Choose heartiness
At Novak’s, the guest chooses how many hearts they will eat … Because it’s not about the number (except with wines…), but about heartiness! Domačija Novak is a place to experience happiness, because every meal here has a flavour of feast!
Couvert
Homemade sourdough bread is fresh every morning. The neighbor’s homemade butter is lightly salted and foamed for spreading. The homemade zašink (smoked pork neck) is from Dolenjska and therefore not only melts in your mouth, but even more so in wine.
Amuse bouche
Toasted rye sourdough bread is topped with a spread of curd and sun-dried tomatoes.
Fig
The fig is cooked in red wine, a cracker with seeds crunches underneath, there are walnuts just in case, and powdered fig leaves provide the spice. “We’re running out of vegetables now, and there are no more flowers,” . This is the kind of simplicity that always has one word when it succeeds (like this): aftertaste.
Tradition
A tradition that should not be missed: smoked trout. Krka is just below, so the home-made and lightly smoked trout – Jan’s domain – is a house specialty that is always on the table. Only the accompaniment, as we now know, is a little different: the fried potatoes are so thin and crusty this time that you can roll them into a sandwich, with the horseradish sauce with the last of the fresh herbs.
Buckwheat
Is the soup from buckwheat or porcini muzhrooms? It’s the best because it’s both, with buckwheat popcorn, chickweed and the last/first daisies, and because it does a great job with both mushroom soups which are everywhere but nowhere special, and buckwheat which is ours but nowhere to be found, especially not in a soup like this.
Pumpkins
Raviolo stuffed with hokkaido and butternut squash, grated smoked ricotta, hazelnuts, roasted pumpkin, sautéed kale, nasturtium pesto.
Roast
Novak’s charm is sharing. But not like it is now modern, when everything is shared, but like in the past, when we all jumbled around the same table with cutlery until the master started cutting a large piece of roast… Such roasts, when one time it is “old” beef from the neighbor’s pasture, another time it is young venison from “wild” (but not fenced) hunting, when one time it is a leg of lamb, another time it is a veal shank, when today it is a deer loin, and tomorrow (after dessert!) it will be goulash, are no longer available these days. Except in Sadinja vas!
Red deer
Only fillets are grazed in the enclosures, so there are so many of them that autumn is full of “game” everywhere. But when a real hunter goes on a real hunt, he knows what he is shooting and who will be able to prepare and appreciate it. Not only how to cook it, but also how and where to cut it, and where (in the middle of the table) to place it. But even this is at Domačija, where the meat is always cut from the whole animal, which is known by name and has the same terroir as the wine, Novak’s specialty: that it is not just meat!
Potato
The side dishes are everything that’s left in the garden. Carrots, kale, broccoli, celery… What’s the best thing right now? Pears pituralka in wine sauce! But what’s the best of all? Novak’s potatoes! Because here lies the answer to the heartiness that everyone chooses. If you don’t admit that these potatoes are the best of all, then you’ve only eaten well. If you do, then you’ve feasted heartily!
Solad
But since we are at a real homestead and having a real Slovenian (Dolenjska) lunch, the real “evaluation” is only given after the salad. Do you agree?!
Pie
Apple pie with quince, with layers of chestnut mousse between the dough and fruit.
Wine
Nowhere is wine as integral a part of the “guesthouse” as at the Novak Farm! Downstairs, both cellars are so full that the pallets are still full among the wood in Žužemberk, so there is no wine accompaniment here, but “a few” dishes are just to accompany the great wine. But not because of the drinking, but because of the great tasting!
Good year
When the master found his fellow vintage at the table, he opened that heavy chest in the cellar where he kept a real treasure. No problem, he proved that 1962 was a good (excellent!) vintage.
Goulash
Since such a wine tasting can be long, it’s a good thing that on the farm, the animals don’t just have fillets, but all the parts, limbs and muscles, from tail to snout. That’s why the goulash, made from such different cuts of (deer) meat and at such an hour, is the best! And the first Rosa de Treviso was also in the salad.
On the clay oven
They say the dead are counted after the battle. Apparently they hadn’t been to Boris Novak’s yet, where the next morning we were all alive, us and the memories on the stove.
New at Novak’s
Miriam Novak’s pottery plates and bowls, Boris Novak’s wooden boards and containers, as well as culinary delights from Domačija and neighbors, now have their own shop. Above it, there is a home, for short or long term, for you and your whole family.
