Serbia - Our Eighteenth Meal

For my first country date night in over a year, I chose the Republic of Serbia! This was my longest cook ever, at 10 hours -- and only partly because I took breaks to nurse our son.

Meze (antipasto) with zimnica (pickled vegetables) -- can't go wrong with pickled veg, feta, and meat!

Slivovica plum brandy -- not bad. Very similar to the Slivovitz we had for Hungary... and I guess no surprises there, since they border each other. Ziveli! (Cheers!)

Sarma -- this was an interesting one, Serbian cabbage rolls. I liked the sour cabbage (pickled whole cabbage leaves) wrappers, and the filling (seasoned ground beef and rice, which is added in raw), but something got lost in translation during the cooking phase. You are supposed to cook them for hours at high heat (200C aka 392F, then 250C aka 482F) and they were scorching so I pulled them out early... I think I neglected to cover them during the initial steam phase so they lost too much moisture, or something. Anyway, not my best work.

Sour cabbage 

Pljeskavica (Serbian burger) with Ajvar (very mild eggplant and bell pepper relish) and Kajmak (tangy cream with herbs) -- these made nice sandwiches with the Lepinja (Serbian bread). This could have been the whole meal, they were big and filling!

Lepinja (Serbian bread) -- I liked this. Easy to make, good crumb structure, etc.

Gibanica -- cheese pie made with phyllo dough and a cheese slurry. I got complimented by a gal from the Balkans in my Buy Nothing group - she said it looked great! (We often gift extra food from these meals.)

The Reform Torta, made with an astonishing 16 eggs!! According to The Balkan Hostess (whose recipe I used), this cake was created "after WWII when rich ingredients like butter, sugar, eggs, and chocolate were a little easier to come by."

This was another fiddly one to make, and was unusual (for me anyway), as the cake layers were baked eggs whites with ground walnuts and a dash of flour, sandwiched between a chocolate filling. I thought it was delicious, but the texture was definitely unusual. As Mark said, "it's surprising that it can be so good, but with the texture of gravel." 

I had fun piping the decorative frosting (which perhaps has an unfortunate resemblance to the 💩 emoji...). This was made from an interesting product, Slag krema, which was a dehydrated chocolate whipped cream powder. It was good! 

After dinner, we started watching Crna macka; beli macor (Black Cat / White Cat), a 1998 black comedy about Serbian gypsies, which seemed awesome, but I was too exhausted to finish. (Being a new mom has ruined me for late nights, haha!) Per Wikipedia, the Romani people, or Roma (Serbian: Роми, romanized: Romi), are the third largest ethnic group in Serbia, numbering 147,604 (2.1%) in the 2011 census.

When? January 15, 2022

Who cooked? Lauren

What's for dinner? (Recipe links) 

Meze (antipasto) with zimnica (pickled vegetables) & shots of Sljivovica (plum brandy); Sarma (stuffed cabbage rolls); Gibanica (cheese pie); Pljeskavica (Serbian burger) with Lepinja (Serbian bread), Ajvar (pepper relish) and Kajmak (tangy cream); Reform Torta

Serbia Stats

• Population: 6.91 million
• GDP: 84th in the world. Serbia is the poorest country in Europe, with 1 in 4 people living below the poverty line. The Romani in the movie we saw were certainly living in poverty.
• Life Expectancy: 75.9, 69th in the world
• Founding Date/Age in 2022: This is another messy one-- another thing I didn't realize about countries, that they don't have a single founding date. The Principality of Serbia was founded in 780, making the country 1242 years old in one sense, but it only got its modern independence in 2006 (16 years ago).
• Official Language: Serbian
• Rankings --
• Winner of most Basketball World Championships; 5 times winner (tied with United States)
• Best performance at FINA World Water Polo Championship(men)