MPJ

Posts

December 2022

Neanderthal Burgers

It was commonly believed that ancient hunter-gatherers, both Humans and Neanderthals, had a simple lifestyle in which most or all of their food was obtained by gathering from local sources or by hunting animals from their environment. We simply assumed that beside the meat they hunted, their diet consisted of only raw foods such as wild plants, edible insects, mushrooms, honey, or pretty much anything that was safe to eat. Well, according to the recent study performed by Ceren Kabukcu* and her team from the archaeobotanical department of the University of Liverpool, we couldn't be more wrong. Researchers analyzed charred food remains at two locations - the Shanidar Cave in Iraq and the Franchthi Cave in Greece. The food remains from the first cave, originated from both Neanderthal hearths, 70,000 years old and those from ancient Humans thirty millenniums later and also those from Greece consumed some 12,000 years ago by our modern ancestors under microscopic examination reveal

Researchers analyzed charred food remains at two locations - the Shanidar Cave in Iraq and the Franchthi Cave in Greece. The food remains from the first cave, originated from both Neanderthal hearths, 70,000 years old and those from ancient Humans thirty millenniums later and also those from Greece consumed some 12,000 years ago by our modern ancestors under microscopic examination reveal their very similar diet with the secrets of Paleolithic cooking of bitter-tasting vegetables.

Analysis of the food remains consists of different pulses, like fava beans and lentils with traces of nuts such as wild almonds and pistachios as well as yellow mustard seeds. They are common herbal species that can be easily found at the Shanidar site in the savannah-type vegetation. All these ingredients required careful preparation before consumption including sophisticated cooking techniques such as soaking and pounding. Needless to say, researchers tried to prepare similar meal and tasted the flavor. Chris Hunt, an expert in cultural paleoecology said that 'it made a sort of pancake-cum-flatbread which was really very palatable - a sort of nutty taste.'

The Guardian's Linda Geddes** has provided a full recipe with detailed cooking instructions, including tips on how to prepare patties the way Neanderthals did. Of course, I immediately got hooked, put on my hunting boots and went to... Well to the local food store to check if I can gather all the ingredients there.

However, even though I knew it would not be hard to find exact ingredients from the Linda's recipe, in the store I was faced with a dilemma - should I follow the recipe to he letter or to try my own variation. First of all I thought of eggs - there's no doubt that Neanderthals easily collected eggs from various nests all around, and although they perhaps didn't used them in this particular meal I thought it could be perfect to add some in the mixture. After all, eggs are a natural choice when it comes to binding different ingredients and they contribute to the taste significantly. Also, the store provided vast variety of different seeds and pulses so I chose my own selection and also instead of pistachios I found nice cashew nuts and goji berries. I'm sure there must have been at least one Neanderthal 70 millennia ago who would have agreed with my choice.

In the end, I created a mixture of all the ingredients from the above photo. In the mix with one cup each were: mung beans (mungo pasulj), green and red lentils (zeleno i crveno sočivo) and finally millet and buckwheat seeds (proso i heljda). The mixture staid soaked for a night and in the morning I cooked it only to the boil. After rinsing, I added grated almonds (bademi), cashews (indijski orasi) and goji berries (godži bobice) followed by three eggs, then shaped into patties and on medium heat I fried them for a minute or two on each side.

I had low expectations for the reason I was not privy to the vegetarian cuisine that much, but I admitted I was wrong - the result was amazingly tasty neanderthal burgers! Nutrition value was off the chart and combined with mustard and ketchup it was one great meal of the day. From what I learned in this cooking lesson, the real benefit lies in zillion combinations with different seeds, pulses and nuts. I am more than sure that with this, we now have one more regular recipe in the house.

First image by Tom Björklund from Neanderthal exhibition at Natural History Museum of Denmark:
https://snm.ku.dk/english/exhibitions/neanderthal/

Refs:
* https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3166335/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/neanderthals-cooked-up-complex-and-tasty-meals-70000-years-ago

** https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/26/surprisingly-tasty-putting-neanderthal-cooking

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2022-11-23/neanderthalcooking

April 2017

Interview With an 'X'

The 'X' is definitely one of the most important letters in the alphabet. Not only that it is the most valuable variable in all math equations and scientific chase for the unknown, but in the entire history of human riddles, and I mean not always related to math, it always marks the most interesting spot. Sometimes the one with the treasure. It was not coincidence that old Romans used it for the most important number of them all. 10. The very base of our widely used numeric system. But we are not here to talk about mathematics or treasure hunting per se. It will be more about age. Of ten. My son Viktor is turning this magic number on this year Earth Day (April 22nd) and I decided, in addition to our previous topic and post Interview With an Expert , to fire another set of questions for him to answer. This time more general and within various realm of life and .. well .. stuff... So let's start with favorites. I guess they say a lot about personality. And they don'

