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| Breakfast Lunch
Dinner Snacks Cakes |
One might say that Czech
cuisine is very similar to the one of Germany or Austria. Lots of
beef or pork meat, dumplings and rich gravy or sause. Meat is likely
to be roasted, fried or baked in stock. Dumplings are either made
from potatoes, potatoe dumplings, or bread, bread dumplings, where
potatoe and bread are the main ingredience. Czech dinner usually consists
of soup and dessert together with main meal. On the menu there are
most of the time soups like liver dumplings in beef broth, chicken
broth, simply vegetable soups or cream vegetable soups like cauliflower,
cabbage, potatoe or tomato. One of the speciality in soups is garlic
soup with crutons, very warming up and good when hangover occure.
A different assortment of breads is served with most meals. Rye bread
- chleb, finger roll - rohlik, knot roll - houska or
long bread stick - veka. Czech bread is used for another of
Czech specilties, fried bread - topinky, where on the top rare
garlic is spread. As you noticed, there is lots of garlic used in
the Czech cuisine, and potato pancakes are without exception. Bramboracky,
in Czech, the main ingredience are, of course, potatoes and garlic.
These two, topinky and bramboracky are usually on the menu in typical
Czech pub as munchies with some other food like pickled sausege -
utopenci or beer cheese, which is a bit smelly and need preparation
at the table. To eat this cheese you mix all the stuff on the plate
together with a bit of beer and musturd.
There are quite few fast-food stalls or refreshment bars. In many
stalls you can get frunkfurters sauseges put with musturd into finger
roll, parek v rohliku, grilled sauseges, klobasy, thicker
served with musturd and slice or two of bread, potato pancakes or
filled bagguets. To buy beer or some spirit in one of this stall is
not unusual. There is a big choise of salads and open sandwiches in
the refreshment bars. Salads are mostly made together with mayonnaise
and it is not recomended to eat tham during hot weather.Typical example
could be potato salad, egg salad, fish fillet salad, crab spraed,
cheese spread and many others. Open sandwiches are made on the slice
of long bread stick with butter or spread and decorated in different
fashions with ham, salami, meat, hard-boiled egg, gherkins, hard chees,sardine
fillets, if prepared at home anything you like. Chlebicky,
how are these sandwiches called in Czech, are popular to serve to
guests in Czech homes or during celebrating occasions |
Breakfast
Breakfast is usually cold and consists of cheese, meats, bread and
cakes!! (Yes you read right cakes ).
You many be presented with several types of salami, hams and pate
in conjunction with various sweet and smelly cheese. "Madeland"
is particularly good cheese as is "Niva" a blue veined example.
These are eaten with rye bread "Chleba" and or rolls: "Roholik"
and "Houska". Once you have had your fill of sweetmeats
you can start on the sweet cakes, these are generally pastries filled
with "Quark", fruit / jam or "Mak" (poppy seeds)
and just add that little extra to an otherwise excellent breakfast.
Sometimes you may have a hot breakfast but this is generally eggs
and ......
If you stay in a hotel you will generally have a wide choice including
cereals, jams, toast, etc. but don't expect an English fryup I don't
think you can find a sausage in the Czech Republic let alone Prague.
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main
dishes
The best way how to introduce main dishes of Czech cuisine, is to
list them with their names and small discription. Some of them may
seem quite fatening but they taste good. Sometimes the best drink
to Czech meal is to have a nice cold beer, for which Czech is famous.
In the pub or beer garden you should be able to get many of the most
typical meals, restaurants may not have much choise on the menu or
it doesn't have to be that dilicious as from a pub. Place you are
looking for to eat Czech meal is hospoda or pivnice.
Typical starter can be either stuffed ham, filled with a mix of whipped
cream and finely greated horseradiis or stuffed eggs, which are hard-boiled
eggs cut in half decorated with different spreads. On the menu can
appear ham plate or cheese plate or mixture of both, cold plate.
Don't be affraid to try tripe soup that could fill you up at lunch
time. It is made from fresh beef tripe add to broth with spices like
paprika, marjoram, parsley and hint of garlic.
Sauses listed below are served most of the time with dumplings and
roasted or boilt beef. There is no huge amounts of vegateble served
on plate with these sauses, if so mainly for decoration.
