MONTENEGRO: THE FOOD

Well, it’s finally time for my birthday again. This week, I’ll be celebrating the 16^th anniversary of being 21. So, this weekend I started a little early and spent some money on myself: something that rarely gets done enough. Of course, I also paid a ton of bills because I like having electricity and running water and other amenities. It’s also been a strange fall. Typically, the temperatures should have dropped, followed by an Indian summer, which makes the tree colors peak around this time. But that hasn’t happened yet, and most of them are still green. Maybe they’ll peak on my birthday this year for the first time??

It's so pretty from this angle. And won't damage your teeth!

But it was a nice day for cooking Montenegrin food. Finding a Montenegrin bread was more difficult than I imagined. I did find a recipe for Cesnica. It’s a bread that’s typically eaten at Christmastime and made with a coin buried inside the bread. The person who finds the coin gets their wish come true or something. My wish is to not have to use my dental insurance, so I left out the coin. That and 7% of US coins carry E. coli. So, that being said… I did cut my recipe down slightly. I mixed together 4c flour, a large pinch of salt, a yeast packet, and 1 beaten egg into a bowl. Then I poured 250ml of lukewarm milk into the flour slowly as I stirred it in. Once I stirred everything together I kneaded it on a pastry mat, adding a little more milk here and there to make it stick together. Then I covered it with cheesecloth and let it sit for about an hour. I pulled off about a third of the dough and broke that into three equal parts. I rolled each part out into a long rope (which should’ve been way longer) and braided them together. With the larger section, I re-rolled it into a ball, and then laid my braid around the top like a crown. Then I brushed the whole thing with an egg wash, covering it in plastic and letting it sit for another 40 minutes. Before I put it in the 400ºF oven for 35 minutes, I gave it another brush with the egg wash just because. During the baking, my braid came up a little short on the ends. But otherwise, from the point of view I took my picture, it looks beautiful! The taste was not quite as flavorful as I imagined, but the crumb was nice. It was on the dense side, but I like it like that. That means, it would be good to use with butter or jam. The outside was hard and crusty and had a nice flavor, though.

This definitely made people jealous.

The main dish for today was Montenegrin Stuffed Cabbage. I had recently made a stuffed cabbage dish for Moldova, but this one offers a slight variation. I removed the stems from my cabbage leaves and blanched them, setting them aside to cool when I was done. Then I fried my onion, green onion (in lieu of a leek), and dried bouquet garni (in lieu of thyme). When my onions were transparent, I added in some minced garlic and some diced mushrooms. After about 5 minutes, I added in a ½ c rice, stirring to mix it with the other ingredients before adding in some chicken stock. Once the stock was all absorbed, I poured this into a bowl and set to the side. Then I browned my minced pork, adding in some Dijon mustard, fresh dill, Parmesan cheese, and a beaten egg. Once that was mixed together, I added the mushroom mix back in. Then I made my sauce: 150 ml of tomato passata (I found it in the Italian section of the grocery store – it’s like uncooked tomato puree and supposedly tastes different – the jury’s still out on that), 150 ml chicken stock, some paprika and some honey. I set this off to the side. Now time to do the dirty work: I took a cabbage leaf, put a piece of prosciutto on top, then a spoonful of the pork-mushroom mix, and folded it all up like a parcel. I secured them with toothpicks and put it in a casserole dish. After I finished the whole thing, I topped it with the bits of cabbage that didn’t make the cut, a little bit of sauerkraut, and the tomato sauce I made. I baked this at 335ºF for about 1 hour 10 minutes. I thought this was really good. The prosciutto added to the flavor along with the tomato sauce. My husband really liked this. I thought it was spectacular and reheats pretty well.

You can never go wrong with this.

While the stuffed cabbage rolls were baking, I made the next two dishes. First I made Blitva. This easy dish called to boil some cube-sized potatoes until they were soft. I used new red potatoes and kept the skin on. When they were soft, I threw them into a skillet with some olive oil and garlic and fried them up. Then I threw in some sliced collard greens (in lieu of chard). I added a little salt and pepper to it. The kids loved this and ate all of it up. Luckily there was a little left to take in my lunch tomorrow! 

Surprise of the day. It was so good, there was none left when I got home from work thanks to my husband.

Finally, the last dish I made was Njuguski Fruit Salad. This salad was pretty easy to make and the flavors surprised me. Actually, it surprised my husband who said it would probably be gross when I described it to him (which he later recanted on). In a large bowl, I mixed together diced cantaloupe, crumbles of asiago cheese, small bits of prosciutto, diced red onion, sunflower seeds, parsley, and drizzled with a little bit of olive oil and apple cider vinegar. Essentially, I just eyeballed the amounts to make it consistent (or at least “look about right”), using a half cantaloupe as the first ingredient. I truly enjoyed this. Amazingly the flavors came together in a new way, and I have to admit I was quite surprised. It was a nice balance between the other two heavier dishes. 

Overall, this was an amazing dinner. Thanks, Montenegro!

For a country that I was only moderately familiar with (as in, I saw it on the map when I did nearby countries earlier for this blog), I learned quite a bit. Enough that I wouldn’t mind visiting one day. Photos probably don’t do it justice. It’s hard to believe that this country became a country not long after my daughter was born, yet I don’t remember ever really hearing about it. You would think that watching a country be born would be a really big deal, right? I guess it just depends on who’s reporting it and who’s listening. That might be true for all news stories these days....