October 2016

Little Chef 4

"Gently, he took her by the shoulders and turned her around, facing her back into the house. - Let's go have dinner. Vincent said he made us that Serbian cevapcici." - Eureka, TV Show. Finally and after almost five years from my first glimpse into the most famous Serbian dish, our cooking thread matured enough to step into the adventure of making the royalty. The well known, the most popular and the most amazing of all BBQs in these parts of the world. And by that I mean many of Balkan countries, If you are resident here you probably know what I am talking about. If not and you are just a traveler visiting Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and/or other neighboring countries and stumble to some restaurant with a grill and hesitated what to order just say "ćevapćići' (pronounced 'chevapchichi') and you will experience one of a kind and one extraordinary dish. The quote from the beginning was from the Sci-Fi TV Shows "Eureka" that aired 2006-2012 a

February 2016

Little Chef 3

Cooking can be hard. Sometimes it's more than art and pure joy but if you add all the effort and 'sweat' into it, the very result never disappoints. It was just like that in our today's kitchen play. Making tacos only looks easy and cheerful, but if you are doing it for the first time.. Well I will just say there was three hours of preparing, shopping, cooking and filming that was all intense and on the edge of disaster, but we managed to go all the way through it, and at the end, our Saturday's lunch included these six 'extremely' edible tacos that vanished into tin air in a fraction of just couple of minutes. Making tacos includes several parallel tasks and one of them was watching the tortillas in the oven during their seven minutes burn and they should be monitored closely to avoid over-burning. The color of our lunch today might went little more brownish I was hoping for, but trust me, they were extra crunchy and delicious nevertheless. Frying b

Making tacos includes several parallel tasks and one of them was watching the tortillas in the oven during their seven minutes burn and they should be monitored closely to avoid over-burning. The color of our lunch today might went little more brownish I was hoping for, but trust me, they were extra crunchy and delicious nevertheless. Frying beef in onion rings took around half an hour and olive oil and spice mixture designed for lasagnas actually were great hit - the meet was extra spicy and beautiful. You can also use vegetables according to your taste, but grated cheese and sour cream goes extra tasty with fried beef, so try not to avoid them to get full experience of beef tacos recipe we used for this occasion, which you can also watch here: beef taco recipe.

Second dish in our today's cooking thread is domesticated sausages and one of the old videos we made months ago. Last year we purchased manual sausage maker and believe it or not, this clip is our very first time of using it. Surprisingly, we mastered it pretty fast and result was.. Well.. Vanished in less than 15 minutes as soon as it was served on the table. All nine of them. Ingredients: minced pork meat, bacon, lemon, cumin, pepper, salt, marjoram, saffron, garlic, parsley.

We actually barbecued sausages on charcoal but you can also dry them out for several hours with some 50 degrees Celsius in the oven to get something extra special or even combine - bbq them but not all the way - just let them soak little bit of smoke and finish in the oven drying them smaller amount of time - but they will end with very different taste. If you think sausages cannot taste better than this, and if you have a room with constant draft with temperatures lower than zero degrees Celsius for, say, two weeks, the same sausages can be hanged there and if ironed every second day their taste could be something you never tasted before. Check the related story here in the post Flat Sausage Fair.

Little Chef series:
http://www.milanzivic.com/2015/01/little-chef.html
http://www.milanzivic.com/2015/03/little-chef-2.html

August 2015

Stone Age of Iron Gates

There were lots of breakthroughs in human history until this date. Some were instant and recognisable events or technological inventions and some were slow evolutionary processes in history of our species. Whatever they were, the outcome was always reshaped course of mankind entirely. In our own time one of those is no doubt learning how to split the atom and very invention of nuclear bomb. We are still living in the post-turbulence time of that latest breakthrough that has potential to rise us from the Earth toward the stars. Some would say that it is still unknown whether this one is more of a civilization killer event or true entrance into another phase of humanity. We will wait and see. Either way, it is breakthrough, nevertheless. In early human history there was one similar invention that had the same uncertainty. It was called "Neolithic Revolution" and it happened in the middle of the Stone Age. And yes, even though we are still here, consequences of this invention ar

May 2014

Little Chef 2

Well, I am still not hundred percent convinced that this weblog matured enough for it's own cooking thread, but anyway, here we are again, after couple of months from original ' Little Chef ' post, we now have two more videos in our channel - our ways of making Sushi and Pizza. It all started couple of days ago, with me passing by one of those 'healthy food' stores in the neighborhood where I usually buy Serbian, sort of, non-carbonated ginger ale juice that is very popular in this part of the world - especially mixed with lemonade and ice cream. Anyhow, I stepped in to buy a bottle and noticed a pack of nori sheets on the shelf. I didn't think twice, so I bought one and today we made sushi for the first time in our culinary history. This is how it looks. Well, looked. It is always fun when you start preparing a dish for the first time. To be honest, in the past, on many occasions, our first endeavors ended in complete failure. However, today, sushi surp

