, about 2 T.
1 c. canned diced tomatoes and juice
8 oz fresh mushrooms, white and crimini, sliced
salt and pepper to taste
water as needed
3/4 c. raw rice
1 c. green peas, frozen
parmesan cheese, grated, if desired

In large skillet, brown onions in oil. Add meats, brown about 20 minutes.  Add seasonings and tomatoes, simmer 20 minutes, adding water as needed.  Add sliced mushrooms and simmer until meat is  tender, 20-40 minutes, stirring.  When meat is tender, sprinkle with rice and add 1 c. water.  Cover and from this point on do not stir.  Check periodically, adding water as needed, and shaking pan to prevent sticking.  Top with frozen peas for the last 10 minutes of cooking.  Rice will take 15-20 minutes in all to cook.  Sprinkle with parmesan cheese, if desired.

We topped the rižota with freshly grated parmesan cheese and served it with coleslaw and some crunchy mlinci saved from last week's dinner.

The verdict:  A winner.  This dish was rich and flavorful.  Nothing I would have guessed from reading the simple, mildly seasoned recipe.  My inclusion of brown crimini mushrooms probably offered a flavor boost.

Overall, this was one more reminder that there is more than meets the eye, where Slovenian cooking is concerned.

Roast Duck: A Fine Partner for Mlinci

Roast duck was the entree for my Week 20 dinner.   But to my mind, it was mostly a vehicle for the mlinci, those intriguing baked noodles that turned out so much better than I imagined.

I decided on duck rather than chicken because it seemed more exotic.  I had never actually roasted a duck before.  In case you are in the same boat, here is how I did it.

There is nothing especially Slovenian about this way of roasting a duck.  I consulted a few standard American cookbooks to come up with this.  The main issue, as I understand it, is getting rid of some of the fat without letting the meat dry out.



A 5 lb duckling, fresh and organic
salt and pepper
other seasoning of choice

To prepare: Remove giblets.  Rinse, dry, and cut off excess fat.  Cut slits in the skin, at regular intervals, all over the duck.  Use a small sharp knife blade held just under the surface of the skin, and parallel to it. Coat the duck inside and out with a mixture of salt, pepper, and any other seasoning you desire.  (I used a Mediterranean seasoning mix prepared by our local spice shop.)

Put the duck, breast side down, on a rack in a rectangular roasting pan. Pour 1 inch of hot water in the bottom of the pan.  Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. Lower the heat to 350 degrees, turn over, and bake for another 30 minutes or until done.   During baking, watch the water level and add more liquid if needed by pouring over the top of the duck.  If skin gets too brown, cover with foil.  Internal temperature should reach 175 degrees.

Remove to a cutting board and let cool before carving.

Save the drippings to coat your lovely homemade mlinci.

The verdict:  This turned out pretty well.  My husband pointed out that the breast and legs require different baking times, so roasting a whole bird isn't the most practical approach.

But my feeling is that a whole roast duck is much more festive.  And it's a better partner to the mlinci.

Murray's Famous Chicken-Beef Kreplach

Kreplach or Zlikrofi?

So what is kreplach, a traditional Jewish dumpling, doing in a Slovenian food blog?

If you have read my recent posts about Slovenian zlikrofi, especially here, you already know part of the answer.

The two dishes are so similar that you could easily mistake one for the other. In fact, my mother often referred to her meat-filled dumplings as kreplach. She probably figured it sounded more American than zlikrofi!

There is another reason for sharing this. Murray's Kreplach is also a family recipe. But it's from my husband's side of the family.

Murray Tabak is my father-in-law. As a boy, he used to watch his Polish-born mother hard at work in the kitchen. He went on to become a fine cook himself. Luckily, he had the foresight to preserve some of his mother's prized dishes. He watched her, asked questions, and made notes. The result was a handful of traditional Jewish recipes. This is one of them. Every fall, Grandma Rose used to make a big batch of kreplach and then deliver them, a couple dozen to each household, to her five children and their families for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Rose, my husband's grandmother, cooked from memory and feeling. Just like my own grandmother, she lived through hard times and had the knack for doing a lot with very little. Her kreplach, like Slovenian zlikrofi, are labor intensive.

The filling uses two kinds of meat, chicken and beef, each cooked separately and then ground or chopped in a food processor. The shape is also more complicated that my mother's simple wonton triangles. There is a second step here: Pinching two corners of the triangle together, so they resemble tortellini.

During a recent visit, my father-in-law proudly showed us a printed version of his recipe, dubbed Murray's Kreplach, in a 1988 cookbook called "Almost All My Secrets: Recipes from the Bakery." This cookbook, probably self-published, was the creation of Deborah Davidson, who used to own a bakery in New York's Westchester County. The cookbook is out of print, the bakery no longer exists, and Murray moved to Florida and lost touch with the baker-author. So I saw this as one more vintage cookbook that helped preserve a piece of the past.

Except for one small problem. The cookbook got it wrong.

This came to light during a subsequent visit,  just after I had posted the first version of this recipe. When I showed Murray the blog entry, he was pleased and started to read it. Then he took a closer look.

I had the proportions of beef and pork reversed, Murray said. So I went to my original source, the cookbook he'd shown me. She got it wrong too. The filling was supposed to be mostly beef and just a little chicken, in a ratio of about 4:1.

