It's not something original, said Pavol, and continued: Our dishes are a combination of the culinary traditions of all our neighbors and all our regions. Slovaks are simple people, workers and peasants who ate what grew where they lived. So when, on rare occasions, they traveled somewhere, they watched what others were doing and took over what they liked, he explained and added that this is how, over the past century, recipes were created that are today characteristic only of Slovakia. And possibly the Czech Republic because the peaceful separation of the two countries did not completely separate either the people or the customs. And the aforementioned perch is a freshwater relative of the sea bass, from which it has juicier meat. In addition, it is a common meal on the way from Croatia to the High Tatras, where many will go skiing this winter, regardless of whether they drove through Austria or Hungary. Moreover, it is also available when crossing the Polish border, and it is not the only dish common to all regions of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
Breaded pork schnitzel, as known as Wienerstchitzel, is another favorite of many travelers through these parts, because you can't go wrong with its preparation. Slovaks love meat and, no matter how poor they may be, they often eat a lot of it. They also put it in soup, which almost always starts a typical lunch. If it's chicken or beef, homemade dumplings swim in it. They also cook bean soup and serious pieces of meat also swim in the very popular cabbage soup. This is, in turn, a sauerkraut soup with pork neck, bacon, sausage, mushrooms and cream seasoned with cloves, cumin, garlic, nutmeg, red pepper... It is traditionally eaten on Christmas Eve, before perch with potato salad. A side dish to this soup can be potato pancakes, which are rolled out to a thickness of about half a centimeter, cut with a glass, and fried in deep fat.
A typical Slovak dish, which can be a hot appetizer, is bryndzové halušky, potato dough dumplings with bryndza sheep's cheese, which resembles feta. It is served on thin fried slices of bacon. The main dishes are dominated by meat: poultry of all kinds, pork, beef and game. Lamb and kid are popular only in some parts of this small but beautiful country. Meat is rarely baked, it is mostly breaded or fried, and very often made into goulash and paprikash, which is an obvious influence of Hungarian cuisine. Very interesting are the sweet dishes that are reminiscent of the cuisine of our Western Slavonia, perhaps because a significant number of Slovaks and Czechs settled there during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The dumplings with jam are at the forefront, similar to ours, which we fill with plums or apricots. They also make cakes popular in Croatia, such are cat's eyes and bear's paws, walnut cake, poppy seed cake... Bratislava's rožky, or rolls, are such a source of pride for the Slovak capital that the local association for the protection of gastronomic heritage is named after them. They are filled with poppy seeds and are always offered on the table for guests to snack on while waiting for more serious food.
Such food will suit skiers, exhausted and frozen on the slopes of the High Tatras, laughs my chef Pavol, answering the question of whether Slovaks watch calories. We don't watch fat either. We Slovaks believe that natural is always better than refined, so we don't even use vegetable oils. Our food is prepared only with lard. And that's why it's especially delicious, he claims. And few people know that Slovakia is also a country of considerable importance in wine. About 20 percent of the famous Hungarian wine region Tokai is on the Slovak side of the border. Although Hungarians often claim that their Tokais are better than those made by their northern neighbors, some producers, such as Jaroslav Ostrožović, can without fear engage in a wine battle with their Hungarian colleagues. There are about 1,300 hectares of vineyards in the Slovak part of this Hungarian wine region. Slovaks have five more wine regions, mostly along the southern borders, with a total of almost 20,000 hectares of vineyards, or about 3,000 more than Croatia.
Varieties are like in the continental part of Croatia and the climate is quite cold, so some popular international varieties, especially reds, did not really cope. That is why Slovaks have been crossbreeding them for decades to get new ones that would grow better, and most of them were named after rivers. Muscat bouchet, which is probably a cross between a Muscat and an Alicante bouchet, was crossed with Portugizac, and this new cross of crosses was crossed with Lovrijenac, resulting in a variety named after the Danube River. Danube reds are thick and harmonious wines that smell of cherries. Winemakers say that over time they slowly change in the bottle, just as the Danube slowly flows through Europe, and over the years its taste acquires tones of chocolate. Six more crossbreeds has rivernames: Váh, named after the longest (only) Slovak river, Hron (the second longest), Nitria (the river is Nitra), Rimava, Rudava and Torysa. Rosa is a cross between picpoul or piquepoul, an old variety from the French Rhone River valley, with Franconian and Traminer which smells like roses. That's probably how the wine got its name.
A unique Slovak variety is also the White Devin, named after the rock above the confluence of the Morava and the Danube and the castle of the same name, whose rulers controlled river traffic for centuries. It is a cross between fragrant Traminer and some Malvasia. It produces dry wines with a strong body, and since the grapes are often attacked by noble rot, it is also suitable for predicates. Such sweet wines smell of dried apricots and honey, and in history they were only for Slovak nobles. Today they will also be delicious for Slovak guests during the ski season.