Well, I am still not hundred percent convinced that this weblog matured enough for it's own cooking thread, but anyway, here we are again, after couple of months from original 'Little Chef' post, we now have two more videos in our channel - our ways of making Sushi and Pizza. It all started couple of days ago, with me passing by one of those 'healthy food' stores in the neighborhood where I usually buy Serbian, sort of, non-carbonated ginger ale juice that is very popular in this part of the world - especially mixed with lemonade and ice cream. Anyhow, I stepped in to buy a bottle and noticed a pack of nori sheets on the shelf. I didn't think twice, so I bought one and today we made sushi for the first time in our culinary history. This is how it looks. Well, looked.

It is always fun when you start preparing a dish for the first time. To be honest, in the past, on many occasions, our first endeavors ended in complete failure. However, today, sushi surprised us nicely and all five rolls, more or less, turned out nice and in perfect shapes. Ok, first two almost fell on the floor due to not that great rolling cylinders but that didn't influence their incredible taste. One thing is for sure, after today, we definitely earned one more dish in our menu. Ingredients: nori algae, salmon, tuna, squid, horseradish, green peas, mustard, carrots, soy & chili sauce, kurkuma.

Next 'show' from our kitchen is actually the very first one we ever made. Only we didn't have that amount of experience in filming our videos (!) before and this one ended as long as a typical sitcom episode. Recently I found the time to do proper editing of the original material and this is the result. Anyway, originally filmed last summer, in this 'master piece' of ours, we are both taking presenter's spot, simply because as much as I tried to do, I couldn't cut me out of the video without spoiling the content. Never mind. Ingredients: flower, tomatoes, oregano, sausages, several types of cheese, mushrooms, olives, olive and sunflower oil.

Perhaps not too much related to this post is story about Serbian Chevapchichi and the food in general, which reminds me of my earlier promise of making smoked meat and sausages and our way of preparing BBQ. That is definitely next in our schedule. Of course, if you liked these two meals and our play time, try not to miss our first blog post in the thread: Little Chef. This one contains preparation of corn dogs, domesticated sausages and carrot juice.

May 2014

Little Chef

I am not sure that this weblog matured enough for it's own cooking thread, but one thing is for sure - spending time in kitchen from time to time and making delicious meals is one of those creative activities that can make your day. Truly. When it is successful, that is. Couple of months ago, Viktor wanted to start filming our kitchen games and to be honest some of them weren't too bad. Actually, what we did on several occasions could be regarded as pretty delicious and worth repeating, especially for those we made for the first time. Anyway, I am really hopeful that we will continue with this thread and maybe in the future if we pile up videos it could be one more chapter on the blog. For the record, I will be the director of the short video clips and Viktor will be dish chooser and main presenter. That means I will be behind the camera while he will be in front. I will also do hard work when camera is off simply because long cooking video clips are not what we really

Anyway, I am really hopeful that we will continue with this thread and maybe in the future if we pile up videos it could be one more chapter on the blog. For the record, I will be the director of the short video clips and Viktor will be dish chooser and main presenter. That means I will be behind the camera while he will be in front. I will also do hard work when camera is off simply because long cooking video clips are not what we really like. I am sure nobody wants to spend too much time watching this kind of videos and to be honest, sometimes the only thing needed is just to hint what we are preparing and in what order. Following recipes to the letter is never fun and we will not include proportions of used ingredients - this is always matter of taste. Ah yes, one more thing. If you encountered something funny or certain doze of humor in videos, remember that we did that on purpose. Kind of.

Ok, let's start with the latest thing we did. Sausages. At the end of last year we purchased manual sausage maker and believe it or not, this clip is our very first time of using it. Surprisingly, we mastered it pretty fast and result was.. well.. vanished in less than 15 minutes as soon as it was served on the table. All nine of them. Ingredients: minced pork meat, bacon, lemon, cumin, pepper, salt, marjoram, saffron, garlic, parsley.

Next master piece was popular "Corn Dog" from the Nickelodeon's "Big Time Rush" show. Every now and again, Carlos was enjoying it in the show and once, he even broke up with a girl because she didn't like them. Needless to say, we found the easiest to make recipe for domesticated environment and found out why it is so popular. We were perfectly aware that they would be much nicer in some specialized fryer, in order to be symmetrical and all, but at the end frying pan served perfectly fine. Ingredients: cornmeal, all-purpose flour, egg, milk, dry yeast or baking powder, hot dogs, saffron, salt, pepper, olive oil, sugar.