In the recipe below, I have made the correction. I also specify chicken breasts, since Murray's mother used white meat only. And I have substituted fresh herbs for dried.  

Murray also agreed with me: The instructions in the cookbook were too detailed. In fact, his observation was a little more pungent: Anyone who needed every step spelled out had no business even attempting such an ambitious recipe!

For the filling, I have simplified the directions even more and put them into my own language.

When it comes to the dough, I offer only brief instructions.

The cookbook version gives detailed directions for using a pasta machine. I no longer own one of those, and I have happily returned to the old-fashioned hand-rolled approach, at least for making noodles and dumplings. If you would like to find instructions for using a pasta machine, I am sure you can.  For a reminder on how to make noodles by hand, you can look back at my zlikrofi recipe.

I have given the ingredients for the dough, to give an idea of the quantities in this very large recipe. Unlike the Slovenian egg noodle dough,  this recipe includes a little oil, but no salt. Oil is supposed to make pasta dough more supple and elastic. I'm not sure how much difference it makes. The Slovenian recipes, and some kreplach recipes, skip the oil.  So it's up to you.



Murray's Chicken-Beef Kreplach

Ingredients

Filling:

8 oz. boneless chicken breasts
2 lb.  boneless beef chuck
2 T. flour
2 1/2 c. chopped onions
2 T. chicken fat
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 t. paprika
2 T. fresh parsley
salt and pepper to taste
additional chicken fat if needed

Dough:

3 1/2 c. all purpose flour
4 eggs, beaten
2  T. oil


Instructions for filling:

Poach chicken breasts in water seasoned with salt, pepper, and a little minced garlic. Drain. Murray, his mother, and my mother all used hand grinders. If you use a food processor, be careful to chop coarsely. You don't want a paste! Refrigerate.

Murray refers to this next step as "making potted beef." Cut beef in cubes, coat with flour, and brown on all sides. Remove beef from pan. Using the same pan, brown the onion in 2 T. chicken fat. When brown, add beef back to pan. Add 1/2 inch of water, along with salt, pepper, paprika, parsley, and garlic. Cover and simmer on low heat, adding more liquid if needed. When beef is tender, remove from pan and grind or chop coarsely in food processor.

Combine chopped beef, chopped chicken and whatever remains in the pan. If needed, add up to 2 T. additional melted chicken fat, both for flavor and to hold the filling together. Taste and adjust seasoning. Filling should taste somewhat salty.

Murray notes that the texture of the filling should be something like ground meat, as though you were making meat balls. Also, to make a lower fat version, you could omit the chicken fat and use additional browned onions. If the filling seems too soft, add some bread crumbs.


Instructions for dough, shaping, and final preparation:

The original recipe suggests using a a food processor to mix the dough and a pasta machine for rolling it out. If you use a pasta machine, divide into 4 portions. You should end up at the thinnest setting. Or you can follow the old-fashioned approach: mixing and rolling by hand!

Either way, cut the thin sheets of dough into 3 x 3 inch squares. Put a heaping teaspoon of filling in the center. Here is where things change a little: The Murray Method is to moisten the edges of the square before folding into a triangle. The edges are simply pressed together. Then, the final step: Two points of the triangle are joined and pressed together. The finished product should look like tortellini.

Ultimately, the shape doesn't define the dish. I have read about Slovenian zlikrofi that are shaped the very same way, and I have enjoyed kreplach that are simple triangles. Again, it is your choice.

To prepare: Cook in boiling salted water, a few at a time, and "cook until they rise to the top of the water." Remove and drain. The printed recipe suggests that the kreplach should be coated in oil or melted chicken fat to store. They can also be frozen and then simmered for five minutes in soup or broth.

Serve in soup or on their own.

Enjoy!


Update: Two years later, I finally made Murray's kreplach. Even with a few healthy modifications (no salt, oil instead of chicken fat) it was wonderful!  For details, go here.

Slovenian Dinner Week 15: Žlikrofi, My Way

Menu
Žlikrofi (Meat-filled Dumplings) in Soup
Broccoli-Radish Salad


For the full story behind this dish, take a look at my previous post.

I  developed this recipe after considering many sources: Memories of a childhood favorite that my mother called wonton dumplings.   Several versions of zlikrofi, plus a meat pita recipe, that I found in my trio of vintage Slovenian American cookbooks.   Contemporary Slovenian sources I discovered online.  And a touch of my father-in-law's family recipe for kreplach, a traditional Jewish dish.

So is this a fusion dish?  Not exactly.  The flavors certainly aren't Chinese.  And meat kreplach would never include pork or sour cream! The fact is, many cultures have similar versions of meat-filled boiled dumplings.

I think this is Slovenian žlikrofi, the way my mother used to make it, even though she never used that name around us.

As for what my mother thinks, read on!



Filling:

1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
4 T. fresh parsley, chopped
1 T. oil
1/2 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb. ground pork
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 t. paprika
1 egg, beaten
3 T. sour cream
3 T. matzo meal (or bread crumbs)

Dough:

1 c. flour
1/2 t. salt
1 egg
water as needed



Preparation:

First, make the noodle dough in the usual way.  Mix, knead till smooth.  Form into a ball, cover and let rest for a half hour.  For more detailed instructions, see my recipe for egg noodles.

