Pastries and Prague!

While the country’s name might have officially changed from the Czech Republic to plain and simple Czechia, its capital Prague is still just as fun. Offering travellers a whole lot of things to see, do and yes...eat. Raul Dias gives you a taste of a few iconic pastries of Prague to stave off the munchies.

By Raul Dias

While there is very little doubt that Amsterdam in The Netherlands rules the roost as far as being Europe’s undisputed party capital, Prague comes a close second. The capital city of the newly christened country of Czechia—that was formerly known as the Czech Republic—is THE place to go for those on the prowl of a rollicking good time. All this, in a city steeped in history and culture and one where the party is on 24X7.
Here, beer flows like water. Quite literally! Yes, beer is cheaper to buy than bottled water in Prague. But this piece isn’t about Prague’s legendary beer bars and how to scope them out. Enough has been written about that. Au contraire, it is about what to do post a tryst with said bars, when the munchies kick in and all you need is a big, comforting sugar rush.
So, in no particular order is my list of the top five sweet treats Prague has in store for you:

Trdelník
It would be sacrilegious of me to kick start this list without a bit about the ‘ruling monarch’ of all of Prague’s pastries. Never mind the tongue-twister of a name, having a trdelník in Prague is a must-do. A traditional Slovak rolled pastry originating from the Hungarian-speaking region of Transylvania, the trdelník is usually served warm and topped with a dusting of sugar, nuts or cinnamon. Also known as a chimney stack cake, this delectable treat that can be found at almost every street corner in the city is made by wrapping the pastry dough around a wooden or metal stick, roasting it over an open flame and coated with sugar or cinnamon. I had a superb chocolate one at Krusta in Drazickeho Square. But, psst…for those of you in Mumbai, The Chimney Factory does a fairly decent iteration of the trdelník at its two branches in Bandra and Shivaji Park!

Palačinky
Though they may look similar to French crepes, these thin Czech pancakes are made very differently using a different batter. Typically rolled up and served with fillings such as jam, fruit, cream or nuts, it is an ideal treat for those post binge drinking sessions. This scrumptious treat can be found easily in cafes like Café Creperie Pod Věží around the city center, as well as at food carts around the city. If you happen to find yourself in Prague during the months of November and December, you’ll see scores of stalls set up at the city’s many Christmas markets dishing out thousands of steaming hot palačinkys. And for those sad souls who don’t like the sweet side of life, you can even opt for savoury stuffings of meat, cheese and spinach to go with your pancake.

Ovocné Knedlíky 
While the idea of eating a fruit dumpling might seem strange, trust me when I say that a plate of these babies will take you straight to gastronomic heaven! Along with the trdelník and the palačinky, the ovocné knedlíky completes the trifecta of Prague’s favourite sweet dishes. Made from milk, butter, flour, eggs, salt, and dry cottage cheese, these dumplings are commonly filled with strawberries, apricots, plums, or plum jam and served alongside a dollop of whipped cream. Café Savoy in Vítězná that has been around since 1893, makes the best ovocné knedlíky in my humble opinion.

Perníky
You don’t need to look hard to find these yummy sweet treats. Your nose will scope them out for you. Now, while gingerbread might seem ubiquitous in Central Europe, the Czechia version really is something special. It has roots stretching back centuries, to when it was made only with honey, butter, and nuts—which you can still find in certain special places in Prague. Nowadays, you’ll see beautifully decorated, iced gingerbread all over the place. But do head down to Perníčkův Sen bakery in Haštalská for the best perníky you’ll ever eat in Prague.

Makový Koláček 
Shortened down to just ‘kolach’ this iconic Prague pastry (that’s similar to a Danish pastry) is diminutive in size and the perfect pairing with tea or coffee. The original kolach boasts a filling of some sort contained by a rim of brioche-like yeasted dough. Though not as easily found as the other pastries on this list, I had a divine one at the Artisan Café & Bistrot in Vejvodova, where the dough was a pleasantly slightly sour yeast-based one, and the filling was made of sweet poppy seed paste.

(An edited version of this column first appeard in the 17th February 2019 issue of The Free Press Journal newspaper's Weekend section on page 3 https://www.freepressjournal.in/travel/top-5-sweet-treats-from-prague/1461597)

Notes from St. Petersburg

By Raul Dias

My metal tray slides along the purpose-built rails generating a loud, clanging sound as it collides with the person’s in front of me. I mutter a feeble apology and swiftly move ahead. The grumpy lunch lady behind the plexiglass screen glares down at me, grunting every time I point at something that catches my fancy on the buffet counter she’s manning. Plonking down a bowl of luridly pink soup and a quarter plate of the greyish hamburger patty onto my tray, she all but ‘banishes’ me to the cashier with a wave of her mighty arm.
Now, before this begins to sound like some dystopian, boarding school-meets-prison lunch hall memory I’m conjuring up, let me set the record straight. I’m in St. Petersburg, trying out a dining experience that I had been wanting to have a go at ever since I had heard about it. Lunch at a Soviet era stolovaya is slowly becoming something of a tourist must do when in the most western city—culturally speaking—of Russia.
And so, there I was at the Ligovsky Prospekt branch of Stolovaya n.1 Kopeika, a popular stolovaya chain in St. Petersburg, where both, the brusque service and the pink-tinted beetroot borscht are said to be equally legendary!   

