This is where vegetables for Czech pubs come from
Good beer and honest cooking
We serve beer that's fresh, right to the last sip, and real home cooking. Lokál is a place where good beer and honest food matter.
Getting Started
Prague's Lokáls have been sourcing vegetables from Hana Součková in Semice since last year. This year, however, the purchase of vegetables from the farm has increased and stabilised. How did it happen that a group of Czech pubs is sourcing vegetables from the same supplier as Michelin-starred La Degustation Bohême Bourgeoise?
"The big impetus was last year's meeting of chefs and farmers at UM, where Hanka and I connected. She knew about us and when she increased the capacity and was sure she would have space and time for us, she contacted Lokal herself," says Václav Kouba, executive chef of Lokál.
And so last year, everyone was able to Lokál chefs had a chance to try working with Hanka's vegetables. It should be added that every farmer is a different vegetable. And since the vegetables from Semice suited all the cooks in the group, the cooperation could begin in earnest.
8 hectares of fields for Lokáls only
The vegetable fields of the Souček family cover an area of around 40 hectares, a quarter of which is annually sown with green manure - plants and herbs that are not intended for harvesting and consumption but provide the soil and soil animals with the necessary substances and nutrients. This is to ensure that the soil will continue to benefit in the years to come remain healthy and in good condition.
For Lokál pubs, Hana harvests 8 hectares root vegetables, onions and garlic, which will be available all year round. From the seasonal crops, Lokál also takes field cucumbers, courgettes, beetroot, white cabbage and smooth parsley. It was thanks to the steady supply from Lokál that Hana was able to get the nod for cooperation.
Moreover, the fields will soon start to smell good. Hana will be growing marjoram, 250kg of which the restaurants will process in dried form.
From root to sirloin
Vegetables from Hanka's farm can be tasted in Lokál all year round. While onions are a staple of almost every Czech meal just like garlic, root vegetables can be found in soups and especially in sirloin steak. In case you've just got a craving for sirloin steak from Lokál, we have a recipe for you here.
The Lokál cooks also create a refreshing beetroot and cucumber salad from Semice produce. "We would like to generally to learn to work more with vegetables. Not that Lokál is going to become a vegetable restaurant, but we are very inspired by cooking together with The Old Guard of Chefs at UM, who found forgotten vegetable recipes for us in their collection of cookbooks," says Václav. For example, he mentions Czech vegetables, which he says are slowly disappearing from plates: turnip and black root.
From the field to the fridge in practice
Carrots, celery, parsley, onions and other crops head to Lokál every Monday. Deliveries are handled by distributors from Green Grocery with whom Hana Součková herself works. "On Fridays, we let them know from each Lokál how much we need and they let us know that on Monday they will bring the vegetables. We will have enough for the rest of the week," Václav explains.
After harvesting, the root vegetables are washed, dried and sent to refrigeration facilities. If this first step can be done quickly enough, the vegetables remain in good condition for a long time.
However, such celery is more problematic because of its tiny shoots. One of the chefs at Lokál mentioned that celery tends to wilt soon after delivery. "We start dry cleaning them, just with brushes," Hana offers a quick solution. She has taken a break from farming for a while to go on maternity leave, nevertheless shows us around the family farm and the vast fields.
Life on Hana Součková's farm
Hana Součková, with whom you can read on our blog interview, works on the farm with her family. In addition to several restaurants, she supplies her vegetables at basket.cz and in season, it sells vegetables at farmers' markets - at Lesser Town Square and in Turnov.
While spring in the field begins with the harvest of kohlrabi, radishes and lettuces.the rest of the year the soil produces root vegetables as well as onions, leeks, garlic and, in summer, in smaller quantities tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and a few other crops.
"Each vegetable needs different conditions," Hana explains why she regularly has her vegetables processed in the laboratory soil samplesand describes how she learned to recognise soil types. "I can often tell the acidity of the soil by the wild herbs that grow around the field," she says, adding that she waters the local vegetables water from the Elbe which was built around the Semice fields in the 1960s.
Next to the farmhouse, they run around in their enclosure hens and nearby sheep with a dominantly grunting ram. "Sheep are our mowers and commuters, they eat the vegetables that don't sell and reward us with good fertiliser," says Hana, leading us to the a field of radishes, where she teaches us how to harvest a sample bunch of. And so the chefs from Lokál know a little bit more about their ingredients.