Now, the filling:  Brown the onion, garlic, and parsley in oil.  Add the ground meats and seasonings and cook until no longer pink.  As the mixture cooks, chop with a spatula to prevent lumps from forming.  Remove from heat and adjust the seasonings. Add egg, sour cream, and enough matzo meal or bread crumbs to hold together.   If you like, you can make the filling in advance and refrigerate

Next, make the dumplings:  Roll out the dough thinly. Cut into  3 x 3 inch squares. I ended up with two dozen. Place a generous spoonful of filling a little off to the side of each square.  I've read about all kinds of fancy shapes for žlikrofi, but I followed the old family method. Fold the square into a triangle and crimp the edges with a fork.

Cook dumplings in boiling salted water for 15 minutes.  Drain and serve.

I served the žlikrofi in a simple but tasty soup I figured out on the fly.  It goes like this: Purchase a good quality, organic chicken broth.   Add some baby carrots, a stalk or two of sliced celery, and  some chopped parsley. Simmer until carrots are tender.  Adjust seasonings.

Alternatively, you can serve žlikrofi on their own, topped with buttered bread crumbs.

The verdict:  Pretty good. Until I compared my žlikrofi to my recollection of my mother's wontons.  Then I started to fret aloud to my long-suffering husband.

My version didn't look like my mother's plump, neat triangles.  Mine were too small, misshapen, and lumpy.  I could have been more generous with the filling. (I did have some left over.)  And that ground meat filling just didn't have the texture of leftover roast beef that passes through a meat grinder.  And why did I decide to use part pork, anyway?

Despite my doubts, I decided to take the plunge.  I gave Mom a serving of žlikrofi a few weeks after Mother's Day.   It was frozen, so maybe she wouldn't get around to it for awhile.

But the final verdict came soon enough.  She called me up one day to deliver it.

I held my breath.

She loved it.  The filling tasted just fine.  No, they didn't seem too small.  And I had even crimped the edges with a fork, just the way my grandmother had taught her, when she was a girl.

Well, naturally.  How else would I do it?

"You do so many things well, Blair," she added.

It felt like a benediction.

                                                        


Here it is in photos, step by step:

Prepare the meat filling

Roll out the dough + cut into squares

Place spoonful of filling on dough

Fold into triangles; crimp edges with fork

Enjoy!

Boil

                                                                              

                                                                                                

Slovenian Dinner Week 15: Zlikrofi, a Wonton by Any Other Name

As a special treat, my mother used to make a tasty dish she called wonton dumplings. They were large, meat-filled triangles made of noodle dough, boiled and then served in soup or topped with browned bread crumbs.  Sometimes she called them kreplach, like our Jewish friends.

But she never suggested they were Slovenian.  I wasn't sure she even knew what I had just discovered:  Filled, boiled dumplings are considered a Slovenian specialty, highly touted on all the tourist websites.

"So Mom," I asked her, "did Grandma ever make something like wontons?  Called, maybe, zlin-krow-fee?"

I hesitated over the pronunciation, since I'd seen a few different variants of the Slovenian name in my cookbooks: zlinkrofi, zlikrofi, zinkrofi.

But my mother didn't hesitate at all.

"Oh, sure.  Only we called them zhleee'-kro-feh."

Amazing.  Not only did she know all about them, but she had come up with the proper Slovenian pronunciation, right down to that tricky little ž!

Now I was determined to make them, whatever they were called.

Both spellings, žlikrofi and žlinkrofi, are used in Slovenia.  The Professor, my translator-linguist friend in Ljubljana, tells me the proper way is the first one, without the "n" in the middle.   According to him, it is probably derived from a German term that means "slippery dumpling."

In Slovenia, you can find zlikrofi in many fanciful shapes that are filled with meat, potato, cottage cheese, millet, and even dried fruit.  The most famous seems to be the potato/bacon version made in Idrija, with the name and the recipe protected by law.  It also seems to be the fashion, at least in these English language translations, to describe žlikrofi as ravioli or pasta.

But my vintage Slovenian American cookbooks were more down-to-earth.  Zlikrofi were dumplings or noodles, filled with meat.  The meat combinations, unfortunately, left me a little cold.  Liver or cooked lungs, put through a meat chopper? Veal pluck?  Ham and sausage?

I decided to come up with a version that would be close to what I recalled of my mother's:  a fairly plain meat filling, probably beef with onion and a little parsley.

As a child, I used to love helping her turn the crank on our old-fashioned cast iron meat grinder.  It was such a mysterious alchemy, to watch those leftover chunks of roast beef emerge as a fluffy bowl of shredded meat.  I had inherited that old grinder from her, some years back.  Sadly,  I no longer had it. It had been the casualty of one too many moves.  I wish I had it now.

I figured cooked ground beef would be a reasonable alternative.  And I did spot a recipe for a meat pie ("Meat Pita") in the American Slovene Club's cookbook, with a filling that looked like it might work.

I also had in mind a traditional Jewish recipe from my husband's side of the family.  We had just been visiting my father-in-law in Florida.  He had proudly shared with me his special recipe, Murray's Kreplach, learned from his Polish-born mother.  It had even been published in a cookbook a friend of his had written.

The secret, my father-in-law had told me, was to use lots of browned onion.  And none of this ground meat business. His very elaborate recipe used poached chicken cutlets and a smaller amount of sauteed beef chuck, cooked separately and then chopped in a food processor.

