The Czech dish Svickova

Recipe: Svickova - Roast Beef with Dumplings

Ingredients for 4 portions:

800g beef from the haunch
100 g bacon fat
1/2 celeriac
2 carrots
2 parsley roots
2 onions
4 tbsp oil
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp mustard
1 lemon
2 bay leaves
6 juniper berries
1 bouillon cube
1/2 tsp. pimento (allspice)
200 ml whipping cream
80 g cranberries

For the bread dumplings:

6 stale rolls
250 ml milk
2 eggs
250g flour
50g butter
1 tsp salt

Preparation

Peel and dice two carrots, two parsley roots, half a celeriac root, and two onions. Cut small slits in the beef and fill them with bacon fat. Sautée the onions till they are translucent, then add the vegetables. Brown the meat on all sides in a little oil in a pan. Then put it, water, and the seasonings in a cooking pot and let it all simmer for at least two hours until the meat is tender. Then remove from the pot. For the sauce, add cream to the vegetable mixture and purée it. Serve the finished dish with a dollop of cranberries or loganberries.

For the bread dumplings, cut six or seven stale rolls into pieces. Pour melted butter over them. Mix together the milk and eggs and pour them over the chopped bread. Knead thoroughly. Add chopped fresh parsley. Roll the dough into balls; drop the balls into boiling water and let them cook for ten minutes. The finished dumplings are then cut into slices.

This recipe comes to us courtesy of chef Petr Baláž from the Kaiser Ferdinand Hotel.