What to eat Slovakia? culinary specialties and gastronomy

Prepared with rich ingredients that are supposed to keep the body strong, Slovak cuisine couldn't do without a better ambassador than bryndzové halušky. Considered the national dish, this mountain delicacy is prepared with tiny potato gnocchi served with sheep's milk cheese. The term " halušky" refers to these little pasta shapes. It is traditionally accompanied by a glass of žinčica (sheep's whey). Very similar, strapačky replaces the sheep's cheese, bryndza, with sauerkraut. Another similar dish, pirohy are thick potato ravioli, usually stuffed with sheep's cheese, cabbage, mushrooms or meat. In Poland, they are known as pierogi.

Often associated with Hungarian cuisine, goulash(guláš) is also widespread in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This paprika-flavored stew, generally made with beef and garnished with potatoes and carrots, requires a long cooking time. It is very popular and often served at village festivals and other local events. Gulášová polievka is a similar, but more liquid, soup-like version. Similarly, kapustnica is a cabbage and smoked sausage soup also seasoned with paprika. This hearty soup is part of the traditional Christmas Eve meal. There are also many soup recipes, which are generally popular dishes in Central Europe, such as fazuľová, a thick red bean soup topped with sausage. Conversely, rezancová is a light chicken broth with vermicelli, while the term demikát refers to a velouté.

Slovaks also love fried dishes. One such dish is kapor so zemiakovým šalátom, a deep-fried carp traditionally served at Christmas. The carp is usually bought in advance and kept alive in a basin of clear water, where it can purge and get rid of its sometimes strong muddy taste. It is then breaded and fried, and eaten with potato salad with onions, gherkins and mayonnaise. The rezeň is a Viennese specialty better known under the German name of schnitzel. This breaded cutlet (which can be pork, veal or chicken) is found throughout Central Europe. Traditionally served with potato salad, it is increasingly eaten with French fries. Last but not least, vyprážaný syr is the high-calorie dish par excellence, found on the menu of every traditional restaurant. It consists of breaded and fried cheese (traditionally Edam or Camembert). This dish is often accompanied by French fries and tartar sauce.

A nutritious and easy-to-grow crop, the potato is widely used in Slovak cuisine. One example is the very popular zemiakové placky, grated potato pancakes similar to rösti, often served with sour cream and chives. Živánska, a potato gratin topped with onions and sausage rings, or fučka, a very creamy mashed potato served with caramelized onions, are also popular. Local cuisine doesn't necessarily give pride of place to vegetables, which are rarely cooked without meat or dairy products, although the result is often mouth-watering, as with plnená paprika, peppers stuffed with meat in a tomato sauce. Last but not least, mushrooms - especially wild ones - are a popular choice. A good example is hríbová praženica, a kind of mushroom brouillade.

Slovak cuisine also features many pork-based products, such as slanina, or bacon, and údená klobása, a term used to describe different types of smoked sausage sometimes containing paprika. Krvavničky are similar to black puddings, while jaternice (occasionally called hurky) are made from various cuts of pork as well as rice and liver. As for cheese, Slovaks love bryndza, a fresh sheep's milk cheese used in many dishes. You can also try other cheeses that have the particularity of being smoked, such asoštiepok, beautifully molded in the shape of an Easter egg, or parenica, which resembles an astonishing reel of cheese that you unroll to tear it into shreds for tasting.

Like its Central European neighbors, Slovakia offers a wide variety of desserts to be enjoyed in cukráreň (pastry shops). Inherited from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, every town, no matter how small, has a pastry shop offering all kinds of cakes accompanied by tea, coffee or hot chocolate. Examples include bábovka, the Slavic equivalent of kouglof, which sometimes contains cocoa, marhuľový koláč, a moist apricot cake, or ryžový nákyp, a rice pudding decorated with melting meringue. Rolled cakes are also very popular, such as makovnik (with poppy seeds),orechovnik (with walnuts) or tvarohový závin (with cream cheese). It is sometimes interchangeable with the word štrúdľa, which unsurprisingly is the Slovak equivalent of strudel. It's most often garnished with apples(jablková) or a poppy-cherry mixture(makovo-višňová).