Well, I still wasn't prepared to cook whole chunks of meat from scratch.  But I agreed with him about the onion.  And I took one important seasoning addition from his recipe: Paprika.  I also used matzo meal instead of the bread crumbs called for in my Slovenian cookbook.

So maybe I had made my family's new version of an old favorite,  a marriage of Slovenian zlikrofi and Jewish kreplach.  That would be fitting!

Recipe follows here.

Slovenian DInner Week 14: Meat Polenta, a Very Odd Ball

Menu
Meat Polenta in Seasoned (Non-Italian) Tomato Sauce
Organic Whole Wheat Spaghetti
Green Salad


This Meat Polenta recipe had been on my mind for some time.  It struck me as both odd and easy to make.  I wasn't quite sure how it would taste.

Months ago, I had spotted it in the "International" section of the Progressive Slovene Women of America's cookbook.  So I had no idea what its origins might be.

The name, Meat Polenta, seemed misleading.  A quick reading made it clear that these were meatballs with cornmeal, served in a tomato sauce.  Quite a lot of cornmeal, compared to the proportion of breadcrumbs or rice in a typical meatball recipe.  The original recipe called for 1/2 cup of cornmeal to 3/4 cup (yes, cup!) of ground beef or veal, the equivalent of 6 ounces of meat.  And the directions suggested that the mixture should be "kneaded until spongy."  What was this, a bread dumpling or a meatball?

I doubled the recipe and increased the proportion of meat slightly, just to be on the safe side.  I also gave myself free rein with the sauce suggestion ("3 cups tomato pulp, seasoned to taste.")  And instead of the "rice, noodles, or dumplings" suggested by the Progressive Slovene Women, I used organic whole wheat spaghetti.


1 lb ground beef
1 c. cornmeal
2 eggs
2 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
1 t. paprika
 3 T. onion, minced

Mix all the ingredients.  You can knead if you like, but don't expect it to be spongy!
Form into small balls, which I took to mean about the size of a walnut.

Simmer for 45 minutes in about 3 cups of "seasoned tomato pulp" or whatever sauce you might care to use.  Here is my version:

(Non-Italian Tomato Sauce)

28 oz. crushed organic tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste
1 t. marjoram
1 t. paprika
pinch of sugar
1 small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
4 T. fresh parsley
splash of mosto (Italian grape must flavoring)
water, if needed.

Brown the onion and garlic in a little olive oil.  Add the rest of the ingredients.  Simmer for 10-15 minutes, adjust seasonings, and add the meatballs.  The sauce became pretty thick, so I added some water.

The verdict?  Mixed.

The sauce was a success.  It was quick and easy.  And it felt good to know that  I have now mastered the art of making an impromptu tomato sauce that does NOT taste Italian, which had tended to be my default approach to seasoning.  It would go well, I think, with any number of Central European and Balkan dishes.

The meat polenta itself was another matter.  Those meatballs looked quite nice, as you can see from the top photo.

But they were hard and dry. And odd.  Those little grains of cornmeal were very much in evidence, as you can see from the close up below.

It is hard to know what to make of this recipe.  What was the intention?

Perhap I should have used ground meat with more fat.  Or maybe the meatballs were too small or cooked for too long.  On the other hand, I did use a slightly higher proportion of meat, so the end result should have been even less "corny" than the original.

Only now, more than a month later, does another possibility occur to me.

Perhaps "corn meal" meant cooked cornmeal mush.  Polenta.

Ahh.  Polenta meant one of the ingredients, not the finished product.

Maybe I'll try this again.

But not for awhile.

Update in November: Go here for the new, improved version!

Goulash on the Road: Sandra's Restaurant in Florida

We spent spring break in Florida, visiting family.  So there would be no home cooked Slovenian meal that week.  I hoped to find  the next best thing: A restaurant that might offer something close to Slovenian fare, when Tuesday came around.

But I had my doubts.  This wasn't New York City, where last month we had enjoyed a wonderful Fat Tuesday lunch at Balkanika.

We were in Punta Gorda, a small city on Florida's southwest coast.  It is a pleasant, low key vacation spot with a resident population that is mostly white and over sixty.  We had eaten at some nice area restaurants over the years, mostly casual seafood places.  But the town is not a hotspot for ethnic dining.

On Tuesday, we were on our own until dinner time.   So we set out from our charming waterfront motel, a funky 1950s-style resort, and headed into downtown Punta Gorda.

.

"I don't suppose we'll find a Balkan restaurant here," I said.  Maybe we would find a Greek or Middle Eastern place, but that also seemed unlikely.

My husband was the one who spotted it: a sign for a German restaurant.

Well, why not?   I figured we could expect to find standard German American fare. Maybe bratwurst and sauerkraut, at least.

Sandra's Restaurant went far beyond that.  It promised Authentic German and European Food--and it did not disappoint.

Inside, we discovered an inviting space, with a bar in front and then the airy dining area, complete with a fireplace.  On the wall, an article from a local newspaper provided some background.  Sandra's had opened just four months earlier.  The owners were a young German couple who had previously operated a catering business in Germany.

At the very back, there was even a mini-grocery.  I inspected the packaged German foods, lined up on a counter.  I got a good laugh when I spotted the bread dumplings, in individual boiling bags.  They looked very much like my homemade version, though undoubtedly faster to prepare.

