Recipe Flemish Vol-au-Vent

The most typical Slovak national food is Bryndzové Halušky with bacon. This is made from potato dough mixed with a special kind of sheep cheese – „bryndza“ that tastes best in the so called cottages of shepherds or mountain chalets. The dish is topped by fried bacon lardons and some of the fat. Bryndzové halušky is best eaten with buttermilk or acidified milk. Slovakia can boast a remarkable world curiosity. Every year, in the mountain village of Turecká at the foot of the Veľká Fatra mountains, lovers of bryndzové halušky meet at the European championship for cooking and consuming of this dish.

Oliebollen, literally translated as grease balls, are deep fried dough balls, studded with raisins and currants and sweetened with a generous dusting of powdered sugar. It is traditional to serve oliebollen with coffee during Christmas and New Year’s Eve in Holland. Oliebollen are good cold too, with a hot cup of coffee and some extra powdered sugar. With this recipe, one can make about six oliebollen.

Karjalanpiirakat come from Karelian kitchen and they are a great gift for Finnish food tradition. Recipe of the pies were spread first from Karelia to East Finland after the wars and then to the whole country. Finnish adapted these pies quickly to their ordinary and festival cuisine. Nowadays some find it easier just to buy pies ready made from grocery store, but baking the pie oneself is almost just as easy as well. Baking may take little bit more time, but the result, it’s worth it.

The Chestnut: sweet, healthy and low in calories. The Valle Isarco/Eisacktal Valley innkeepers show us the taste of the chestnut during the “Valle Isarco Chestnut Speciality Weeks” from the middle of October to the beginning of November when everything revolves around the fruit of the bread-fruit tree. Numerous inns all along the route of the Keschtnweg, in the traditional chestnut growing area of the Valle Isarco offer all sorts of tasty treats during this time, which are all prepared using the noble chestnut.