Up next: Morocco

CROATIA: THE FOOD

Yesterday, the city of Indianapolis held its annual Sister Cities Festival downtown. And it was such a beautiful day to do so: it was sunny with a slight breeze, and the temperatures were in the low 70s.  We have eight sister cities, all mostly with ties to racing or agriculture.  I visited the booth to one of our sister cities: Piran, Slovenia. Piran is lies on the Adriatic Sea not too far from the Croatian border. I started talking to the lady there (who was part Croatian) and showed her my recipes. We talked about how amazing Swiss chard is and how we much we would love to retire to the Balkans. She showed me a bread stamp from the 1800s, a piece of metal with a raised design that bakers would put into the bottom of the bread pan and indent the bread with their stamp. That way people would know which bakery their bread came from.  I know a new project for my husband now: make me a bread stamp.

Povitica as it came out of the oven.

Cross-section of the povitica so you can see the marbled goodness and be jealous. 

So, stepping out of my dreams of retiring to Zagreb, I started my afternoon off today by making Chocolate Walnut Povitica (it’s sometimes referred to as a nut roll in the US).  The first thing to do is to proof the yeast. Then I had to scald my milk before putting it into my mixing bowl, adding in sugar, salt, the yeast mixture, egg, vanilla extract, and melted butter, and then the flour. Once it’s been kneaded until smooth, it had to rest for an hour and a half so that I could play some Candy Crush. (Just kidding on that part. Sort of.) Next came the filling.  I mixed cocoa powder, walnuts, and sugar together, and since I don’t have a food processor, I put it in my blender to crush everything so that it was the consistency of wet sand.  After I poured almost-boiling mixture of milk and butter on top of this cocoa-walnut mixture, I added an egg yolk and some vanilla and stirred until it was consistent and set it aside.  I rolled out the dough until it was more or less a 12-inch “square” and spread the filling over it, leaving about an inch or so from the edge.  Then I just rolled it up, which was easier said than done.  And somehow I managed to get it into my cake pan, although the seam side wasn’t necessarily down. And it was time to rest again. Trust me, I needed to. Just prior to putting it in the oven, I brushed the top with an egg white and sprinkled with sugar.  This is baked at 350F for 15 minutes, then at 300F for another 20-25 minutes (or until golden on top). What came out of the oven is a crispy, golden crust with a marbled chocolate inside and the occasional walnut piece lying in the corners like a forgotten Christmas present.  It practically melted in my mouth – the dichotomy of crispy dough and smooth filing makes for a decadent pastry. I absolutely loved this. It was definitely worth waiting for.  Because I used cocoa powder, it had a different flavor than if I had used milk chocolate chips or something.  If I were to do this again (who am I kidding? WHEN I do this again…), I think I’ll keep more walnut pieces in the chocolate mix in chunks instead of pulverizing all of them.

You had me at "bacon shoved into beef." 

The main meal today is called pasticada, or a Dalmatian stewed beef.  It starts with beef rounds, that I pierced the sides and shoved bacon inside of it.  It already sounds amazing. Then I browned it in oil, and once it was browned, I removed it. I added soup vegetables (I used a frozen mix of mirepoix vegetables) and browned those, adding in marjoram (in lieu of rosemary since my husband hates rosemary), a bay leaf, and ground pepper (it actually called for peppercorns, but I forgot to get them). Then I placed the meat back on top of the vegetables and added just a little water, letting it simmer on medium heat for about an hour and a half.  After this time, I took the meat out and set it aside.  Straining the vegetables, I put the liquid back in the pot and added some flour and a cup each of beef broth and white wine (I actually used a cheap moscato).  I didn’t want the vegetables to go to waste, so I put them in a blender with a little bit of the beef broth and pureed them, adding them back to the pot to help thicken the sauce.  I added a small can of sliced black olives and the juice from one lemon.  At first I thought the meat wasn’t done all the way through because it was a little pink on the inside in places. What confused me was that it was so tender to cut, but then I remembered I shoved it full of bacon.  And once I poured the sauce on top, the wine, the bacon, and the few olives gave it a very complex merging of flavors.  It was moderately smooth with a pleasant bitter bite in the aftertaste.  I really liked it.  Everyone else seemed to like it as well, except my little finicky one.

Whoever says vegetables are yucky obvious hasn't tried this.

And last but certainly not least, probably the most underrated part of the meal: blitva. I boiled five diced red potatoes in salted water. Then I added one bunch of Swiss chard. It always seems like a lot when I first put it in there, but it does draw up a little once it gets wet.  I like chard a little more than spinach because, like kale, it holds it shape a little more than spinach does.  I think the reason a lot of people don’t like spinach is because it gets soggy when it cooks down.  Perhaps if they would just try chard, we’ll finally get world peace. I’m certain that soggy spinach is the cause of all the fighting in the world. I threw in some minced garlic and a little sea salt and pepper.  It was amazing. I’m going to have to bring this recipe back out because it’s so easy and everyone loves it. And that’s a win-win in my book.

Definitely a cold-weather comfort meal. 

And while my weekend winds down, and I’m full from this absolutely wonderful Croatian meal, and I’m sipping on some of this cheap moscato I bought for the pasticada, I realized that I learned a lot about a country that I didn’t know much about.  And I was taken away from it all, so much so that I thought of retiring there. The thing that I appreciated is that this region is such a melting pot of Europe, and you can see that in their art, their music, their literature, and their cuisine. And I think that’s great. But another thing that I’ve learned to appreciate about where I am now, is that we’re such a global society. Even in my city of Indianapolis, we have representatives from most of the countries in the world here in my city somewhere. And we have the opportunities through these ethnic fests to eat the food, listen to their music, and talk to the locals who are from these countries or know a lot about these countries to learn firsthand what life is like there.  I highly encourage everyone to visit these festivals wherever you are. You’d have to pretty much be a grade A jerk to not enjoy yourself and learn something.

Up next: Cuba