Sandra's menu offered an impressive array of foods, along with helpful descriptions of each dish, including the country of origin.  Along with traditional German fare, many other European cuisines were represented.  Italian. French.  Swiss.  Spanish. Greek.

Austrian and Hungarian.

Bingo! Slovenia's neighbors. Close enough.

I zeroed in on the perfect choice.  Hungarian goulash with spaetzle.  I wondered how it would compare to my Slovenian version, which I'd made with beef and sauerkraut.

That goulash was delicious: Tender cubes of beef and pork in a just-right paprika and tomato sauce.  The contrast of the two meats added interest.  It was less tangy, of course, without the sauerkraut.  I might try it this way myself, the next time I make goulash.

Those thick yellow spaetzle reminded me of rezanci, the homemade egg noodles I'd served with chicken paprikash.  At the time, I thought they were a little too thick.  This confirmed it!

My husband had a tasty fish sandwich, which featured fried pangasius.  He ordered a side of sauerkraut, so I got to sample that, along with a sip of his dark Austrian ale. Both were good, although the German sauerkraut was a little sweeter than what I had tasted at San Francisco's Slovenian Hall.

I had spotted the perfect choice for dessert:  Apple strudel.  My grandmother used to make it, and I keep planning to tackle it myself.  It would have been the perfect finale to the meal.

But we were too full.  Maybe next time.

Sandra's Restaurant in Punta Gorda, Florida.  Recommended, especially if you like authentic German food.

Here is the website:   http://www.sandras-restaurant.com/

And Sandra's does seem to be gaining a following,  judging from reviews in places like this:

Slovenian Dinner Week 13 : Cevapcici Encore, Fit for Company

Menu
Cevapcici Encore (a spicy beef-lamb version)
Pita Bread
Ajvar
Cucumber, Zucchini and Yogurt Salad
Coleslaw

It was a busy Tuesday in early April.  I was finishing up the final edits on my Slovenian cooking article for Kosovo 2.0.   And this week I had a special cooking challenge. A few days earlier, we'd learned about a couple of out-of-town visitors, who were due to arrive sometime tonight.

In other words: Dinner guests, on my Slovenian cooking day.  For the first time.

So far, my ethnic cooking had been a private experiment.  I didn't want to miss a week, but  I wasn't sure I was ready to share it with outsiders.

I thought back to a little pep talk I'd read in my vintage copy of Woman's Glory: The Kitchen, at the beginning of the "potica" chapter.

"If  your potica is made correctly in every respect," the authors wrote, "you should not hesitate to offer it to your American friends."  In their own experience, they added, potica had "always been well received."

Last year, when I first read those words, I laughed.  I felt sorry for those insecure cookbook authors, afraid that their ethnic heritage might be dismissed by "real" Americans.  How sad that the leaders of the Slovenian Women's Union even sounded anxious about Slovenia's most delectable dish.

But now I wasn't laughing.

Three months into my cooking project, something had changed.  Now I felt an unexpected kinship to those 1950s homemakers.  Just like them, I felt protective (and a little insecure) when I thought about sharing our Slovenian food with outsiders.

I had developed a feeling of pride and ownership for this culture that I barely knew before.

What to make? The recipe had to be reliable, tasty, a bit unusual, but not too odd.  I wanted to make something that would please our guests, an old friend and his teenage daughter, who were considering a college admission offer she had just received from UC-Berkeley.

Yesterday, I  had figured it out: Cevapcici.  It had been a real success, when I made it the first time, a month ago.

My husband was surprised.  "Are you allowed to repeat the same dish?"

At first, I thought he was teasing me.  But he was serious.

I assured him that it would be all right.  I would just change the ingredients a little.  I had already planned on experimenting with the meat mixture and the seasonings.  And a Facebook friend from Slovenia, when he viewed the photo I had posted, suggested that the shape needed to be a little longer and skinnier.

So that's what I did.    I mixed lamb with beef instead of pork, this time around.  And I increased the spices.

For more background about cevapcici and my first version of the dish, go to my earlier post, here.


Here is the new "fit for company" encore version:

1 lb. ground beef
1 lb ground lamb
3 cloves garlic
1 T. parsley, chopped
2 T. paprika
2 t. salt
1 t. black pepper
1 t. baking soda, dissolved in 1/4 c. hot water

Mix all the ingredients together.  Let rest in refrigerator for 2-3 hours.  Shape into skinny fingers, like a digit.   Let sit in refrigerator, if you have time.

Once again, my husband did a beautiful job with the his Le Creuset stovetop griddle:

We served the cevapcici with the store-bought pita, ajvar, coleslaw, and a nice salad of cucumber, zucchini, sour cream, and yogurt.

This verdict? Delicious!  I liked the increased spices.  The cevapcici did seem a little drier this time, maybe because I used lean ground beef instead of pork.  Or perhaps they cooked faster, because of the thinner shape.   Overall, my second attempt at cevapcici seemed closer to the dish's Serbian-Bosnian origins.

Our guests didn't arrive until late at night.  They were very happy to have such tasty and exotic leftovers!

Slovenian Roots Quest in Kosovo

No, I am not currently in Kosovo.  Neither is Trent, our black cat.

But I am delighted to say that my Slovenian cooking story has found its way there, thanks to the young journalists who edit Kosovo 2.0, a multimedia website and print magazine that emerged a couple of years ago.

