Overnight rice flakes and chia pudding

The main event of July (not just for me but for all Slovakia I assume) was Pohoda musical festival. I’ve never taken part in summer open air activities and was quite nervous if my inner introvert survives in a crowd of 35000. Well, I shouldn’t have been nervous as the festival was unexpectedly cool: really good organized, with plenty of workshops, master classes and great music, of course. Food courts were also great with all possible types of dishes: from fresh coconuts to traditional Slovak langos (fried dough with different toppings like cheese or garlic) or from absolutely great pastrami (it was my first pastrami and I totally liked it) to chia pudding. I finally tried the famous Slovak codfish salad tapped into hot dog bun. It tasted ridiculously good despite the fact that I have prejudice to mayo salads. Well, once in a while 🙂
On one of festival days my breakfast was chia pudding made by Lunter company ( the biggest Slovak producers or tofu and vegetarians spreads like hummus or “fake codfish salad”. Btw, it makes Slovakia special, where else can you try codfish salad hot dog or fake codfish salad made from soya beans?

Stuffed bell peppers recipe

What is your recipe for “what to do with leftovers”? I’ve read plenty of recipes, but most of them were about “take everything you want, add eggs and cheese and bake/fry” – it’s boring, isn’t it?. In my search for a way to use leftovers I came to a summer recipe that is much more enjoyable.

Artichokes hearts and quinoa warm salad

Last Thursday I invited guests to late dinner and my plan was to cook something quick and impressive (and worthy to be shared here, lol). It didn’t take too long to make a choice, because I had pickled artichokes and freshly bought package of quinoa that was on sale in Tesco. I can also proudly say that this whole recipe was created by myself: it’s quinoa warm salad with pickled artichoke hearts, shallots and tomatoes. It’s really quick to cook if you already have pickled artichokes, but this quickness didn’t save me from being late as I had some urgent work to do, so I started too late and guests came when salad was cooling. And… Do you also say to your friends “wait a moment, I have to make a picture first and then we can eat?” Well, my friends are already used to it.

Greetings from Nová Baňa: cold beetroot soup recipe

This week was very hot in Bratislava so the idea to spend  a weekend in a country house in Nová Baňa sounded as a good idea. It was hot even there so my choice for the Saturday dinner was obvious: I cooked a cold beetroot soup.

If you ask me what is the taste of south Ukrainian summer, I will place this soup (it has very cute name in  the region where I grew up “cholodnichok”) right after famous Mikado tomatoes.  It’s also interesting because you can find all 3 staples of Ukrainian cuisine in this recipe: beet, dill and sour cream. Someone call this soup “cold borsht”. Every year I waited for the beginning of summer and my mom can finally  cook it. It’s a super dish for hot summer days when you don’t want to eat too much but you also don’t want to feel hunger in an  hour after you had lunch.

Artichokes heart and cherry tomato salad

Artichokes were always something mysterious to me. They were either painted on my favourite classical still lifes by old Dutch masters or appeared in the recipes of famous food bloggers I follow on the Instagram. I tried them pickled on the top of pizza, but I always wanted to try them fresh. Artichokes are neither usual  in my native Odessa  (and I can’t understand why, the climate there is close to North Mediterranean now)  nor in Bratislava. However Tesco gave me another surprise and last week I found Violetto artichokes among vegetables right under a box with rhubarb. The  price was high enough, so I bought just some. Of course they were not so fresh, beautiful and fragrant as those at Italian or French farm markets, but ok, it’s still nice that I can expand my cooking horizons.

Rabbit stew with shallots recipe

I feel a special kind of excitement as today I’m going to post the first meat recipe in my blog. It didn’t take too long to decide what meat dish to cook first as my Slovak friends mentioned that they have never tried rabbit and I invited them to the dinner with rabbit stew.

Before I share the recipe, here is a funny story about my experience with rabbits. In Odessa, where I grew up, rabbits on farm markets are always sold with one unskinned paw. Why? Because it is a proof that you are buying a rabbit, not a cat that was caught on the nearest street. I am still not sure if these “rabbit cats” were not just an urban legend.

Rhubarb banana muffins

I honestly tried to break this “no meat recipes” circle in my blog but it’s hard to switch to other topics when you have fresh rhubarb in your fridge. So the recipe of rabbit stew will wait until I get enough of rhubarb. This week I decided to combine sour rhubarb with sweet bananas in muffins (muffins are my current baking favourites as they are so easy to make and can have so many varieties). Inspiration for this recipe was found on Rhubarb Central which is a great page where you can find everything about rhubarb.