Finally, what fits perfectly with either sausages or corn dogs is Carrot Juice. Preparation is pretty easy, just put in the blender chopped carrots, oranges, seasonal vitamins, sugar and spices to taste and that's all. Ingredients: carrots, oranges or lemons, saffron (yep we use it as secret ingredient a lot), fresh peeled ginger, mint, sugar.

Perhaps not too much related to this post is story about Serbian Chevapchichi and the food in general but this might be our future play with sausage maker - we will try to make these casing free sausages that are kind of a trade mark of the Balkan peninsula. The recipe will be from Jana's blog. We will be back as soon as we master our next appliance we have in mind: sausage dryer/smoker BBQ on the balcony. Stay tuned.

January 2014

Flat Sausage Fair

Approximately 15 years ago I was working as a lab assistant in the programming department of micro assembly and object oriented languages within " College of Applied Technical Sciences " in Niš, Serbia. I was engaged with all five semesters and was teaching students from their freshman year to the graduation and every now and again, along with board of professors, I was asked to attend their final exams followed by sort of social celebration in form of small festivity with table full of food and drinks. On one such occasion, student who came from Pirot, one of the biggest cities of eastern Serbia, asked us if we ever tried before a sausage called "vitamin bomb" which, he said, was one of the oldest delicacies from the region he came from. I spotted that one of the professors, who was actually known that he tried almost everything when it came to food and drinks, started nodding his head but it was clear that the rest of us heard it for the first time. Stude

On one such occasion, student who came from Pirot, one of the biggest cities of eastern Serbia, asked us if we ever tried before a sausage called "vitamin bomb" which, he said, was one of the oldest delicacies from the region he came from. I spotted that one of the professors, who was actually known that he tried almost everything when it came to food and drinks, started nodding his head but it was clear that the rest of us heard it for the first time. Student looked the professor and said: "I am sure this one you never tasted." and pulled out from the bag a ... well ... something that looked exactly like a "horseshoe" in both, shape and color. I glimpsed toward the professor who claimed that he tasted it before and saw that even he was surprised with strange looking sausage in student's hands. The student glimpsed the same, warmly smiled and explained to us what it is and how it's made. Today and after almost two decades later, the "vitamin bomb" sausage is recognized brand and simple translation from Serbian "Peglana Kobasica" is "Ironed" or "Flat" Sausage. Last year, town of Pirot and its tourist organization, created first "Flat Sausage Fair" and yesterday, despite poor weather, we decided to visit the second fair made in honor of this great Serbian "Soulfood" which is the mutual name for all those old recipes that survived centuries in their original forms.

But, what is that so special about this sausage so it earned its own fair?

The recipe is not the secret, although this is not a meal you can make in a couple of hours in your home, with a little enthusiasm it is doable and results could be extra ordinary. From what I can find online you need great selection of various quality meat (cleaned and stripped out of all fats and unwanted parts), ultra fine chopped or minced and mixed with spices (up to 2% of different chilies, 2% salt, 1% garlic, 1% pepper followed by other suitable spices according to your taste). No water or any other liquids are welcome in the mixture. Now comes the interesting part. After filling is ready and wrapped into eatable natural sausage casing, sausage should be formed in the "U" shape and left for drying on the draft. The drying "chamber" must be very cold with optimal temperature around zero degree or colder, with as low humidity as possible and in presence of great frost keeping outside water from vaporizing in great scales. Usually with a bottle, sausages are pressed and ironed two or three times a week after which they take the form of a horseshoe. Ironing is necessary for the most of the unnecessary air and water to be ejected from the sausage which ensures longevity. Needless to say, they are purely organic with no preservation of any kind, no additives or artificial colors, no heat treatment and no exposure to smoke.

Since there is no strict recipe when it comes to ingredients, it is clear that with different mixture of various meat and spices they come in wide varieties of different tastes and given the fact what are they made of and the nature of the preparation that is not changed from the times dating couple of centuries before, under my humble opinion, I have to say that I didn't try better sausage yet. And believe me, I have tried many. Even those advertised on large scales like the white sausages of Bavaria or great Danish delicacies you can buy outdoors, are simply not worthy rivals. Furthermore, energy value of the sausage is very high and it is usually served in small dosages and sliced into tiny, couple of millimeters chopped pieces. Best of all, and due the fact they contain almost no water inside, you can store them in deep freezer where they keep original taste and shape even after couple of months. Yesterday's fair was, like the year before, organized very nice and with thousands of people browsing and tasting the specimens. We bought couple of kilos of different varieties with different meat mixture and spice ratios and the winner for me was a hot whitish extra tasty brand. It was moderately hot, made out of four different kind of meat (besides beef they used best parts of goat, horse and donkey meat) and with great mixture of spices. The casings is giving this particular one whitish color which is also pretty cool and unique.