It feels like coming full circle, to write about my Slovenian roots quest for a Balkan audience.  Kosovo, like Slovenia, is a small nation that was once part of the former Yugoslavia. And it's pretty exciting to see my words in English, Albanian, and Serbian.

I have a post up in the Kosovo 2.0 website blog today.  It's called "A Culinary Homecoming."   The longer version of the article, complete with recipes and photos, will be in the upcoming issue of the print magazine, available in about a week.  It's a beautiful, glossy (sometimes edgy) publication.  I feel proud to have a spot in it.

In the photo above, you can see our cat Trent looking over the last issue, which had "Corruption" as the theme.  I think he's impatient for the next installment.

A Slovenian saying about cats in the kitchen provided the opening for my blog post.  It struck me as the perfect metaphor for my family's ambivalence about our ethnic heritage.

In Slovenian, it goes like this:  Hoditi kot mačka okrog vrele kaše.

The literal translation is "to walk like a cat around boiling porridge." In other words, to pussy foot around.  Or to beat around the bush.

To read the rest of the essay, go here: http://kosovotwopointzero.com/en/blog/people/a-culinary-homecoming-15-05-2012

Since it's Tuesday, I have to figure out what to cook for my weekly Slovenian Dinner.  I'm tempted to make one of those dishes that originated from points farther to the the south and the east.   Maybe a nice pita or burek. . .

Bleki, Slovenia's Favorite Noodle

Bleki are nothing more than homemade pasta or egg noodles, cut into square or rectangular shapes.

I discovered bleki in the course of tracking down my grandmother's Mystery Soup, which turned out to be the Slovenian take on pasta fazool, or pasta and bean soup.  But evidently the pasta had the starring role, at least in my mother's family, since she referred to the soup simply as "black-eh."

In fact, bleki have an oddly exalted status in Slovenian cooking.  An entry on the official Slovenian Tourist Board website describes this "simple dish"  as a "special treat." Bleki were associated with special occasions in rural life, like finishing up the harvest or picking grapes.  A recent cookbook by a Slovenian academician and cooking expert describes it as a "high dish," often served with a cream sauce and pancetta.

To make the bleki for the pašta fažul, I used the dough I had used in the previous week's rezanci.  It's a simple recipe:

2 eggs
1 1/4 c. flour
1/4 t. salt

Mix and knead, adding a little water if needed.  Cover and let rest 15 minutes.  Roll out thinly.

Here is where plain old noodles become bleki:  Cut the dough into squares or rectangles.  I aimed for  2 cm x 3 cm rectangles, but if you look at the photo below, you will see that those shapes varied in size.

Let the pasta squares dry on a dishcloth for an hour.  Cook in boiling salted water until done.  Not long, in other words.  Drain and use as you will.


That's it!

Homemade noodles and pasta are delicious, no question about it.  Not to mention a little labor intensive.

So what is so special about bleki?  Just the shape?

It took me awhile to figure it out.  Yes, it has to be the shape.  Standard noodles or rezanci are quicker to make, and it is easier to create uniform sizes.  You just roll up multiple layers of dough and slice. At least that's the theory.  I had a problem with the layers of noodles sticking together.

Blecki, on the other hand, take more time and a better eye:

So far, I have use bleki just one way, in soup.  But I'm ready to branch out.  Next time, I'll try it with one of those creamy pancetta sauces.  But I'll wait for a special occasion to make bleki the centerpiece of the meal.  

Slovenian Dinner Week 12: Pašta Fižol with Bleki

Menu
Pašta Fižol with Bleki  (Pasta and Bean Soup)
Red Cabbage Slaw
Bread (if you really need it!)


Finally, I had a clearer picture of my grandmother's elusive Mystery Bean Soup.  It was a Roman bean and pasta soup, made with square noodles.  In my mother's family, the Slovenian name for those noodles, bleki, had become the name for the soup itself.

I couldn't find anything like this in my trio of vintage Slovenian American cookbooks.  But an online search turned up a handful of recipes for Slovenian pasta and bean soup, or pašta fižol.  So this looked like another recipe the Slovenians had adapted from their Italian neighbors.

I found a recipe on the official Slovenian Tourist Board website, here.  It served as a good guide, although much was left to the imagination.  The type of beans, the style of pasta, and the quantities of seasonings were unspecified.  The photo seemed to show red kidney beans and commercially made macaroni elbows.  In a delightful American blog called Soupsong, I found an almost identical recipe here,  which specified kidney beans and small pasta shapes.  It also spelled out the cooking method a little more clearly.

My first task was to find those Roman beans, also known as borlotti beans or cranberry beans.  They can be hard to track down.  But I found them in the special "heirloom bean" section of our local organic produce market in Berkeley.  Turkey bacon seemed like a good substitute for pancetta.

The pasta, of course, would be homemade bleki.  This turned out to be an easy enough task, using the same the egg noodle recipe from last week's dinner.  But I figure bleki deserves a separate post, since it was so central to this dinner!


