Czech Foods Recipes

It's seems to be hot in nearly every time zone. Conversations with friends afar keep drifting to 'Its just so hot in my country X.' After weeks of wailing about the weather and devouring salads for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and yes, I do mean breakfast), I craved meat.  I recently hit upon what I consider to be summer-meat-ingeniousness: thin slices of beef, veal, or pork, wrapped around some veg, cooked for a mere ten minutes in a sauce of tomatoes plus broth, with a handful of fresh gnocchi cooking along in the same pan.   Complete dinner, twenty minutes tops, no oven, and one pan. I am in roulade love. For last week's version (with much prettier pictures), check out Veal Roulade with Herbed Eggplant & Peppers. Continue to Recipe... Recipe: Beef - Green Bean Roulade with Gnocchi Serves 2 Eat with Chianti Classico  Time 20 mins 9 oz (260g) thinly sliced beef/veal a few big handfuls of green beans , ends trimmed 1 can stewed tomatoes 1 cup beef broth 1 tsp dr...

Some days lead one looking for a filling plate of meat. These days do not come as a surprise. They predictably stop by on the very same days where a 15K run was had under an eighty-degree morning Roman sun. Everything fueling that grueling wake-up had been burned off, and I was ready for lunch by 10am. And I wanted a proper lunch. Salads be damned. People always joke about the vast quantities of food slim girls are able to put away. It's been like this for as long as I can remember. You know those skinny girls in middle school who rivaled their older teenage brothers at the dinner table? I do. Something about genetics, something about lifestyle, but it gives skinny girls the go-ahead to chow down for years. Then they grow up. They learn to fit in with the other girls by joining fitness classes, or cycling groups. They also learn to keep their mouth shut in the locker room when others are griping about the insurmountability of those last few pounds. But those skinny ones who were ne...

{Steak with a Cilantro Dressing & a Bresaola Potato Salad} Some days must be witness to a little beefy indulgence. Make no mistake, this is not whatever the newest mcmassive hamburger is being promoted in the adverts. Rather, what a better accompaniment to a nice beef steak than a little bit more beef? First came the bresaola-wrapped potato salad. The following day, some gorgeous Chianina steaks were waiting to be topped with a spicy-cilantro dressing. Hmmmm...no time to do up a side, how about that potato salad with the thin slices of cured beef? Yes please, said the stomach. The potato salad is based out of Cook with Jamie . It's a slight twist on the classic - with lemon, horseradish, and celery. I find it brilliantly refreshing in the summer. Boiling the potatoes is done in the cool of night, of course. Replacing the crème fraiche with plain yogurt keeps it light, and I would even say that it is begging to be taken out for a picnic. Alongside a choice cut of meat with a sp...

Another wee blog absence has gone by...the last few weeks have been filled to the brim with 'important things to do' and weekends that disappear in a flash. One such weekend was spent back in Brno eating platefuls of dumplings and meat with my favourite 'granat' pivo to wash it all down. I hadn't noticed how much I'd missed Czech food (despite years of moderately good-natured kvetching) until I arrived, and my hosts asked if I was hungry. I replied, nope, I had řízek (schnitzel) for lunch before the flight. In Italy? Up went the eyebrows...Ummm, yes, I confess, I made řízek for lunch in Italy. At least I didn't smash it between bread slices and bring it on the plane with me  à la traditional-Czech-travel-snack . And what should happen when I'm back in Rome, in my kitchen, staring at some choice pieces of beef stew meat I'd just picked up? Yes, goulash. Yet this is not just any goulash. This is a trans-national goulash. Using a smoked Spanish...

If ( insert colour of choice here ) is the new black, then surely the Gaeta olive is the new Kalamata. Once a sought-after niche item, jars of plump Kalamatas now grace the shelves of even the smallest American supermarkets. After those dark Greek orbs were widespread enough for the foodies to snub the slightest mention of Kalamata, in marched the Niçoise. It was French, and had a crazy letter C, which made the pronunciation intimidating enough to make the average American home-cook shy away from them. It was perfect. The foodies were happy with their Niçoise, that is, until the cooking magazines published enough retro Niçoise salad recipes, coaxing middle America to roll out that ni swaaaaahhhz while ordering in chain restaurants and chatting with friends at book club. The foodies had to move on. The Italian Gaeta is smaller than the Kalamata, and not as difficult to pronounce as the Niçoise, but nevertheless hasn't had a salad named after it, so is still somewhat under the radar...

One Czech spouse. Check. One batch of freshly-made dumplings. Check. The only ingredient left for one cozy Czech evening is the guláš . Out of all the Czech dishes, guláš plays a special role in this country. Any pub worth its hospoda title is guaranteed to serve guláš. You know, I even feel confident enough to step that up a notch - any establishment whatsoever in this country serving food will have guláš on the menu (okay, okay, except pizzerias and kebab huts). Most pubs serve it on a mound of pillowy dumplings - around 4 slices or so. Some restaurants trying to distance themselves from traditional Czech food try to put a spin on it - like serving it in a big bread bowl with assorted garnishes on the side. Some places trying to tap into the rustic element will serve a venison guláš. Although, I'm told that since this is quite the money maker, some pubs advertise venison guláš, but it does not actually include any venison. (I've heard numerous stories of this same sort of aff...