Unfortunately, because of yesterday's weather and half a meter snow outside our weekend house, we couldn't get to the fair earlier and see its social side so I am including the video I made last year. Somehow and also to my taste, the jazz band playing last winter fits greatly to this particular fair and the advertising product.

Serbian Flat Sausage*
http://www.rostiljanje.com/gastronomske-manifestacije/peglana-kobasica/

Image Refs:
http://www.pirotskevesti.rs/lokalna-samouprava/na-hiljade-turista-dolazi-na-sajam-peglane/
http://www.pirotskevesti.rs/gradska-hronika/pocinje-prijava-za-sajam-peglane-kobasice/
http://www.pirotskevesti.rs/lokalna-samouprava/ogromno-interesovanje

Refs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NjN4KZ1zdo
http://www.peglana.com/english/index.htm
http://www.pirotskevesti.rs/zivot-drustvo/praznik-peglane-u-hali-kej/
http://fondazioneslowfood.it/ark/details/1707/pirot-ironed-sausage
http://www.tanjug.rs/news/113206/pirot-hosts-flat-sausage-fair.htm

August 2013

Πάργα

In our part of the world summer vacation is the most important one for most people. There are several reasons for this and probably the major one is that during July and August in this part of western Balkans, where we live, temperatures can go as high as 45C (113F) degrees and the obvious solution is to pack your bags, jump into the car and go to one of four nearby seas for couple of weeks to cool and enjoy (and also to change the everyday scenery and recharge your inner batteries which are always seriously depleted when summers come). Due to the shortest distance and good roads Greece is probably the best destination for a car trip to the seaside that takes less than 10 hours of drive. Unfortunately this is one of few routes for all those " gastarbeiter " people who mainly work in Germany and other western countries and during summers form very long river of vehicles toward their home destinations in Turkey and other countries. When they hit borders along the way thi

Due to the shortest distance and good roads Greece is probably the best destination for a car trip to the seaside that takes less than 10 hours of drive. Unfortunately this is one of few routes for all those "gastarbeiter" people who mainly work in Germany and other western countries and during summers form very long river of vehicles toward their home destinations in Turkey and other countries. When they hit borders along the way this is a nightmare you want to avoid. Once we had bad luck and stuck in one of 7 lanes between Serbian and Macedonian (FYROM) borders and waited 4 hours to pass through. This is why we always travel half a way during night and cross the borders around dawn or so to avoid crossing peeks and giant waiting times. Returning way is always smoother and we mainly use borders for rest and shopping. Like I already wrote in the post Aegean Sea before, short car destinations in Greece are all connected to Aegean sea, but this time we chose to check out Ionian basin and try relatively new motorway Greeks built not so long ago. Only once I spent vacation in this part of the Greece and I remember it was hard job for my father as the curvy road from Aegean to Ionian sea included one mountain after another and driving them through required full concentration all the way with frequent resting points. Today, this is different story with new modern freeway and the same destination is now reachable within 3 hours or so. Believe it or not, this new route includes about 60 tunnels almost 50km long combined and during summer heat driving through all the tunnels comes extra handy and relaxing.

Since this was the first time for me driving this road I decided to use little help from modern GPS navigation. It was only needed for last hour of the trip where we needed to leave motorway and find our way to the final destination in Parga, small and old town located some 40km south of Igoumenitsa port across the Corfu island. I didn't have any specialized GPS car device before and I decide to risk it a little and use the smartphone instead. I bought cheap navigation software called "Navi Ninasus" despite not so many recommendations online. To my surprise it handled all the situations extremely well and pointed us exactly to the front gate of our villa without any problems. Rerouting was perfect and fast and it proves very well on the ship and foot as well. You can see it in action in bellow photos and if you want to save some serious money in the big GPS market, this one is a very good solution.

When we visited our travel agency (Big Star Niš) and told them that we decided to go to Parga this year, Stefan, one of the agency owners, while describing the house we wanted to hire said something about nearby olive forest that looks exactly like the scenery from "The Lord of the Rings", fantasy trilogy based by J. R. R. Tolkien famous book. Of course, I was little skeptical about this but in the same time very curious to explore. The moment of our arrival, when I saw first large olive tree just above our villa I was eager to go to the forest as soon as possible. So we did very next day and if you look next couple of photos from the woods when we made a shortcut our way to the Lichnos beach I am sure that, like me, you will agree that old olive trees are something special to see and to tell you the truth if Bilbo Baggins or Gandalf jumped out of some tree I wouldn't be surprised at all. My only regret is that we didn't hit the time when olives are being collected with large nets villagers are using for this purpose. I am sure this would be something worthwhile to see. Needless to say, our landlady on our last day gave us a bottle of olive oil as a present, made exactly from the olives collected right from the woods we saw and photographed and with this blog post I thank her for all her hospitality and kindness. The same level of gratitude goes to Stefan and "Big Star" which is one of the best travel agencies in Niš.

