Slovenian Recipes

I received a couple of delicious Christmas gifts from Kosovo, where our visiting journalist son now makes his home. They were twin jars from a store called Sacro, the first organic food shop in Pristina, Kosovo's capital. One contained mountain honey, or mjalte bjeshke in Albanian. The other held a concoction I had never heard of: honey-tahini spread. The honey-tahini combination turns out to be popular in many other places, like Greece, Turkey, and even Israel. It is a familiar flavor, similar to sesame seed halvah. The texture reminds me of the honey butter we used to buy at the grocery store when I was a child in Cleveland.  But this exotic delicacy is even more thick and decadent, and with a far more complex flavor than honey butter. I am sure you could make your own.  But it is much better if it comes from the Balkans. I discovered a wonderful use for this luscious spread one January morning, when I wanted to make cinnamon toast for breakfast.  My husband ...

I had a limited role for Thanksgiving dinner: the pumpkin pie and the cranberry sauce.  My husband was making the rest. I wanted to slip in a few Slovenian touches. I toyed with the idea of pumpkin strudel.  I knew it was traditional in Slovenia, and in a few other places in Eastern Europe.  But I knew that would be pushing the limit with my family. So it would be traditional pumpkin pie—but I would sneak in a secret Slovenian ingredient: pumpkin seed oil in the filling.  And as long as I was innovating, why not try a gingersnap crust? For the filling, I simply adapted the traditional recipe that you can find everywhere.  For the crust, I used the recipe from the box of our favorite brand of gingersnaps. Pumpkin Pie with Pumpkin Seed Oil and a Gingersnap Crust Gingersnap Crust: 1-1/2 cups crushed gingersnaps 6 T. melted butter 1/4 c. sugar Crush the gingersnaps finely, using the food processor or a rolling pin.  Mix in the sugar...

Gnocchi have been on my mind. The recipe looked good, especially with that rich gouda and gorgonzola sauce. Then I remembered that our friend Marie, whose background is Portuguese and Italian, had recently sent me a recipe for  gnocchi.  When I checked, her recipe (for the dumplings, not the sauce) was very similar. And she used American measures. In adapting the Slovenian recipe, I got a little mixed up with the metric conversions.  I should have used more spinach and less flour, I suspect.  This was my first-ever attempt at gnocchi, so it was all uncharted territory. But it all worked out in the end.  Read on!   Potato and Spinach Dumplings (Njoki) with Gorgonzola-Gouda Sauce 1 c. mashed potatoes (you will need 2 potatoes) ¾ lb. fresh trimmed spinach (2 small bunches), cooked and minced 1 c. white wheat flour 1/3 c. semolina flour 1 egg dash of salt dash of pepper nutmeg, freshly grated fresh basil, 2...

Menu Sweet Beet Soup (sladka pesna juha) Potato-Spinach Dumplings (njoki) with Gorgonzola-Gouda Sauce Fresh Tomato Garnish Coleslaw I was in the mood for some healthy, not-too-meaty Slovenian food. I had a couple of ideas, both appealing.  One was borscht, or beet soup.  The other was gnocchi, or njoki in Slovenian.   Since I couldn't choose, I decided to make them both. It was a labor intensive dinner.  So let's consider the beet soup first. Months earlier, I had noticed a curious recipe in the Progressive Slovene Women's cookbook.  It was called sweet beet soup, or sladka pesna juha.   Definitely the sweet-and-sour type, with plenty of sugar and lemon juice, along with tomatoes and onions. But I didn't know what to make of the eggs.  What was this, a dessert or a soup? So I dismissed it. But I got to thinking about borscht again, when we visited our favorite Polish restaurant and ordered their version of borscht, which we had enjoye...

Menu Stuffed Peppers with Turkey-Kasha Filling Fresh Cranberry Beans Green Salad Lost Kosovo Kugel Now, with an eye to a healthy makeover, I made a few more changes.  For starters, I would make an all-turkey filling, instead of the beef-pork-turkey mixture I had used before. That meant increasing the spices, as I had done in my recent attempt at healthy turkey cevapcici.  And why not substitute high-protein, flavorful kasha for the white rice?  It might not be traditional, but it would be in the Slovenian spirit. Otherwise, I followed my original recipe, although I did add a little wine to the tomato sauce. When I went to the market in the morning, I found a surprise: fresh cranberry beans, otherwise known as Roman or borlotti beans.  By now, the dried version had become a staple in my Slovenian kitchen.  I couldn't resist buying these tasty beans fresh, although I wasn't quite sure how to prepare them. And for dessert, I invented something new...

Menu Pierogi Lasagna (Žlikrofi Casserole) Sausage with Red Cabbage Coleslaw Pierogi Lasagna. Lazy Pierogi.  Polish Lasagna.  Pierogi Casserole. However you name it, the dish comes down to this: Potato lasagna.  Not so appealing, at first blush. I discovered Pierogi Casserole on the website of an ethnic radio station in Cleveland.  It sounded like a bland, white-on-white, carb-heavy nightmare.  And even though it was identified as Slovenian on that website, and on a few of the others, I had my doubts. But it turned out to be more than I expected—and more traditional than I realized. Most of these recipes are simple:  Lasagna noodles are layered with a filling of mashed potatoes, enhanced with cheese and onions, and maybe a little garlic.  It does sound like the casserole approach to pierogi, the popular Polish boiled dumpling that commonly features a potato filling. But this dish could just as easily be considered the deconstructed versi...

Menu Turkey Cevapcici Tuna and Tomato Salad Whole Wheat Pita Ajvar and Greek Yogurt Fall in the San Francisco Bay Area can feel like August.  This was one of those days.  It was early October, but we were having a heat wave.  By mid-afternoon, the temperature would be over 90 degrees. “Maybe we should grill outside,” my husband suggested, as he headed off to work in the still-cool morning. Maybe.  It was definitely a day for cooking light and avoiding the oven at all costs. I was torn between two entrees.  Cevapcici had become my tried-and-true favorite for grilling.  I had made it three times so far. But I had never made a healthy light version with turkey, so maybe this was a good time to give it a try. But I had just found the perfect summer entree salad in my latest cookbook:   Slovenian Cookery by  Slavko Adamlje, published in Ljubljana in 2001. I had spotted this book in the library at San Francisco's Slovenian Hall, ...