Homemade Knedľa

Woe is me for living in a place with no Slovak restaurants.  (Let's face it, the States isn't big on Slovak restaurants in general; your best bets are New York or Chicagoland.  There are also a few Czech food trucks in the Northwest.)  If Ahab can't go to the Slovak food, the Slovak food must come to Ahab.

When my dad was making pork for dinner last night, I decided we needed to have an appropriate side dish.  We don't have the right kind of potatoes to make halušky, since it would probably look pretty weird made with little multicolored ones.  We did, however, have all the right ingredients to make knedľa.  Knedľa is a big steamed dumpling, usually in the shape of a loaf, though mine turned out a little more round because of how I had to steam them.  Knedľa is most often served with saucy pork dishes.

Although I'd never made knedľa before, the recipe is pretty straightforward: Activate the yeast, mix it with flour, milk, and egg, knead for a bit, let it rise, form the loaves, and steam them.  For the complete recipe and many more Slovak favorites, check out Slovak Cooking.  I pretty much never underestimate my ability to mess up a recipe, but everything turned out okay. 

Here's the bigger of the two loaves in all its dumplingy glory.  The recipe says to cut the knedľa with a thread or piece of dental floss, but I just used a serrated knife.  Next time I'm going to have to make a proper entree to go with it.  Until then, I (and all of my former students and fellow teachers who saw this same picture on Facebook) am very proud of my successful knedľa.