Czechmatediary

If you knew that something terrible were to happen to the Czech Republic and a radio broadcast was telling you that you had 24 hours to get out, what Czech “treasure” would you pack in your bag, knowing that you could never come back?? What things do you think would retain the Czech heritage for the future generations as well as keep you from becoming terribly homesick?

This is how my list would look like:

• Food

- Remember, we only have ONE luggage to pack, so we can’t fill it all with food (you can see I had to get rid of lot of my stuff…..)

3 tatranky (waffles dipped in chocolate)

2 fidorky (round waffles dipped in chocolate)

1 lentilky (similar to M&M’s)

2 polomacene susenky (shortbread cookies; one side dipped in chocolate)

2 burty (type of sausage)

• Books

Polacek: Bylo nas pet ( “It used to be five of us“)

Nemcova:Babicka (”Grandma“;Czech classic written in 19th century)

Vylety pana Broucka (”Trips of mr. Borucek“;another 19th century classics)

Capek: Valka s mloky (War with the Newts (European Classics)

Ctyrlistek - can’t leave Fifinka behind! (Czech cartoon magazine for kids) (more…)

Vanocka has a long history. In the past the Czechs called it pletenice or zemle or ceplik. Before the 18th century it could only be bought at the baker store, people rarelly made it at home. Since preparing vanocka wasn’t and isn’t easy a variety of customs have developed over time to make sure that the baking process is successful :). One of those customs, for example, was for the woman to wear a white apron and kerchief while she was cooking so she couldn’t talk, AND she was supposed to jump up and down while the dough was rising (I personally still do that and my vanocka always comes out perfect; one time I wore an apron that was green and instead of vanocka I found a baked pig in my oven! So all that to say, please make sure that your apron is WHITE!). Another tradition was (and still is) to bake in a coin and whoever found it in their slice was to be wealthy the following year.

Ingredients:

• 6 cups of all-purpose flour
• 9 Tsp of sugar
• 4 oz of unsalted butter
• 1 Tbs of yeast
• 1 cup of milk (more…)
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The Czechs start to fancy the organic foods and I am not just talking about the basic stuff such as meat, eggs or the vegetables but also the so-called bio-wine, bio-beer and bio-bread! They have spent this year 49% of their grocery money on organic food which equals to 760 million Czech crowns. This amount should increase to 3.2 milliard Czech crowns by the year 2011. The Czech Republic is therefore becoming the “star child” when it comes to ecology. Compared to other EU countries, the amount of its organically-worked land is far above the EU average, equaling about 7.2% of the total amount of the agricultural land. And that’s not all! (more…)

The word “goulash” means “herdsman” in Hungarian, meaning that it was originally a meat dish prepared by herdsmen. Starting back in the Middle Ages massive herds of cattle were driven to Europe’s greatest cattle markets in Moravia (hello!!), Vienna and Venice. During those long voyages the sickly animals had to be slaughtered. In order for the herdsmen not to waste any cow they just cut them up and threw them in the pot together with all of the germs, viruses, bacteria or whatever the poor cow died of….and that’s how goulash came into the world! Goulash has quickly become an important part of the Czech cuisine as its taste penetrated the whole former Austrian-Hungarian Empire. This luscious mixture of slow-stewed meat, vegetables and a good handful of sweet paprika just took over Eastern Europe. Beware though when you cook it! One authentic Hungarian website warns that “under no circumstances should flour be used to bind the soup..” (oops, I guess I have a confession to make..). The reason why no thickening substances (flour or cornstarch) need to be used is because the meat itself derives its thickness from tough collagen, which is converted to gelatin during the cooking process.

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Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 lb beef for stew or beef chuck
• 1 onion, thinly sliced (more…)
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Ray Kroc was born in 1902 in Chicago, Illinois. His Czech grandparents, however, came to he US from Stupno (near Pilsen). In 1917 a 15-year old Kroc lied about his age and joined the Red Cross as an ambulance driver. He never left for Europe though because the war ended. Disappointed Kroc had to find work to feed himself. He played the piano for a radio station during nights and functioned as a salesman of paper cups during the day. Later on he obtained exclusive marketing rights for selling the five-spindle multimixer - the miracle of speed and efficiency of that time. For next 17 years Kroc traveled the US selling these mixers until he encountered the San Bernardino restaurant in California, owned by Dick and Mac McDonald brothers. This simple-menu hamburger restaurant ordered 8 mixers on the spot. Kroc was quite blown away by the restaurant’s efficiency and offered the owners a partnership where his part would be building McDonald’s stores across the USA. Kroc says: “I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns, but I was convinced that the best was ahead of me.” (more…)

I consulted three cookbooks for this recipe of which one is taken from the “Velka Kucharka”(Big Cookbook) by Brabec - a favorite cookbook of my mom’s. “Velka kucharka” was written during deep communist times (1969) so the authenticity of this recipe is 100% guaranteed…

