Hlavní jídlo (main course for feast days, centered on knedlíky)
Vepřo-knedlo-zelo — Caraway Roast Pork, Knedlíky, and Sauerkraut
FestiveReconstruction🧂 🍋 🫙moyen3 h
The totem dish of Bohemia-Moravia: a pork shoulder roasted long and slow, rubbed with garlic and caraway, served with soft knedlíky (steamed bread dumplings, sliced) that soak up the juices, and a lightly sour braised cabbage, fermented, that cuts the richness of the meat.
Hlavní jídlo (main course for feast days, centered on knedlíky)
The totem dish of Bohemia-Moravia: a pork shoulder roasted long and slow, rubbed with garlic and caraway, served with soft knedlíky (steamed bread dumplings, sliced) that soak up the juices, and a lightly sour braised cabbage, fermented, that cuts the richness of the meat.
On great feast days, when the bell called the brothers to the refectory, it was this dish that was carried steaming to the long table. I liked to rub the pork with garlic and caraway the night before, so that the flesh would absorb it all night like a field drinking rain. The knedlík, you see, is not a luxury but wisdom: it gathers the juice that the plate would let escape. And the sour cabbage, a little acidic, awakens the palate weary of fat — each dish corrects the other, just as characters compensate from one generation to the next.
Ingredients
- •Pork shoulder — a nice piece (roast meat)
- •Garlic — a few cloves (aromatic)
- •Caraway seeds — generously (signature spice)
- •Lard — as needed (fat)
- •Fermented cabbage (zelí) — a large bowl (sour accompaniment)
- •Wheat flour — enough to knead (knedlíky dough)
- •Stale bread — a few slices (knedlíky filling)
- •Sourdough or yeast — a little (leavening)
- •Milk, egg — as needed (binder for dough)
How it was made : The water- or steam-cooked knedlík dates back to peasant kitchens of Central Europe; it allowed stretching a scarce meat by absorbing the sauce. Cabbage, fermented in large crocks in autumn, provided vitamins and acidity all winter. This trio, codified in the 19th century, became the national emblem of Czech and Moravian cuisine.