Horseradish Sause is creamy with a bit of sweet taste of horseradish.
Pickled Gherkin Sause, sweet and sauer brown sause.
Tomato Sause, red colour creamy sause with flavour after tomatoes
and spice like thyme and bayleave, and tomatoes of course.
Mushrooms Sause, white creamy sause with mushrooms, pepper
and caraway seeds.
Roast Tenderlion, fillet of beef is served a creamy slightly
sweet vegetable sause decorated with slice of lemon, dollop of whipped
cream and cramberries. It is one of the most offerd meals on the menu.
Beef Goulash, even it sounds more Hungarian rather than Czech,
it is very popular among tourists. Meat cut in cubes is in brown rich
sause made of paprica, tomato sause marjoram and caraway seeds. It
can be eaten with boiled potatoes, bread dumplings or potatoe pancakes.
Don't be surprice of the amount of sprinckled onion on the top.
Czech Platter is ideal if you want to try several classic Czech
dishes at on time. A large plate consists of sauerkraut and red cabbage,
slices of potato and bread dumplings, potato pancakes, smoked meat,
roast pork and beef and grilled sausege. Each of the meat might be
served as a separete meal with on of the sidedish and sauerkraut.
Breaded and fried pork is a steak of pork served with boiled
potatoes or cold potato salad with slice of lemon. Don't change this
with Wiener Schnitzel which is not cooked from pork.
Beef Rollups are best to eat with rice. Pieces of vegateble
like carrot, peas, onion and slice of bacon or egg are rolledup into
beef meat and cooked in gravy.
Stuffed Meatloaf is made from mixture of minced meat,egg, marjoram
and garlic, baked and sliced. It's usually served with boiled potatoes
or mash.
Roasted Rabbit is quite often on the menu among rest of poultry
dishes. Potato dumplings and spinach is the best side dish. You may
taste a hint of garlic, which is used in cooking preparetion.
Fish appears on the menu quite often. In Prague there is few
fish restaurants, if you fancy only fish meal. These have bigger choice
of different preparetion of many types of fish. Typical fish eaten
in Czech is carp. Breaded and fried carp is a traditional mael at
Christmas dinner. Other ways of serving carp is with cheese sause
or stuffed carp. Boiled, breaded and fried or grilled trout fish is
common, but has tiny bones, so you don't want to talk while eating
this fish. Many sea fish are now comming into Czechs restaurants as
they are wanted from tourist and some Prague's residents.
You may find some vegetarian or meat free dishes in Czech cuisine.
Most of the time it si fried vegatable like mushrooms or cauliflower.
Fried breaded cheese, omellets or even sweet dishes appear on the
menu under free meat dishes.
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deserts
In Prague is lots of cafes and cake shops where is a huge selection
of cakes and gatoues, espacially. You can get different types of coffee,
and, again, it is not problem to get a glass of wine or beer. Cakes
in many shapes and tarts are filled with poppy seeds, cottage cheese,
prunes or nut filling. Discribe gatoues is a bit difficult, they are
creamy, they are fruity or plain just with jelly or icing on the top.
Bellow is a list of the most displayed desserts.
Fine cake "BABOVKA" is similar to sponge cake but in twisted
rised shape. Sometimes is filled with poppy seeds or cocoa filling,
sprinkled with sugar and can be served with whipped cream.
Apple Pie, "jablkovy zavin", is made from apple filling with
a hint of cinnamon wrapped into puffin pastry. Fillings of cherries
or cream cheese can be wrapped up in the puffin pastry in similar
way.
Fruit Dumplings, in Czech, they might be eaten as a main meal
mainly by children. You may find this dish under either free meat
dishes or desserts on the menu. Fruit dumplings filled with blueberries
or plums are usualy made from raised dough. Dumplings filled with
with prunes, appricots or strawberries are made from potato dough.
Dumplings are served with melted butter, sprinckled with icing sugar,
poppy seeds or cream cheese.
Crepe Pancakes, are served with jam, ice cream, stewed fruit
coated in chocolate,whipped cream, sugar or nuts. Ask fiirst how pancakes
are served first.
Pancakes "Livance", are round, smaller and thicker than usual
pancakes made from yeast dough. They are decorated with redcurrant
or plum jam and cream.
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