1 lb. dried Roman beans (also known as borlotti or cranberry beans)
5 oz. turkey bacon (or, to be traditional, pancetta)
2-3 T. olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 T. flour
2 t. paprika
1 clove garlic, minced
2 T. tomato paste
1 c. hot water
2 t. marjoram
1 bay leaf
1/2 t. pepper
salt to taste
2 t. vinegar
homemade bleki/square noodles (recipe follows) or 4 oz. dried pasta
parsley to garnish


Soak the beans overnight in water to cover.  Drain, cover with fresh water, and simmer until tender, 30-60 minutes.   Do not drain.  Set aside.

In a separate pot, boil the bleki (or other pasta) in salted water until barely done.  Drain, rinse in cold water, coat with a little oil, and set aside.

In saucepan, brown turkey bacon in oil.  Add onion, fry until golden.  Stir in flour, let brown.  Remove from heat, add garlic and paprika.  Add tomato paste and hot water and stir to make a smooth sauce.

Add the sauce to the undrained beans.  Add the bleki or pasta and seasonings.  Bring to a boil, cook for about 15 minutes or until thick.  Add salt and vinegar to taste.  Garnish with parsley to serve.

The verdict?  Delicious!  And it was brought to a whole other level by the homemade bleki.

Was this really the Mystery Soup my mother recalled so fondly?   I'm not sure.   Next time, I might try making a separate brown roux with the flour and oil, and then add it.

And maybe I should have pureed the beans.  Here is the very brief bean soup recipe from another Slovenian tourist site:

"First, you puree the beans, thicken with roux, and boil home-made noodles, bleki (noodle dough squares), or other pasta."

Maybe I'll try it again that way, before I risk a "black-eh" taste test with my mother!


Update:  Using the guidelines above, I did make a final attempt to create my mother's "black-eh."
To find out how it turned out, go here!

Week 12: Mystery Bean Soup

I was hot on the trail of my grandmother's Mystery Soup.

It was a food recollection that surfaced a few years ago.  My mother remembered a special thick bean soup my grandmother used to bring to her, in the early years of her marriage.  No one had a car, so Grandma had to take the bus to deliver it. The name sounded like "black-y" with an exaggerated Slovenian accent.

I could picture it so clearly.  My grandma on the bus, in a housedress.  Week after week, carrying a big  jar of her precious homemade soup to the young married couple.  I figured it must be a thick dark porridge, something like black bean soup.

I kept looking through my Slovenian cookbooks, but I couldn't find a soup that matched the name or the description.

"You're sure that's what it was called?"  I asked my mother.

Yes.  She kept repeating the name, with growing insistence.  Now it sounded more like "blahk-eh."

"It was made with black beans, right?"

No. I had guessed wrong.  They used Roman beans.  Big, speckled and pink.

Pink?

I was wrong about one more detail.  It wasn't my sweet, long-suffering Grandma who delivered the soup.  It was my surly grandfather.  And he did it just once.

So much for the family legend. But I still wanted to find that soup.

I started plugging alternative spellings for "black-eh" into search engines, along with "soup".

Finally, I got a possible hit.  Bleki.  But it referred to a square-shaped noodle or pasta.  Sometimes served on its own, but also used in soup.

Like bean and pasta soup?  I had come across a number of recipes for that dish during my online search,  using unspecified pasta or noodles.

In Slovenian, the soup is called pašta fižol.

It was hard to believe that the mysterious "black-eh" was a variant of the familiar Italian standard known as "pasta fazool" in America.  But I checked with the source.  My mother.

"So Mom, that soup.  It was made with Roman beans.  And roux?"

"Of course.  Everything had a roux!"

"And did it also have square-shaped pasta ?  I've been reading about these Slovenian noodles called bleki. "

"Yes. That's right.  Only we pronounced it 'bleck-eh.' "

Pašta fižol with bleki.

Mystery solved.

On to figuring out  Slovenian Dinner, Week 12.

Slovenian Dinner Week 11: Chicken Paprikash with Egg Noodles

Menu
Chicken Paprikash (Kokošli Paprikaš)
Homemade Egg Noodles (Rezanci)
Green Salad

After Week 10's struklji, I was ready for something a little less adventurous.

Chicken paprikash is familiar to most Americans.  It is another one of those Slovenian dishes with Hungarian origins.

The Progressive Slovene Women offered a straightforward recipe along with the proper Slovenian name: kokošli paprikaš.

I made just a few adaptations.  Instead of a whole cut up chicken, I used chicken breasts. I browned the onions and paprika before adding the chicken, not after.  I used light sour cream, just because it was on hand.

The other change was unplanned.  I ended up using more flour to coat the chicken than the single tablespoon the recipe suggested.  That is probably why the sauce was a little heavier than we would have liked.


3 lb. chicken breasts (bone in)
salt to season chicken
flour to coat (1-3 T.)
2 T. oil
1 onion, chopped
1 1/2 T. paprika
1/8 t. cayenne
1 1/2 c. hot water
1/2 c. sour cream

Cut up chicken pieces, salt them, and coat with flour.  Brown onions and paprika and cook until onions are golden.  Add the chicken and brown on all sides.  Add water and cayenne, cover and simmer 1 hour or until done.  Mix in sour cream five minutes before serving.

Serve with dumplings, mashed potatoes, or broad noodles.


I decided to make homemade egg noodles, a dish I associated with my grandmother.  All three of my vintage cookbooks offered recipes.   In Slovenian, they are called rezanci, I learned.

Those noodles were  the real adventure of this week's dinner.  The ingredients are simple: eggs, flour, a bit of salt, water.   It's all in the technique.  So  I'll devote a separate post (with photos) to the noodles.

