Kulajda

Ingredients

Soup

• 300 gfresh mushrooms, sliced, or 30 g dried, soaked
• 4potatoes, diced
• 1 litrevegetable stock
• 2bay leaves
• 6allspice berries
• 1 tspcaraway seed
• salt
• black pepper

Sour cream

• 300 mlsmetana or double cream
• 2 tbspplain flour

To finish

• 1large bunch dill
• 2 tbspwhite wine vinegar
• 1 tspsugar

To serve

• 1poached egg per bowl
• bread

Directions

1. Simmer the potatoes in the stock with the bay, allspice and caraway for 15 minutes.
2. Add the mushrooms, with their soaking liquid if you used dried, and cook a further 10 minutes.
3. Whisk the flour into the cold sour cream until completely smooth.
4. Now temper it. Whisk several ladles of the hot soup into the cream mixture, one at a time, before it goes anywhere near the pot.
5. Tempering is the whole difficulty of kulajda. Sour cream tipped straight into hot soup splits into curds instantly and there is no recovering it.
6. Pour the tempered cream back into the pot, stirring, and bring it to a bare simmer for 5 minutes.
7. Never let it boil after the cream is in.
8. Add the vinegar and sugar and taste.
9. It should be sharply sour and slightly sweet at once. Under-soured kulajda is just a mushroom soup, and the vinegar is the point of it.
10. Stir in a very large quantity of chopped dill, off the heat.
11. Dill by the bunch rather than the spoonful. It is the dominant flavour and Czech cooks are heavy-handed with it.
12. Poach one egg per person in vinegared water, keeping the yolk soft.
13. Ladle the soup into bowls and lower a poached egg into each.
14. The soft yolk is meant to be broken into the soup at the table, where it enriches it further.
15. Serve with bread, and eat it straight away while the yolk is still soft.
16. It is South Bohemian, and every family holds that theirs is correctly sour and everyone else’s is not.

Technique

• Wild mushrooms in season make a considerable difference; Czechs are serious foragers.
• The caraway and allspice are what mark it out from a generic creamy mushroom soup.
• It is served both as a starter and as a light meal in its own right.

Substitutions

• Crème fraîche, which is more stable and less likely to split.
• Dried porcini rehydrated, using the soaking water.

Variations

• With a hard-boiled egg instead of poached.
• Without mushrooms, as a plain dill and potato soup.
• With more vinegar, as it is made in the south.

History

A South Bohemian soup built on forest mushrooms and soured cream, thickened without meat for fast days.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kulajda?

Kulajda is a soup & stew from Czechia: creamy sour soup with dill, mushrooms, potato and a poached egg. A South Bohemian soup built on forest mushrooms and soured cream, thickened without meat for fast days.

How long does Kulajda take to make?

Kulajda takes 15 min of preparation and 30 min of cooking. The recipe makes 4 servings. It is rated easy to make.

What can I substitute in Kulajda?

Yes, within limits. Crème fraîche, which is more stable and less likely to split. Dried porcini rehydrated, using the soaking water.

What is the most important thing to get right in Kulajda?

Tempering is the whole difficulty of kulajda. Sour cream tipped straight into hot soup splits into curds instantly and there is no recovering it.