ZELNACKA

Ingredients:

• 7 0z. Sauerkraut
• 6 cups of water
• 2 potatoes, diced
• 2 tbs. of flour
• 1 onion,diced
• 4 slices of bacon
• Polish sausage (kielbasa)
• 5-10 white mushrooms, diced
• 1 tsp. Caraway seeds
• 1-2 tsp. Sweet paprika
• (more…)
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This is a classic Czech recipe that I used to love as a kid (and I still do). It wasn’t on my mom’s cooking repertoire but I learned to adore it from - believe it or not - the good old communist school cafeterias. There are a lot of slight variations of Paprika Chicken but the one I use has been created by Lada Kovarova (www.recepty.atlas.cz). I played around with the Czech metric system and converted it into the American “cup/tbs” system. I also played around with the recipe a little and added/tweaked some stuff to make it taste even better (and you can do the same!)…

Ingredients:

1. 1 lb chicken breast
2. 3/4 stick of butter (more…)
   If you liked this post buy me a coffee! (Suggested:$3 a latte $8 for a pound) Thanks!

Are you planning on visiting Colorado sometime soon? Why don’t you make a little side trip to Georgetown, a cute little town just outside of Denver? It is a hometown to famous Cafe Prague, a Czech restaurant that serves anything from a hotdog to Svickova (Beef roast in a special Czech creamy sauce) and Palacinky (Crepes - Czech style). The owner Martin Stribal says that his food is being sought after not only by the local Czechs such as famous hockey players such as Milan Hejduk, Martin Skoula, and Radim Vrbata or famous Czech American Madeleine Albright but also by the local bears (they periodically eat out of their trash bins)! Mr. Stribal says that even though the restaurant stays busy, Czech kitchen unfortunately won’t make them millionaires. Well the truth is that as good as our cooking cuisine is, it is still mostly a peasant style food, so one can’t expect to make a bank on it as some French and Italian restaurants do with their food. “Czech kitchen” and “Fine Dining” just don’t go together - and I am quite alright with it because there is nothing better than a slice of fresh baked Czech bread (Sumava…hmmmm) dipped into a bowl of Zelnacka (Sourkraut soup).

CZ: Planujete navstivit Kolorado? A proc si neudelate objizdku do Georgetown, roztomileho mestecka na okraji Denveru? Zde sidli mistni ceska restaurace Cafe Praha. Serviruji tu jak hotdogy, tak Svickovou, Vepro-knedo-zelo a ceske palacinky. Manazer Martin Stribal konstatuje, ze jeho kuchyne je zadouci nejen pro Cechy z okoli jako jsou slavne hokejove hvezdy Milan Hejduk, Martin Skoula a Radim Vrbata, ale take tu velmi chutna Cecho-Americance Madeleine Albrightove a pry i mistnim medvedum (pravidelne vyziraji odpadky)!

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Hi Everyone / Nazdar vsichni!

I found this “State Grand Champion Poppy Seed Kolaches” (by Claudia Matcek). I haven’t made it according to her instructions yet but it seems easy to understand. I have a real appreciation for such recipes because I have countlessly tried to bake Kolace (and various other Czech pastry) but with…..let’s just say, little luck. The problem was that I was reading the recipes out of the Czech cookbooks and ingredients such as “kostka masla” (cube of butter) or “prasek na peceni” or (one package of baking powder) does not have an equivalent here in the US unless you have stocked up supplies from the Czech Republic.
Anyway, good luck, here it is and let me know how they came out!

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One of the beauties of being a foreigner in a completely new country is the incredible varieties of food that you have never eaten before! For me it was such things as avocado, papaya, mango, peanut butter, broccoli, smores (Whoever came up with that one??!!) and the list goes on….I also took on liking the American “milk”. Yes, the box did say something about “Half-and-half” but how would I have known what that meant?? The fridge also offered an option of “Non-fat milk” but I wasn’t planning on poisoning myself with that weird substance. So for about a month I kept putting this “milk” not only into my cups of coffee but also into my cereal and was drinking it by the glass anytime I felt like a cold glass of milk. And every time I tasted that “milk” I thought to myself: “This is America! this is what everyone was talking about….even the milk tastes so much better here than in Czech!”

About a month later I started to realize that I had been suspiciously gaining weight. I kept blaming it on the lack of movement ( In
Prague one would daily run/walk about 5 miles just by trying to catch the bus or a tram on time). Well, finally my host mother caught me gulping down my daily glass of “milk” one day and proceeded to enlighten me on the situation. I was quite embarrassed, I have to say. So during the next grocery shopping we bought real (WHOLE) milk and a week later I was 15 pounds lighter.