Pancakes(palacinky) are on the menu of every restaurant. In themselves, they are not very different from our wheat pancakes, although in Slovakia they are a dessert of choice. They are usually filled with fresh or cooked fruit, chocolate, jam and, of course, whipped cream. Whipped cream is also used as a filling for veterníky, caramel-coated puffs. Parené buchty are amazing steamed buns, usually filled with plum jam and generously dusted with cocoa before serving. Last but not least, laskonky is a delicate dessert consisting of two disks of walnut meringue topped with coffee whipped cream.

The festive season, and in particular Christmas markets, is the perfect time to indulge in a few specialties, such as the unmistakable trdelník, a spit cake resembling a thick tube of dough covered in sugar and gilded on the barbecue. It goes by other names in Central Europe, such as kürtőskalács in Hungary. However, the recipe is thought to have originated in Slovakia, where the best is said to come from the town of Skalica and is known as skalický trdelník. As for bratislavské rožky or Bratislava rolls, they're more like crumbly croissants, filled with poppy seed cream or walnuts. Unsurprisingly, Christmas is also the occasion to devour a large number of sweets prepared for this time of year, such as medovníčky, honey cookies often in the shape of stars or fir trees finely decorated with white icing. Mačacie oči (literally "cat's eye") are the equivalent of our spectacle cookies, filled with jam, while medvedie labky or bear's paws are a kind of chocolate madeleines. Finally, perník is a broad term that covers several gingerbread specialties between the soft cake and the harder cookie used to make edible houses, similar to the Russian prianik.

If Slovaks aren't such big beer drinkers/pivo than their Czech neighbors, who top the podium, beer is still a serious subject in Slovakia. Beer has been produced in the region since antiquity, and production exploded in the Middle Ages. In bars, it generally costs less than a glass of fruit juice and is served by the pint (50 cl). If you want a small beer (30 cl), it's best to say so. Almost every region has its own local production, so try it out and you'll find one to your taste. Among the most famous are Zlaty Bažant from Hurbanovo in the southwest, Šariš from the eponymous region in the east, Urpiner from Banská Bystrica in the center, as well as Corgoň, Steiger, Erb and Topvar. Tatran, the beer of the High Tatras, is much less renowned. As elsewhere in Europe, the microbrewery craze has taken hold in Slovakia, with numerous bars and taverns serving locally-produced beers with often distinctive and sometimes excellent tastes. Please note that Slovaks do not use the same scale as the French to calculate alcohol concentration. Local beers at 10 or 12° are therefore equivalent to 4 or 5° in France.

Slovakia has gradually privatized its wineries. The best wines are of international standard, even if domestic wine production is sometimes drowned out by more mediocre, low-cost wines. White wines, particularly Château-Bela's Rieslings, are among the country's finest. More than twenty grape varieties are grown in the six wine-growing regions of the southern plains (Little Carpathians, Nitra region, Southern Slovakia, Chateau-Bela, South Central Slovakia, Eastern Slovakia and the Tokaj region). If we had to choose just one Slovak wine, it would be tokaj, probably the best-known wine in Central Europe for its unique aromatic richness, a luxury product that is highly attractive on the international market. So much so, in fact, that Hungary and Slovakia, the two producer countries, have been engaged in a trade war since the 1960s over who should have a monopoly on the production of the famous tokaj. In 2013, the EU ruled in favor of neither party, as the wine could be called tokaj in Slovakia as well as Hungary.

In addition to vodka, Slovaks produce a gin-like spirit called borovička, scented with juniper berries, as well as silvovica, a plum brandy often homemade. There are all sorts of variations: režná (grape), hruškovica (pear), jablkovica (apple), marhuľovica (apricot) and čerešňovica (cherry). The rarest and most precious palenka is distilled from ripe forest fruits such as raspberries, bilberries and cranberries. Drienkovica is made from wild dogwood berries, a tree that grows in Europe and the Middle East. It was the favorite drink of Slovak President Rudolf Schuster.

Local non-alcoholic beverages include kofola, a caffeine-based soda that is a favorite of children and teenagers, and competes with Coca-Cola®. This drink has a distinctive licorice-like taste - like it or not, you just have to try it. It's served in bars, on draught.