This svickova recipe is only an attempt as making it as traditional as I can. I scarcely had all the right ingredients, but in the end it tasted pretty similar. Svickova is one of the most Czech recipes out there – it is tender beef meat surrounded by sweet carrot and parsnip sauce, served with Czech bread/dumplings, whipped cream and… cranberry jam.
Let me show you how I got close to the above:
Svickova
Servings: 6
Cooking time: 3 hours
Difficulty: medium
Ingredients
- 1 big piece of beef meat
- 4 slices of bacon
- 3 big carrots
- 2 parsnips
- a quarter of a celery root
- 1 onion
- 2 cloves of garlic
- fresh thyme
- 2 tbsp of butter
- peppercorns
- oil for frying
- 1 beef stock cube
- laurel leaves
- 2 tbsp of sour cream
- fresh lemon
- 1 tbsp of sugar
- Unsweetened whipped cream and a sour jam for serving
Directions
- Start frying the bacon.
- Once it curls a bit, add the peeled garlic and thyme.
- Pat the meat with salt.
- Add it to the pan and let it brown well.
- Add the butter and turn it on the other side to brown.
- In a big pot, add the cubed carrots in a bit of oil, until they are soft.
- Add the second spoon of butter.
- Now add the chopped parsnip, celery root and onion. The parsnip is the key to this recipe, don’t skip it.
- Add the peppercorn and sugar.
- Cover with water and add the stock cube and laurel leaves.
- Add the meat, garlic and thyme and bring to a boil.
- Cook for 3 hours, while stirring occasionally.
- Once done, take out the meat.
- Blend the sauce until very smooth and add the sour cream and a squeeze of lemon.
- Ready to serve dumplings, whipped cream and cranberry jam. Since I did not have them all, I used normal bread and strawberry jam. And also a crisp cold beer.