Perhaps to better feel and in this case hear the forest, I took couple of seconds long video clip showing all the beauty of old olives:

According to couple of wikis I read, I learned that Pargians are descendants from the old Greek tribe called Thesprotians. Perhaps the best known resident in the ancient times was Odysseus himself who married Thesprotia's queen of the time by the name Kallidike and spent many years in this area leading the tribe and fought many wars as their king. Unfortunately, if we leave mythology aside, real history for Pargians was not so cheerful especially much later in the dark ages when these people shared violent times with the active neighborhood. They survived different rulers and occupations starting with Normans, Venetians, French, British, Ottomans, not to mention constant attacks from various pirates from the sea. Today, monumental fortress built for their defense is the sour witness of the old times standing above the small town for centuries. In the town bellow, old stone narrow streets, similar to those of Corfu are now wonderful tourist attraction along with four beaches, all very different in nature and appearance. Surrounded with large hills and dense forests, Parga today is one of few real tourist paradise during summer filled with voices of dozen of different languages especially at night when it is not easy to find empty chair in local tavernas. In addition to Parga's social life, to me, Greek vacations are always more about reading books and enjoying peaceful moments. This time I brought "The Lost Symbol" and swallowed it in just couples of days. If you want to learn something more about worldwide freemasonry this is the book for you, especially if you are, like me, big fan of Robert Langdon's adventures. We had large garden in front of the house with big stone table where bellow the shadows of lemon's leaves, reading Dan Brown's book got additional pleasure. At the other hand, for Viktor no summer vacation can pass without his tablet and couple of video games (picture to the right).

Just 20km offshore there are two small islands called Paxos and Antipaxos. According to the legend, Poseidon himself used his mighty trident and sliced the southern part of Corfu making these small archipelago paradise just for him and his wife Amphitrite to enjoy some peace and quiet. Comparing to nowadays worldwide religions I really love Greek mythology and their amazing stories. I mean, come on, if you are creating a mass fairy tales using wild imagination is a must and ancient Greeks did it very well. In all religions in existence today and those extinguished in the past, Greek former beliefs are probably the best in the history of mankind. Anyway, there are many boats sailing to Paxoi islands every morning providing one of the kind experience of swimming the same waters where Poseidon enjoyed his time with his wife alone on the beach. Small boat even entered one of the sea caves providing the unique feeling for us, but the best was the moment when one of the boats turned loudspeakers toward the cave and played James Brown's "I feel good" famous song. The echo from the cave provided a sound effect I never heard before. Don't miss this trip if you are spending vacation in Parga or Gaios, the main town of Paxos island where we enjoyed "Τσιπούρα", delicious Mediterranean fish with teeth.

Second boat trip was ship cruise to Corfu and island of Vido (Greek: Βίδο), special place for Serbian history where more than 5000 Serbian soldiers were buried at sea. At the beginning of the World War I, the whole Serbian army was forced to retreat by the major offensive by Austrian and Bulgarian armies. In just two years of war Serbian army declined from 420.000 to the number of 150.000 ending to the island of Corfu with the help of Allied forces' ships. Those who didn't survive harsh winter time during long walk over Albanian's mountains were buried on island of Vido and those who couldn't find empty burial space on the island are just buried in the sea near the island. This very spot where they are buried are called Blue Sea Tomb and there is now almost hundred years old poem "Ode to a Blue Sea Tomb" describing the pain and suffering of the Serbian people and soldiers during the WWI. I simply wrote "History is sometimes painful" to the book in the memorial. And I meant not only Serbian history. More about our trip to Corfu please read in the post Streets of Corfu where I experienced unique kind of Déjà vu I tried to describe there. Following are photos from Corfu and Vido and second image is Serbian House in the street of Moustoxidou 19 which is one great museum dedicated to the WWI events.

But, life is always going on and history is there to remind us for our failures and our brightest moments. We should use it to learn from it but honestly speaking I have that feeling that humans have long way to go in order to start avoiding mistakes and stop repeating violent behavior from the past.

Well, this post is also a photo collection from the vacation and now is the time to choose the best photo taken. Of course this is subjective business but if you ask me the honor goes to my wife Cica who took the opening photo of this post. I am sure for some of you this would be just bunch of rocks on the shore but for me this is the perfect example of accidental photography and Pareidolia. My wife actually just wanted to take a photo of the rocky formation from the taxi boat when we were returning from the beach to Parga, but after we saw it on the big screen, from this angle, it looks amazingly like a giant prehistoric fish or sea dinosaur with large fin or flapper on its back.

Needless to say that we all fully recommend Parga and Ionian sea for summer vacation. I am sure we will be returning here in the future maybe next time on the northern Corfu or one of the southern Ionian islands.

