Slovenian Recipes

Menu Rižota (Risotto) Mlinci (Baked Noodles) Coleslaw At first, I overlooked the recipes for Slovenian-style risotto, or rižota.  Each one of the cookbooks had a version.  Sometimes the meat mixture varied, but otherwise they were all fairly similar.  Not too exciting, I thought.  They seemed like simplified, less rich versions of the classic Italian dish.  None of that slow stirring so that the rice gradually absorbed the liquid. But I decided to give rižota a try.  I stuck pretty closely to the version offered by the Progressive Slovene Women of America.  I substituted beef for veal and used a little less pork.  I upped the tomatoes slightly and, as usual, substituted olive oil for fat or lard. Naturally, I used frozen peas instead of canned.  (Maybe I'll try fresh next time.)  When it came to the rice, I used the long grain variety we had on hand.  Short grain, like arborio, is usually recommended for risotto. 1 lb. ...

I decided on duck rather than chicken because it seemed more exotic.  I had never actually roasted a duck before.  In case you are in the same boat, here is how I did it. There is nothing especially Slovenian about this way of roasting a duck.  I consulted a few standard American cookbooks to come up with this.  The main issue, as I understand it, is getting rid of some of the fat without letting the meat dry out. A 5 lb duckling, fresh and organic salt and pepper other seasoning of choice To prepare: Remove giblets.  Rinse, dry, and cut off excess fat.  Cut slits in the skin, at regular intervals, all over the duck.  Use a small sharp knife blade held just under the surface of the skin, and parallel to it. Coat the duck inside and out with a mixture of salt, pepper, and any other seasoning you desire.  (I used a Mediterranean seasoning mix prepared by our local spice shop.) Put the duck, breast side down, on a rack in a rectangular...

Menu Mlinci (Baked Noodles) Roast Duck Red Cabbage with Apples Red Pepper and Tomato Salad This was another dinner where the side dish became the main event. Mlinci (m'LEEN-tsee), also known as baked noodles, seemed like an intriguing but improbable dish.  I had to give it a try. I first heard about mlinci when The Professor, a Facebook friend who lives in Slovenia, posted a photo of a festive St. Martin's Day dinner he'd just prepared: A roast duck, accompanied by a strange sort of dumpling or noodle called mlinci. Months later, I came across a recipe for mlinci/baked noodles in the Progressive Slovene Women's cookbook.  I found a few other recipes through an Internet search.  It's a simple dish.  A noodle dough, rolled into thin rounds and baked, then cooled and broken into bits. To serve, the bits are moistened with boiling water or dropped into soup. Presto! Instant noodles.  Or dumplings.  Or something.  Often mixed or fried ...

Menu Roast Sauerkraut Grilled Kielbasa (a klobase substitute, in a pinch!) Coleslaw My husband had picked up a jar of organic sauerkraut at a local market.  So I decided to make it the centerpiece of this week's dinner. I had enjoyed the sauerkraut many times at the Slovenian Hall in San Francisco.  I'd even been the official sauerkraut server in the buffet line at a recent dinner.  It was always rich and brown, and it appeared to be oven-baked.  I wondered if there was a special trick to it. My vintage cookbooks had plenty of references to sausage and pork dishes served with sauerkraut, boiled or roasted.  But not one of them bothered to give a recipe.  It was probably one of those things a Slovenian cook just knew.   The seasonings (caraway seeds, juniper berries, and white wine) sounded lovely.  But the recipe seemed pretty heavy on meat and fat. About four ounces each of bacon and ham, plus four tablespoons of zaseka, a bacon-...

Menu Bleki Soup (Roman Bean Puree with Bleki and Pancetta) Waldorf Salad For months, I had been trying to figure out the thick bean soup my mother recalled from her childhood.  She referred to it as "black-eh."  I had come to think of it as our family Mystery Bean Soup. Just like our family history, the story about this elusive soup emerged slowly.  I'd had an "ah-ha" moment when I figured out that my mother might be referring to bleki, the square noodles that are a delicacy in Slovenian cooking.  And then it turned out that the beans she recalled were actually Roman beans or borlotti, not the black beans I had imagined. Put together Roman beans and pasta or noodles and you get pašta fižol, a tasty soup-stew.  For my Week 12 dinner, I had made a version that my husband and I enjoyed. But I suspected that it wasn't quite the soup that grandma used to make. Finally, I read a single line on a Slovenian website that pulled it all together.  It desc...

Djuveč Menu Djuveč (Lamb, Pork and Vegetable Casserole) Green Salad Bread Djuveč ("ju-vech") is found in one form or another throughout the Balkans.  But I had never heard of it until I started poring over my vintage copy of  Treasured Slovenian and International Recipes , the cookbook put together by the Progressive Slovene Women of America. The origins of the dish are probably Turkish. The Romanian version, ghivetch, is often considered a Jewish dish, one I recall seeing on menus in Israel.   It sounded like a mildly spiced version of ratatouille, although djuveč usually adds meat and a little rice to the familiar vegetable mix.  The Progressive Slovene Women included two versions in their cookbook.  I was surprised to find one of them in the Slovenian section, since the dish probably reached Slovenia by way of Serbia. The second one, called Serbian Djuveč, was included in the International section.  At first glance...