Czech Fruit Dishes
Traditional Czech cakes and fruit dishes

 

The central European apple pie with nuts, raisins, and cinnamon is - jablecny strudl or jablecny zavin or apple strudel.  Apple strudel is one of those dishes that everyone swears their own mother makes best.
Another favorite  fruit pastry that's mainly made in the summer is tresnova bublanina or cherry souffle, literally cherry bubble cake.  When fresh cherries are no longer available, stewed cherries will do.  Unfortunately, preserving fruit for the winter seems to be dying out, and very few young people know how to do it these days.
Grandmothers make preserves and jams from all kinds of fruit.
Preserved cherries - tresnovy kompot, or apricots - merunkovy kompot were never missing on  Sunday tables. There was also blackcurrant jam - rybizova marmelada.  Note, that unlike marmalade, the Czech marmelada can be made from any fruit, not just citrus fruits.
Thre is also blackcurrant syrup - rybizovy sirup and raspberry syrup - malinovy sirup.  Add soda water and you get malinova st ava or malinovka, a lovely refreshing drink in the summer.  Children sometimes use the word malinovka to refer to blood - it sounds less scary.  In the Slovak language, malinovka means any kind of fizzy non-alcoholic drink.
A traditional Czech fruit dish that should not be forgotten is ovocne knedliky - fruit dumplings, basically pieces of fruit stuffed in a ball of dough which is then cooked in hot water.  They are usually eaten for lunch in the summer.  Eating knedliky sprinkled with caster sugar and with melted butter poured over the dumplings is a childhood memory that's difficult to forget.
Czech sweet dishes are so tasty, you wolf them down - slupnete je jako malinu - you gulp them down like a raspberry.
The cherry on the cake - tresnicka na dortu - or the icing on the cake, in proper English.

 

-Pavla Horakova

 

 

 

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