Slovenian Dinner Week 10: Buckwheat Struklji, Dumpling for the Bold

Menu
Buckwheat Štruklji with Cheese Filling (Ajdovi Štruklji)
Ajvar and Greek Yogurt
Green Salad
Coleslaw

It took time to build up my courage to tackle the most unusual dish so far:  Štruklji.

All three of my vintage cookbooks included recipes for štruklji.  The dish certainly sounded odd.  A giant boiled dumpling? I had never tasted it, or even heard of such a thing.

But a Slovenian government tourist website proudly proclaims struklji as a unique national dish, rivaling potica in importance.  In fact, a common Slovenian surname, Štrukelj, is derived from it.

That gave me pause.  This oddball dish had a connection to my own family's immigration story.  My great-grandmother's maiden name had been Josephine Strukel, at least in America. But my genealogy research had turned up something else.  She was Jožefa Štrukelj when she left her small Slovenian village in 1899 to join her brother Janez in Ely, Minnesota.
  

Struklji ("shtroo-klee") really is a giant filled dumpling.  It begins with a thin sheet of dough, usually  pasta or noodle dough, although some versions are leavened with yeast.  The dough is rolled around a filling, either savory or sweet. The štruklji is wrapped in cheesecloth and trussed up with twine.  Then the long roll is dropped into a large pot of boiling water.  After cooking, it is sliced and served.

Definitely labor intensive.

I started assembling supplies a few weeks ahead of time.  Cheesecloth and cooking twine turned out not to be so easy to find, at least in my immediate neighborhood.

Since I wanted this to be an entrée, rather than a side dish or a dessert, I settled on a savory cheese filling, one of the most common variants.  The American Slovene Club's cookbook had a recipe that I adopted as a model.

I decided on the unleavened pasta style dough, with a twist.   I’d read about a variant of struklji that uses all buckwheat flour.  I still had plenty of buckwheat flour left over from my adventures with žganci and šmoren.  So I substituted buckwheat for part of the wheat flour in the recipe.  I also made good use of that leftover homemade bread from the previous week's dinner, when I made the filling.

Štruklji  (Rolled Cheese Dumpling)

Dough:

1 ½ c. white flour

½ c. buckwheat flour

1 t. salt

2 T olive oil

1 egg

½ cup hot water, plus 2 T more if needed

Filling:

3 slices bread, cubed

2 T. butter

1 lb. farmer cheese or ricotta

3 extra large eggs, beaten

1 t. salt

½ t. pepper

1 T. fresh chives, chopped

1 T. fresh parsley, chopped

Cheesecloth and cooking twine

For the dough:  Sift the flours and the salt into a bowl.  Beat the egg and oil together and stir into the flour.  Add enough hot water to make a stiff dough.  Knead dough until smooth and elastic, adding a little more flour if necessary.  Form into a ball and let rest, covered, for 30 minutes.

For the filling:  Beat eggs with salt and pepper and set aside.  Brown the bread cubes in butter.  Remove from heat and stir in egg mixture until the eggs are cooked.  Add the cheese, chives, and parsley and stir together.  Adjust seasoning.  (Note: filling can be made in advance and refrigerated.)

To assemble:  Roll and stretch the dough on a floured cloth until you have a rectangle that is about 15” x 20”.  Spread the filling evenly.  Roll up from the long side.  Dampen ends and edges of the roll to seal.

Rinse and then wring out a large piece of cheesecloth.  Roll the long loaf of dough in the cheesecloth, so that it is wrapped in several layers.  Wrap the roll in twine: knot at one end, wrap it around the length of the roll, and knot at the other end.

Boil a large kettle of salted water.  Coil the roll so it will fit and carefully drop into the water.  Let boil for 30 minutes.

Remove the roll, let cool, and unwrap.  To serve, slice into rounds.

I did hold my breath when I sliced into that štruklji.  But it was perfect.  The concentric dark circles of buckwheat dough contrasted so beautifully with the creamy white cheese.  In photos, it looked like a fancy cake.  It tasted just as good as it looked.

Traditionally, štruklji is served with a topping of breadcrumbs cooked in butter.  But I opted for a healthier and, to my mind, a more flavorful choice: ajvar and thick, nonfat Greek yogurt.

Three months into my cooking project, I would have to pick štruklji as my most successful dish so far.  I never would have guessed that it would turn out to be so unusual and delicious.  I couldn't wait to tell my mother about it.

"So Mom, I made this giant boiled dumpling, filled with cheese.  It's called struklji.   Grandma never made anything like that,  did she?"

My mother didn't hesitate.

"Oh, sure she did.  But only for special occasions."

Amazing, all the Slovenian kitchen lore she is starting to remember!

#

Hard to picture this?  I felt the same way, even after I found some photos online to guide me.

So, for anyone who might be tempted to give it a try, here is my step-by-step record. Making štruklji as easy as one, two. . . ten!

1. Assemble the supplies:

2. Prepare the ricotta-egg-bread filling:

3.  Mix the pasta dough:

4. Roll out the dough:

5. Add the filling:

6. Roll it up:

7. Wrap it in cheesecloth and truss with twine:

8. Boil:

9.  Remove, cut the twine, and unwrap:

10. Slice and arrange prettily on a platter.  Voilà!