Servings of Nostalgia
The word stolovaya simply means “canteen” in Russian and is a nostalgic leftover (pun intended!) from the Communist USSR days when providing an “adequate” level of care and provision for the population in all areas of their lives was the well-flogged mantra. The Germans even have the perfect name for this—ostalgie. Loosely translated, this implies a sort of nostalgia for the bygone communist days.
While these are public cafeteria-style restaurants that can be found everywhere in Russia, it is St. Petersburg that boasts the most number of them—both old and more recent, 21st century iterations. Each trying to distil the bleakness and “dark” atmosphere of the older ones into them. Right down to the Soviet style prints hanging on their walls and work staff that are mostly from the ex-Soviet republics of Central Asia.
In St. Petersburg, most stolovaya are open 24/7 and are cash-only establishments. And in a city where buying groceries and cooking one’s own meals can be a rather expensive affair, eating all three meals at a not-so-friendly neighbourhood stolovaya is the norm. For here, a hearty lunch of a soup, a soft drink, a main and a dessert can often be bought for as less as 200 roubles (Rs 218 approximately).

Herring under Fur Coat!
Speaking of dishes, the food on offer at most stolovaya are simple, homestyle, fill-your-belly kind of no-frills stuff. Here, one can expect to find dishes like the ubiquitous mayonnaise-doused fruit and veggie Salad Olivier that is known to the world as Russian Salad. Apparently, the salad was named after Lucien Olivier, a Belgian-origin chef who invented it at Moscow’s Hermitage restaurant in the 1860s.
Equally popular are other dishes like the kotleti hamburger-style patty and the beetroot borscht–both of which I’d tried earlier and loved. Not so much the insipid, watered down kompot, however. This soft drink is said to be a stolovaya mainstay and is made from synthetic ‘fruit’ syrup with tiny bits of fruit flotsam bobbing along its room-temperature surface.
But then there are some stolovaya specimens that are so confounding to a non-Russian that seemingly innocuous dishes like the pickled fish and boiled eggs shuba salad end up with weird translations such as ‘herring under fur coat’ on menu boards. The traditional Russian dish of yezhik (literally, hedgehog!) is another example, where the rather tasty side dish of rice-spiked meatballs has a strange-sounding English translated name.
Interestingly, breaking away from the traditional stolovaya model as far the food is concerned seems to be the latest trend in Russia. I was soon to find out that there are a bunch of speciality stolovaya options in St. Petersburg such as all-vegetarian (Rada & K on ul Gorokhova 36), organic and even a few where the emphasis is on ethnic cuisine. Puris in St. Petersburg, anyone?


(This article first appeared in the 10th February 2019 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 7 https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/travel/notes-from-st-petersburg/article26212860.ece)

A-N-A-T-O-M-I-Z-E: Atta Chicken

By Raul Dias

The idea of rich, buttery pastry encasing a succulent piece of meat is represented to great culinary success by two of my all-time favourite dishes—the French poultry wonder that is poulet en croute and the very British dish of lamb wellington. It also finds itself (albeit, handled a tad differently) in another dish I’d wage war for i.e. parda biryani! Unlike the earlier two western preparations, where the ‘croute’ or pastry covering the meat is meant to be eaten, the ‘parda’ draping the Awadhi-style biryani, made up of a thick sheet of rolled whole wheat flour, is discarded to reveal the fragrant rice preparation within.
On a recent trip to the Delhi NCR, I encountered a very interesting preparation that had elements of both styles baked right into it. The atta chicken at Unplugged Courtyard Gurgaon is a succulent, spiced whole chicken wrapped in a dough made from wheat flour and then baked. Chef Akshay Bhardwaj, the restaurant’s corporate chef who has in the past worked at Chef René Redzepi’s two-Michelin star restaurant Noma in Copenhagen, came up with the idea of blending these two very different, yet strangely similar techniques to create one single dish.
Using a mixture of aromatic spices like ground cardamom, black stone flower, the ubiquitous garam masala, with raw mango and lemon rind powders thrown in for a tangy hit, the chicken is marinated overnight along with hung curd. To seal in its moisture, it is then seared off in a hot tandoor oven for a few minutes.
But before that all-important layer of wet atta covers the whole bird, a sheathing of banana leaves is used to give the dish a unique taste. Designed to keep in the juices, the atta covering is scored in a hedgehog pattern and the chicken is baked in an oven for 20 minutes at 180˚C. Once at the table, the baked dough seal is broken to reveal its steamy contents that are a treat to each one of the senses…

(An edited version of this column first appeared in the 3rd February 2019 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 8 https://www.pressreader.com/india/the-hindu/20190203/283420602870802)

Bored in Bratislava?

