Our favourite thing about travel is experiencing new food. Or old food in new guises. We’ve already talked about the delicious alcoholic beverages available here (most particularly rakija), and we’ve also spoken about some of the seafood. So this post is about some of the other Balkan foods we’ve really enjoyed getting to know, or reacquaint ourselves with, in Montenegro and elsewhere. Most of these dishes run clear across the Balkans, so you can also find them, or near-relations, in Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Albania, Kosovo, and even Bulgaria and Romania.
Burek
Those delicious savoury pastries we liked so much in Istanbul are a Balkan thing too, regularly available and often eaten for breakfast. We think the spinach is the best, but we wouldn’t turn down the cheese (usually a salty, feta-like cheese). Or the minced meat. There’s also a quiche-like version which is less greasy, but just as tasty. But perhaps the best of all is the big one. It’s a giant spiral, from which you can order a pie-like wedge.
Ćevapi
The Balkans are a meat-loving people, and Balkan foods are very rarely vegetarian. There is much attention paid to the cow and the pig, usually in preparations semi-familiar. For instance, ćevapi and their smaller cousins ćevapčići. These are ground meat kebabs from the Ottomans, but with a delicious twist: they’re full of flavour and served in multiples of five (always, so far as we can tell), usually inside or next to a flatbread. Raw onions always come with them, kajmak usually (see below) and sometimes ketchup or mustard or mayonnaise (why!?). If you want to get fancy, you can order a tomato and cucumber salad to go with them. But the most basic places offer only meat, in several shapes and sizes.
Beef is the standard ingredient, but lamb and veal are sometimes used. Spices vary by region as well: there’s always salt and pepper. Our favourites are laced with thyme. The bread varies by region too; it’s usually a pita, sometimes a fluffy, yeasty one (lepinja). We are told that pljeskavica is a completely different dish: it is flat and wide like a burger patty, and comes with the same sides. We can’t tell the difference (but we got into trouble by mentioning the wrong pork product in Rome, so we’re not totally trustworthy).
Pršut
Then there is pršut, which sounds a lot like prosciutto and for good reason. The best, or at least the most famous, comes from Njeguši in Montenegro. As with ćevapi, there are tons of variants. The basic formula requires salting and air-curing for months. Some regions smoke theirs (in Njeguški, with beechwood). There is typically less fat than in prosciutto, it’s often aged for longer, and slices are thicker. We aren’t going to say pršut is better than prosciutto because there are enough Italians mad at us as it is. But it is very, very good! (We are also sneaking in a picture of lamb stew with milk, a mountain dish we loved: see featured image.)
Ajvar
Of all the Balkan foods we know, this is our favourite. We love this condiment! In fact we have loved it for years, when we bought it on a whim in some international grocery store. What is ajvar? It’s a spread containing roasted peppers and (usually) eggplants, with a bit of vinegar (often) and a lot of oil. It’s just a bit sweet, and it can be spicy. Think unctuous and creamy and mouth-puckering. It is amazing on literally everything we have ever tried it on: bread vegetables, meats, barley, stirred into soups, eaten off a spoon. In fact, it is better than amazing. Get some immediately (at least two jars)!
Potatoes and Greens
We’ve never not liked this dish, but we really came to crave it in Ireland (as champ). It’s a side dish we see all the time throughout the Balkans, often with fish. But ‘side dish’ doesn’t really cover it. It’s made with blitva, aka mangel aka mangold (near as we can tell, that’s chard). We have seen several varieties of potato here; the one used seems closest to a Yukon gold. Plus a lot of garlic and pepper and oil. Yum!
Cheese
Cheese is also a prominent element in Balkan foods. Mostly, the dairy is excellent! We’ve tried any number of things new to us, including kaymak, which is a bit like clotted cream, or cream cheese, but saltier than both. We aren’t always fond of dairy products like this. In fact, we may have avoided this one in Istanbul. But we were wrong to do so! (We are still right about ayran, though, which is like a salty milkshake, not in a good way, also readily available here.) There’s a crumbly sheep’s cheese, ‘sack cheese’ (sir iz Mijeha) named from the practice of preserving it in sheep intestines. This one is kind of a big deal: darling of the slow food movement, it’s dry and crumbly and very moreish.
There are lots of others, including a very mild one that comes in layers (lisnati), the famous Njeguški cheese (a tangy sheep cheese sometimes matured until it becomes almost spicy).There’s also one that has the consistency of parmesan but the taste of sharp cheddar. We just bought a giant pail of this and have been eating it with everything.
Cherries
Finally, cherries are a beloved fruit here. We have enjoyed them in many baked goods. The best is this one, cherry strudel!
So much to eat, so little time!
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