Dishes from Eastern Europe

As you could checked in the previous post, I enjoyed my workcamp in Jasenov (for everything but specially) for the food. I learnt many new recipes (most of them with sweet taste) and I would like to write them down to make sure that I won't forget them -and to share them with you, in case you want to try.

Sweet pasta
Well, this may not seem very innovative for some of you, but for me it was. You cook the pasta like always, then when is in your dish you add butter and cocoa powder, it's tasty! Jarka, the Czech girl of my workcamp, told me it's a very popular dish for students since it's easy and cheap to prepare -she took it like vegetarian alternative to bolognese sauce.

Anyway, I think a good tip will be to use good cocoa powder brands, because I prepared last Monday and it wasn't so good like on workcamp. She used Granko -which is pretty famous in Czech and Slovakia-, but for Spanish people I guess ColaCao would be the best analog choice.

Rice with milk (Eastern style)
In Spain (and I remember also eating it in Portugal), we also prepare rice with milk and we take it as a dessert, with cinnamon on the top and perhaps some lemon or orange peel.

In Czech they prepare it other way and they eat it like a main dish (is that pict that look quite delicious of the previous post). You have to let the rice on water first so it absorbs it. Then you boil it with milk and you add raisins. Once is cooked you add some sugar and you mix it well. Afterwards you can add: Granko, cinnamon, butter, fruits' compot or natural fruits. I tried it with peach and Granko and I really liked it :)

Rice with apple (Russian style)
Another possibility for sweet rice is to cook it with apple. You don't need to cook the rice this time with milk, just with water. In the meantime it cooks you can take one saucepan and prepare the sauce at the same time. You need to use margarine (or maybe butter is ok), then add small pieces of apple prepared with a grater (rallador), and when it is more or less cooked you add a gentle amount of sugar.

When Jarka was going to prepare the previous dish on the workcamp, Alex from Ukraine wanted to also do it this way, but unfortunately we didn't have a proper grater. Anyway, when the workcamp was over he kept on travelling passing trough Bratislava, and he took advantage of my kitchen to prepare this tasty dish -he did it Monday evening and prepared so much I had it also as lunch yesterday and today, haha. Very tasty!

Kachamak (Serbian dish)
This is not particulary sweet dish. In fact is a little bit sour, but maybe changing a bit the ingredients you can also prepare it sweet (I need to check with Serbian girls). The basis of this dish is water and flour. You need around 40-50 minutes to properly cook the flour in a light fire, otherwise you will fill its texture and it's not good. After this first part of the process you take it out of the fire and add some cheese (cow cheese or feta cheese). Then you put it back to the fire again and cook it for 5 more minutes, until it's ready to serve. You can add some sugarless yogurt when eating it, it makes it much tastier -I had it for dinner and following day's breakfast, me like it a lot!

Even when is not particulary similar, when I tried this dish reminded me of a sour version of Spanish 'leche frita', that I need to learn from my grandma though I asked her for the recipe so many times -I keep losing it!

Paprikas (Serbian dish)
This is a kind of chicken soup tyical from Serbia. Around there (also in Hungary, it's like their national vegeteable), there are many paprikas and so they have this soup. You have to first fried some onions in oil, then add water and boil it for like an hour with the following ingredients: chicken meat (in small pieces), paprikas, tomatoes, carrots and potatoes. Don't you forget to add a lot of the spice of sweet paprika. It is also very tasty, even when on workcamp it was paprikas without paprikas :D

Potatoes (Russian style)
The Russian guys prepared potatoes twice: once for us and once for the feast of cultures. We ate them in the workcamp just boiled and with a side dish with oil and salt where you could dip the potatoe. In the same meal we had salad made out of fresh onions, cucumber and tomatoes and with different dressings: oil and salt or kind of yogurt-cream sauce.

In the event for the locals they prepared a kind of potatoe salad close to the version we have in Spanish of 'ensaladilla rusa'. I don't remember if it was the Armenian or the group from Azerbaijan but they also prepared in an exchange I was something similar, and they call it 'Capital salad'. The one of wormcap had potatoes, boiled eggs, pickles, peas and a good quantity of mayonnaise -but I think everybody knows about other things you can add to the basis of patatoes and mayo, I personally like it with sashimi (palitos de cangrejo).

I think I ran out of recipes. Of course Achille, our Italian guy, prepared pasta for us and it was very good, but that's not so Eastern -is it? I need to check with Alejandro this fish soup he prepared because I wasn't present in the cooking and I don't know how it's done, so maybe I'll add it later.

I hope you are brave enough to cook one of these, I'm pretty sure you'll be glad you tried -and if not please tell me why, haha :D. See you in the next post, probably after Slatinka.

Big hugs,
Alicia

PS: shame on me, I still don't know how to make gulash, really need to ask some Slovaks!