While it can be accused of being rather bland and boring, the Central European city of Bratislava does have a few interesting surprises up its sleeve, says Raul Dias who spent a solitary spring day about the rather uninspiring Slovakian capital.   

By Raul Dias

I must confess, I had been warned about Bratislava. Warned that I’d be unimpressed with its bleak, unimaginative urban architecture. Warned that I’d find the food uninspiring. And yes, warned that I’d find it very hard to like the compact little city, try as hard as I may! But on that sunny spring Friday morning in May last year, nothing could prepare me for the day I was about to have in Slovakia’s capital city that’s truly one of the most boring places I’ve ever been to.
Then why write a travel article on such a place? You may very rightly ask. Well, you see, that all boils down to a simple belief I’ve held close to my heart. I’ve always felt that just like every single person on earth, every single place has its own unique story to tell—however bland and bring it might seem to others. And as a travel writer it is my job to write about such places and chronicle such stories. Real travel for me isn’t just about the triple alliteration of gloss, glamour and glory.

Back Story Time
Located very close to the Austrian border and only 60 kilometres from the super fun and exciting Austrian capital of Vienna, Bratislava straddles the River Danube in southwestern Slovakia. Declared the capital of Slovakia when the Central European country became an independent state on 1 January 1993 after the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia that’s sometimes known as the “Velvet Divorce”, Bratislava couldn’t be more different from its Czechia counterpart of Prague.
And I could most certainly see that! Having just taken the bus from Prague to Bratislava en route Budapest in Hungary, the difference couldn’t have been more obvious. For one, the grey, concrete buildings of the newer part of town that the bus drove past looked like surly remnants of the communist era. Secondly, I had to use up my stash of one Euro coins to secure a five-hour spot for my suitcase at the left luggage room at the bus station, while both Czechia and Hungary use their own currencies.
A tad peckish after the bus journey, the attached station cafeteria was my only option for immediate sustenance—never mind that it looked straight out of some dystopian film noire. Visions of grumpy lunch ladies ladling gloopy looking boiled potatoes and greyish meatloaf onto a plastic tray were beginning to resemble a scene in some Dickensian novel. Shoveling the tasteless lunch washed down by a glass of weak, concentrated orange juice, I made my way on foot towards the city center to see what more surprises Bratislava had in store for me.

Of Statues and Graduates!
One of the first things that caught my eye as soon as I got the main town square was the sight of a group of Korean tourists all huddled together staring down at something on the pavement on the junction of Laurinská and Panská Streets. On closer inspection, the object of their (and now, my!) curiosity turned out to be a rather odd looking bronze statue of a workman peering out of a manhole. Known as Čumil or “the watcher”, this is supposed to be the most photographed statue in all of Bratislava. As I was to later learn, there are two possible explanations for its name. The first rumour says that he is a typical communist era worker who is not bothered about the work he’s supposed to be doing. According to the second rather kooky rumour, he’s a pervert looking up the skirts of women who pass by. I rest my case, folks.
Still a bit winded from that encounter with Bratislava’s greatest tourist attraction, I was almost runover by a group of rambunctious young people riding bicycles festooned with balloons and banners and generally creating a mighty rumpus asking passersby for money. As it so happens, Thursdays and Fridays throughout May mark a special time in Slovak culture. For it is then that a sort of coming of age parade takes place where soon-to-graduate high school students go into the town with every member of their class and beg for money to be spent on drinking. The entire class will be there at this final party and most likely it will be the very last time the entire class will be together.
Eager to fit in something worthier of talking about on my five hours in Bratislava, I sauntered down towards the Bratislava Castle. Situated on a hill along the Danube, this castle is made up of a huge rectangular building with four corner towers. It was constructed in the 9th century and underwent massive renovation after World War II. Its front yard, called the “Yard of Honour”, has triumphal gates and guard houses. And it was from here that I took in my single, remembrance-worthy sight of the panoramic view of the city below. A city that tired its best to bore me…to remarkable success!

(An edited version of this column first appeard in the 3rd February 2019 issue of The Free Press Journal newspaper's Weekend section on page 3 https://www.freepressjournal.in/travel/bored-in-bratislava-heres-how-to-make-it-interesting/1450529)