Recipes

You’ve probably never heard of Somlói galuska, and yet it is one of the Magyars’ favorite desserts. For some unfathomable reason, it doesn’t even appear on the menu at André’s Café. The …

Like nearly every European country that’s been invaded by Muslim Turks at some point in its history, Albania counts pilaf in its culinary repertoire. This is a rice dish that can be …

This is one of my recurring ramblings: why do we see so little shellfish in Russian restaurants outside of Russia? Oh sure, you can have seafood fettuccine, lobster bisque, snails in garlic sauce, …

Recent visits to Yugo restaurants like Kafana left me craving more grilled meat. Something slightly different from my usual Caucasian and Central Asian kebab experiments, yet not completely unrelated — after all, the …

Bryndzové halušky can be called Slovakia’s national dish without too much debate. This dish of potato spaetzle/gnocchi topped with a sheep’s milk cheese sauce and fried bacon is available in every other Slovak restaurant, …

I’ve said in the past that if you want to avoid crowds, the Monday after Thanksgiving is a good day to fish on the Salmon River. Well, here’s another quiet day to …

Spring has now sprung in earnest, but tell me, what foods can possibly mark the beginning of spring in a world where you can buy bad strawberries all year round, and even the …

There are few places where duck is as ubiquitous a culinary staple as in Central Europe, in particular Germany, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia (the other places would be France, China, and …

The last entry in my series of national dishes was Kazakhstan’s beshbarmak. This time, we’re hopping to the Baltic to try Latvian piragi. Naming a single national dish for a whole country is a …

I love baklava. The thin, nutty layers saturated with fragrant syrup take me back to a warm night in a caravanserai in Baku’s Old City, drinking herbal tea and dark Azerbaijani cognac. …