Some
recipes from Porabje
“Nail
soup”
Ingredients:
2 litres of cooked smoked meat juice, 2 dl of sour cream, garlic, flour, bay leaves,
vinegar and salt.
You pour
away the first juice the smoked meat produces, and then you cook a soup with
the second one. To this soup you add small and long cut garlic pieces
(therefore, “nail soup”), the bay leaves, some vinegar and if you
like, some salt too.
Curd
soup
Ingredients:
1 litre of curd, 2 dl of sour cream, garlic, flour, caraway and salt.
You cook
the curd slowly on small fire. Then you add salt, caraway and garlic.
Afterwards you let the soup cook and then, after some time, you boil it again
briefly on a bigger flame.
Buckwheat
groats
Ingredients:
1 cup of buckwheat, 1 tablespoon of lard, 1 onion, salt and water.
You briefly
heat up a tablespoon of lard in a frying pan. Then you add the well washed and
cleaned buckwheat. You sear it a little and then you add two cups of water and
some salt. Let it cook for some time (do not forget to stir!). Afterwards you
add an onion and if you like, some more water. Then you stew it in the oven covered, until
the buckwheat softens.
Dödölle
Ingredients:
About 8 potatoes, 4 cups of flour, 1 tablespoon of lard, onions, salt and
water.
First you
cut the medium-sized potatoes in slices and cook them in salted water. As soon as
the potatoes are half-cooked you strew them with flour. Then you stick a wooden
spoon in the middle of the frying pan and let the potatoes cook. By the time
the potatoes have become done, the flour is also well stewed. The water is then
poured out in separate dishes and the potatoes are mashed. You sear onions in
the lard on a baking sheet and add the mashed potatoes carefully spoon after
spoon. And then you roast them red-brown in the oven.
Dödölle
is usually served as a side dish to juicy meat. However, you can also enjoy it
with salad and sour cream only.
Sauerkraut
with beans
Ingredients:
200 g of beans, 200 g of sauerkraut, 1 onion, pumpkin seed oil, vinegar, salt,
pepper and paprika.
Sieve the
water from the cooked beans. Then let the beans cool and mix them with the
sauerkraut. Add the cut onions, some pepper, some paprika and some vinegar.
Then you pour everything with some pumpkin seed oil and stir it well. Let it
remain covered for about 2-3 hours before serving.
Corn
dumplings (Gánica)
Ingredients:
300 g of cornmeal, 3 litres of water, some lard and salt.
The
cornmeal is strewn into cooking salted water. You stick a cooking spoon right
in the middle of the frying pan, so that the steam can disappear well. Then you
cook everything for about half an hour. Afterwards you pour the water into a
separate pot. Then you stir the mass well and, if you like, add some of the
poured off water. The thickness of the mass should be similar to the one of the
Dödölle. You “crumble” the Gánica mass into the
heated up lard and roast it for a short time in the oven.
You can serve the Gánica dish with sweet or sour curd, white coffee or as a side dish to the Pörkölt. (In the German-speaking regions the Pörkölt is often referred to as goulash, even though goulash is a soup. Pörkölt is similar to goulash, but much more viscous).
Fruit
bread
Ingredients:
700 g of flour, 30 g of yeast, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 teaspoons of sugar, water,
200 g of dried fruit and 140 g of nuts.
First you
knead the juice of the before stewed dried fruit (apples, pears, plums) in the
bread dough. Then you cut the cooked dried fruit in finger-size slices: from
every fruit about the size of a fist. The nuts are cut in small pieces as well.
The fruit and nut pieces are then added to the bread dough and kneaded well. In
the hot oven you bake the dough for more than an hour.
“Splint”
pancakes
Ingredients:
250 g of flour, 50 g of margarine, ½ packets of baking powder, milk, 1
tablespoon of sugar, 2 yolks, salt, lard to crisp up.
The
ingredients are kneaded with milk until it becomes dough. Then you cut out
rectangles of the size of 8 cm x 5 cm or small stripes from the finger-thick
rolled out dough. Little ties can
also be formed with the 1 cm wide and 15 cm long dough stripe. Then you add
them to the hot lard. Take out the dough splints from the hot lard, let them
drip off and serve them strewed with sugar.
Translated from German into English: Joël Gerber
The German text is based on: Mukics
Mária, „A Magyarországi Szlovének“;
Press Publica, (2003)
The specialities were cooked and photographed by Tibor Horvat & Joël Gerber