June 2013

The GMO Controversy

I have an old friend who couple of years ago made a decision to radically change his way of life. What he did is almost unreal for the rest of us. He simply stopped eating food we are all familiar with and instead he eats only fruits, vegetables and various grains and nuts. All that in its raw and natural form without any cooking, baking or frying. Of course as a practical man (he is a math teacher in my wife's school) he didn't do this over night and instead used methodical approach so his switch from "ordinary" food to this final stage of the most strict vegetarian diet possible lasted couple of years in order to adapt his organism better and to avoid potential dangers on the way. Contrary to other vegetarians I know he didn't do this because of some illness or because his organism is not capable of digesting meat and thermally processed food. Instead this was an act of free will and strong belief that he is doing a good thing. I strongly admire him for this and

August 2012

Serbian Chevapchichi

"Gently, he took her by the shoulders and turned her around, facing her back into the house. - Let's go have dinner. Vincent said he made us that Serbian cevapcici." - Eureka, TV Show. The very last decade of the very last century of the previous millennium was very exciting in many ways. It won't be remembered by all meaningless Balkan wars flaming down here for many years, nor by the final end of communism era in this part of the Europe, nor even by the birth of European union idea or rise of the new world order we are all living in today. No, to me, it was the birth of the internet, email, world wide web, social networks, instant messaging, blogging, everything what we are using in our homes on daily basis the same way we do with television or radio or ... kitchen and all its appliances. Although the internet network and its services were invented many years before, it was the nineties where all started to go real worldwide and accepted by majority of people eve

"Gently, he took her by the shoulders and turned her around, facing her back into the house. - Let's go have dinner. Vincent said he made us that Serbian cevapcici." - Eureka, TV Show.

The very last decade of the very last century of the previous millennium was very exciting in many ways. It won't be remembered by all meaningless Balkan wars flaming down here for many years, nor by the final end of communism era in this part of the Europe, nor even by the birth of European union idea or rise of the new world order we are all living in today. No, to me, it was the birth of the internet, email, world wide web, social networks, instant messaging, blogging, everything what we are using in our homes on daily basis the same way we do with television or radio or ... kitchen and all its appliances. Although the internet network and its services were invented many years before, it was the nineties where all started to go real worldwide and accepted by majority of people everywhere.

Serbian Chevapchichi

By now you are probably wondering what is the connecting point with "Serbian Chevapchichi" and the internet, right? Well, it's simple. Let's get back to mid 90s - I vividly remember those years simply because with commercializing the network, computers started to be interesting by adding complete new perspective to the whole idea. The potential was so great so anything we could think of could be possible and easily transferred to the web. I remember my first web page was about Jupiter's four moons, their images and short stories about Galileo and history of telescopes. Sadly, this was not what was popular in those days. If we exclude all the educational content, IT and science stuff the whole internet, beside email service was all about two things. Cooking and pornography. Even today I am making jokes about how half an internet in those days was about amazing worldwide recipes while the other half was filled with naked women. Regarding the latter, I remember earlier this year I was watching the "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" where Craig tried to analyze couple of astronomy images made by Hubble and other space telescopes with blogger Phil Plait. If you didn't see it before try not to miss it on the net and you will find out how Phil commented Craig's astronomy knowledge in regards to the other half of the internet. The same is with food, with tons of web sites, forums, social media and blogs, internet successfully replaced cooking and recipe books. The only problem now is how to cope with tons of different variations of the same recipe. There are no secret ingredients today. Everything's online.

With that said I am done with long introduction and now I am ready to go with the main topic. The food itself. Let's start with the post title. Initially I wanted to name the post with one of Serbian specialties and for me it was easy. It was the meal of my childhood, I remember all the visits to different restaurants with my parents on a weekly dinner and "Serbian Chevapchichi" (ćevapčići) was always there. Here in Serbia and all neighboring countries they are extremely popular. There are also variations of the same meal in Croatia, Bulgaria and especially Bosnia but they are all descendants of the "kebab", the meat dish that, like 'shawarma', originates in the Middle East. Unfortunately, history of this part of the World was pretty violent comparing to, for example, northern Europe where big conflicts somehow avoided their people in great scale. Here, ever since the middle age back in 14th century Balkan peninsula was more or less under constant occupation first by Ottoman Empire that lasted for more than 500 years, followed by several Balkan wars, followed by Austro-Hungarian Empire, followed by two World wide wars giving birth of 50+ years of dictatorship by communism and postcommunism turbulence.

