I feel like eating „bryndzové halušky“

If I were not full enough while writing this blog post, Sainsbury’s supermarket round the corner wouldn’t help despite the fact that they have practically anything that comes to mind (including turkey pan, two-yolk eggs or vegetarian version of famous Scottish haggis usually containing sheep’s pluck).

Everybody living behind the Channel for a sufficiently long time has probably come across some of “the best of England” meals. Always served with pride by British, explaining the preparation process in appropriate detail might give a shock to the guest. The most peculiar example is definitely the Christmas pudding. Once all the dried fruits available in one’s household as well as egg, suet, cloves, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon are added, only the high content of alcohol is able to prevent it from spoiling during the aging requiring at least one month. According to Constance Spry, British florist and founder of the Domestic Science School, it used to be not uncommon to consume pudding made at previous Christmas!

The brown bread ice-cream is also remarkable. Breadcrumbs are grilled in the oven until the added brown sugar is caramelised. Once cooled, the breadcrumbs are broken into small pieces and added to the cream whisked with egg yolks and whiskey and frozen. However, made with chocolate rather than breadcrumbs, stracciatella ice-cream seems like a perfect substitute.

The vegetable sold at the Cambridge Market Square usually looks like something between pumpkin and swede with green coating. It is used to prepare various stews which are another part of the local cuisine. However, taking into account the fact that the preparation of such meals usually requires stewing it for sufficiently long time, any kind of vegetable would probably look like that after the preparation.

The Trinity College hall menu usually rotates such “best of England” meals, various dishes inspired by Indian cuisine and large collection of “meat, potato and beans” dishes. Thus within several weeks from my arrival, I usually start dreaming about the greasy and rich flavours of the Central Europe.

I enjoy cooking and I would be happy to prepare something myself but there are a few problems. The Czech cuisine distinguishes between soft and rough wheat flour but English supermarkets have a different selection. Unfortunately, neither standard flour (close to the Czech soft one) nor the self-raising flour is suitable for making the traditional Czech dumplings.

Yet another product is problematic. The British quark is by no means equivalent to Czech “tvaroh” since its packaging says “virtually fatless British cheese”. The fat dairy products are generally very unpopular. The producers seem to compete to catch customer’s attention by large “0% fat” signs on most yoghurts. The equivalent of standard Czech cream is called the double cream as if some virtual supermarket dietary nurse were asking me whether I really want to eat twice as much fat as it is really necessary.

I was naively assuming that so called Cambridge Eastern European shop might solve these ingredient problems. However, once I paid my visit, I got an impression that the true intention of the owner must have been to create something between the museum of Eastern Europe shopping at the times of socialism and a copy of grocery shop from Jan Neruda’s Tales of the Lesser Quarter (one of the tales describes the shop of Mr. Vorel who was spending most of his day smoking a pipe in front of his shop and thus putting off all potential customers).

It is hard to fail to notice the strong smell of fish after the entrance. The source is easy to find – smoked mackerel is placed next to the traditional Armenian honey cake. There are pickled herrings in large buckets below and Hungarian sausages are vaguely hanged above. Several types of millet and buckwheat can be found in opposite shelves next to some mysterious bicuits with signs in Cyrillic script looking a bit like the Czech Christmas cookies. The owner only nodded disapprovingly and continued smoking when I asked him whether the traditional Slovak cheese bryndza is available in the store.

Thus there is no chance to prepare the traditional Slovak “bryndzove halusky” dish. It seems that stocking up is the only possible strategy. Yesterday, one Slovak student told me that each time when he returns to Cambridge, he brings about 1 kilogram of bryndza and polooštiepok cheese with him. Such supply serves him for about 1 month but then he still needs to survive a few more “fish and chips” Fridays before coming back home.