Lake Bled is a very scenic place in the Julian Alps of Slovenia, which we visited last year. A famous dish from Lake Bled is a cream cake, composed of puff pastry, whipped cream, and a custard. Carol made it last night based on a recipe in Spela Vodovc’s book Cook Eat Slovenia: Traditional Recipes Read More …
A popular dish on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia is Pašticada, which a beef pot roast in a flavorful sauce. We enjoyed it with gnocchi at Trogir during a recent trip. I made this version last night based on a recipe in chasingthedonkey.com, which was adapted for ingredients available in an American kitchen. We started Read More …
Ajvar is a roasted pepper and eggplant spread which is very popular in the Balkans. Some 10 years ago we hosted overnight a Serbian exchange student. He noticed a jar of ajvar in our refrigerator and demolished it. It was the taste of home. This version is adapted from The Best of Croatian Cooking. Normally Read More …
Stuffed cabbage is classic Eastern European comfort food. If available, they are so much better if made with fermented cabbage leaves, which can be bought at Eastern European groceries, and add a pleasant acidity to the dish. The fermented leaves (which are essentially sauerkraut which has not been shredded) also cut out the otherwise Read More …
The Richmond Times-Dispatch published this week a recipe from their archives, which apparently originally came from Perla Meyers’ “The Early Summer Garden Cookbook”. It involved most of my favorite foods, especially roasted peppers and feta cheese, so I had to give it a try. As expected it was easy and very tasty. 2 Read More …
This is the rub I used on the Mexican Soda Marinated Grilled Chicken in a separate post. It is adapted from Robb Walsh’s “The Tex-Mex Grill and Backyard Barbacoa Cookbook”. I used about a tablespoon per batch of chicken, which is less than Robb Walsh recommended. 2 Tbs. granulated garlic 1 Tbs. chili Read More …
This was a successful experiment to improve the Bosnian flatbread Lepinja by adding a preferment step, rather than making it as a straight dough. The process involved dividing the original recipe into two parts, a preferment part, made earlier to develop gluten and flavor complexity, and the remainder added at the normal time a few Read More …
Lepinja is a Bosnian flatbread, which is rather like a thick pita without a pocket. In the Balkans, they are used for many purposes, especially as a bun for cevapcici, the cyclindrical skinless sausages which are to the Balkans what the hamburger is to the US. I had lepinja in a Houston restaurant called the Read More …
In Houston and Alexandria, I became familiar with Cevapcici, the fresh sausage of Bosnia. I am sure it will be the subject of a later post. This post is about a similar sausage from Romania. It is a skinless fresh sausage which is grilled like Americans grill a hamburger. This version is from Elisabeth Read More …
I am a great fan of dishes which combine bread with a filling (dumplings, calzone, empanadas, etc.) or with a topping (pizza, etc.) This is a slightly unusual variation on the Greek feta triangles made with phyllo, which are called Tiropites. These use a home-made dough, olive oil instead of butter, are less rich, and are adapted from Read More …