The history of the area is important to understand many things but in this particular case its imminent influence to Serbian cuisine. I am not saying that Serbian national dish doesn't exist, just that the majority of the recipes suffered irretrievable change under the foreign influence over so many years. Like "Chevapchichi" sausages, many other recipes have Turkish and Middle East flavor, others, on the other end, 'suffered' changes especially by German, Greek, Hungarian and other influences. All great recipes and flavors of all the foreign influences combined with all our Serbian heritage also gave the people here very special culture related to food, preparation and also consummation and restaurant service. There is a story (and even a fork shaped monument you can see above) where in the city of Niš, in southern Serbia (roman Naissus), back in 12th century, during the royal dinner in honor of Frederick Barbarossa who was on a 'holy' crusade with his army, his host Stefan Nemanja, Serbian Grand Prince of the time, used forks, knifes and other kitchen aids while Barbarossa in a 'Robin Hood' style enjoyed all the royal meal with his hands and fingers. Of course it is hard to tell if this was true but this is what is mentioned in some old tales and stories and supposedly the monument itself is shaped like the fork based on those old unwritten narratives.

To be only fair, historically relevant is that the meeting did happen and some treaty was signed but Nemanja didn't join German army to the Constantinople and crusade itself after that point and Barbarossa never consumed this alliance as well. After all it all happened in well known dark and religiously divided middle ages that is very hard to understand. Nevertheless and just because of illiteracy of the time and not so much historically proven facts and texts, and especially because each nation writes its own truth in their own history books I do like these times because of this hint of mystery, speculations and old fairy tales. The old church where this meeting supposedly happened and where Barbarossa's army made a camp, still stands and its own history is full of mysterious stories as well. If you like to know more about it, hop to the story Fairies of Naissus with more old tales about local neighborhood.

Meeting with Barbarossa in 1189*

But to get back to the worldwide dishes - as a Serbian I can't be too much objective when it comes to judging or comparing different cuisines to Serbian but I know one thing - eating just one same food every day is not much fun at all. I am also far away to be some food fanatic but every now and again, and again, and... again I really want to try something new. To satisfy this need I do two things. I cook and I order various different meals from the menus of domestic and international restaurants here and during my travels. To be honest I am not great cook simply because I always foolishly think that I can do better and never follow recipes to the word and often my master pieces end in trash bin, but from time to time I get something extraordinary out of the oven making me proud of myself, especially when the meal is product of my own experiments. In addition, Viktor and I in recent years started one special thread for this blog and YouTube channel with our selection of food we liked and prepared.

Chevapchichi is one of the Serbian BBQ dishes we simply couldn't avoid and finally, and in contrast to later commercial presentation of all Serbian food I embedded, what is following is our own small video with our own recipe and step by step instructions of how to make chevapchichi sausages in shortest possible way and with our way to try and preserve all the Balkan's touch and taste. It's not little effort, I know, but the result is definitely worthwhile.

Beside five different meat, it's not that obvious what exactly goes into the mixture so here is our own recipe that originated from Jana's Chilli Pepper Travels blog but with our twist. Minced meat includes beef, lamb, pork, turkey and bacon. Combined there was around 1kg of the mixture and for spices we used 1 onion, 3 cloves of garlic, and 1 tbs of all of these: oregano, cornflour, curcuma, paprika, sea, black pepper and brown sugar. The quote from the beginning was from the Sci-Fi TV Shows "Eureka" that aired 2006-2012 and the central gathering in many episodes was in the town's great diner called "Café Diem" and its chef Vincent once selected "Serbian cevapcici" as a daily special. He made it from lamb patty, paprika and garlic and literally described it with "a little hunk of Balkan heaven". However, and in the nutshell, for a dish so widely prepared there is not just one recipe out there. Instead different people and restaurants use their own (secret) ingredients and little sausages can be very different from one place to another.

My blog is really not a promotional piece of any kind. This is not what I am doing here. It's just a public journal of mine and I never intended to use it for some commercial purpose. However, this is my chance to break this principle with Serbian food. I have to admit that if I wanted to make a research about all the Serbian national food that would probably go far beyond this blog but, luckily, the guys from National Serbian Tourist Organisation last year made a tremendous job with their promotional video they called "Soulfood Serbia". I embedded it next on the post and even though it is rather long (about 12 minutes), I am encouraging you to find the time to watch it. Preferably with empty stomach - it will be good for your gastronomical urges later. Besides, the video is made in great quality and it is describing the core of Serbian food history pretty well and also it covers only Serbian genuine food, the one survived all possible influences over the centuries.

Well, at the end, all I can add is that enjoying food is one of those things that's occupying almost all of human senses and remembering all the occasions, where and when it happened, have the power of bringing back all good memories of all occasions and people we shared all those dinners with. With me, Serbian chevapchichi are very high on the list ever since my childhood and no doubt will be here and around for many years ahead.

*
Kosta Mandrović - http://staresrpskeslike.com/
Stefan Nemanja - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Nemanja