Cevapi - Kebab from Croatia

Ćevapi is one of the most famous dishes in Croatia, it is Croatia's kebab. Kebab is an Arabic word that means roasted meat.

It looks a bit different from the Turkish-origin kebab; it is a kind of sausage made with minced meat that can be beef, pork, lamb, or a mix.

It is eaten in a pita-type bread called Somun or Lepinja and accompanied by a sauce made from sour cream.

This dish is also widely consumed in other Balkan countries.

Ingredients for the Somun/lepinja (4 pita breads):

- 250 g wheat flour.

- 5 g Salt.

- 3 g dry baker's yeast.

- 155 g cold water.

Ingredients for Cevapi

- 800 g ground meat (mixturebeef and pork).

- 5 g Salt.

- 8 cloves of garlic.

- 5 g paprika.

- 1 egg.

- parsley.

- pepper.

- 1 onion.

Ingredients for the sauce

- Sour cream.

- Salt.

- Pepper.

- Chives.

Method:

11- Let's start with the bread. Put the flour, salt, and yeast in a bowl and mix well.

22- Add water and mix well, Sure, once the dough is compact, knead for 5 minutes.

33- Cover the bowl with cling film and let stand for one and a half hour.

44- This is how the dough looks after the first fermentation. It should double its size; the time it takes to ferment depends on the room temperature. Ideally, it should be at 24-25 degrees, otherwise, it might need more time to ferment.

55- Divide the dough into 4 equal parts, shape them into balls, and cover them again to let them ferment for another hour.

6- Preheat the oven to 250 degrees Celsius with the fan on.

7- Flatten each ball with your hands, and make marks on the surface with a knife to create a pattern.

8- Cook in the oven for 3 minutes until you see the bread puff up. The time depends on the oven; for me, it took 10 minutes. Keep the bread covered with a cloth while we prepare the rest.

9- Since sour cream is hard to find, I’m leaving a link to my blog where I explain how to make it: Sour Cream.

Put the sour cream in a jar and add the pepper, salt, and finely chopped chives. Stir well and keep it in the fridge.

10- Combine in a bowl the egg, pepper,paprika, salt, grated         garlic and parsley.

11- Add the meat and mix well.

12- Put some oil in your palms, take some ground meat to make sausages the size a finger. Put the sausages on a dish into the fridge until it is time to cook them.

13- Take a frying pan and fry the sausages, take the bread and cut in the middle as you see in the picture.

14- Add a few spoonfuls of the sauce, place the sausages in, and add the onion. If, like me, you find raw onion too strong, you can boil it in water for 15 minutes to reduce the acidity."

Receta en Español

You can also watch the recipe at my Youtube Channel:

Here you have a link to my favourite cooking tools where you can find my spices grinder:  

Favourite cooking tools

Croacia

Bandera:
De Nightstallion, Elephantus, Neoneo13, Denelson83, Rainman, R-41, Minestrone, Lupo, Zscout370,MaGa (based on Decision of the Parliament) - http://www.sabor.hr/Default.aspx?sec=4317, Dominio público, Enlace

Bierascie roast chicken

                                                                                                           Receta en Español

The recipe I bring today is the way they cook chicken at Bierascie, a city from Belarus very near the polish border, the city is a stop of the railway line from Berlin-Warsaw-Moscow.

The result of this recipe is original and tasty.

Ingredients:

-  400 grams of chicken.
-  4 potatoes.
-  1 onion.
-  2 tablespoon raisins.
-  1 tablespoon chopped nuts.

For the sauce:

-  1 cup sour cream.
-  1 tablespoon butter.
-  1 tablespoon flour.
-  2 tablespoon tomato sauce.

Method:

1- Cut chicken in little pieces (30-35 grams of weight), sprinkle some salt over both sides of chicken.

Pour some oil in a frying pan , fry chicken.
Set aside.

2- Cut onion in little pieces sauté it. Set aside.

3- Peel and cut into cubes,salt and fry in some oil.
Place potatoes in a ovenproof dish.

4- Add onion over the potatoes.

5- Place chicken over the potatoes and onion.
6- Add some raisins.

7- Now make the sauce.
You will need sour cream at least 20% fat, you can buy it or you can make it by your own: sour cream.

8- Heat butter in a casserole, add some flour , stir with a wooden spoon.
After stirring for some time add tomato sauce, after cooking for a few minutes add sour cream, cook for 3 more minutes at medium heat , keep on stirring.
Let the sauce cool.

9- Once the sauce is cold , pour it over the chicken. Sprinkle some nuts.

10- Preheat oven at 200 ºC. Cook chicken in oven at the same temperature for 20 minutes.

My comments to the Recipe

The sauce , raisins and nuts provide a taste and juiciness to the dish.
This style of cooking a meat reminds me to the recipe I cooked for Albania: Tava elbasani (lamb with yogurt)



 Where to buy the ingredients

Sour cream can be bought at 'Extra' ,a shop specialized in russian products. The shop is located at Rafael Riego street 10  in Madrid.

The owners answer clearly every doubt , besides, the prices of the products are not expensive.

Belarus

Baclava from Azerbaijan

                                                               Receta en Español


Baclava is a typical treat at middle East countries, it is called baklava, baklawa, baclava or pakhlava, depending on the countrie.

In Azerbaijan there are several types of baclava, the most popular is the recipe I bring to you today.

This is called pakhlava, it is one of the most laborious due to the multiple layers you need.

It is a dessert cooked for the persian holiday Novruz, the 21  st of mars to celebrate the arriving of the spring and Persian's New Year

I took this recipe from this blog flavors of baku

where you can find a lot of recipes form Azerbaijan.

Ingredients (For 55 baclava, ovenproof recipient~ 25 X 27):

For the mixture of yeast:

• 1 teaspoon of yeast.
• 1 table spoon sugar.
• 1 table spoon flour.
• 80 ml of warm water.

For the dough:

•   1250 grams of flour.
•   1 egg room temperature.
•   1 table spoon sugar.
•   The mixture of yeast.
•   3 table spoon sour cream.
•   250 ml warm milk.
•   250 ml melted butter.
•   Salt.

   
For the Filling:
   

  450 grams nuts (without the shells).

  450 grams sugar.

  1 teaspoon ground cardamom.

  1 teaspoon ground coriander.

  1 teaspoon vanilla sugar.

  250 ml clarified butter.

 To decorate:

  2 yolks.

  1 teaspoon saffron infusion.

  1 teaspoon olive oil.

  15 nuts.

For the Syrup:

  125 ml clarified butter.

  250 grams of sugar.

  125 ml water.

  125 ml thousend flowers honey.

  1 tablespoon lemon juice.

Method:

1-  We are going to prepare first the mixture of yeast,flour and water. Let stand for half en hour.

2- Add to the bowl where you have the yeast the rest of the ingredients except the flour: egg, sour cream,milk, melted butter and mix well. Now add flour little by little passing it through a sieve.



3- Knead the dough until it is not sticky. Cover the bowl with a dish towel and let it stand for 2 hours at room temperature. Yo can see in the pictures the dough before and after the 2 hours:

4- Now we prepare the filling. Crush the nuts in little pieces , mix with sugar, cardamon, coriander and vanilla sugar.

5- Now it is time to build the baclava, it has 12 layers of dough, you should divide the dough into 10 balls the same weight and other 2 balls with a little more weight , these two layers will be the upper and lower layers.

My dough weighted 1830 grams, I used 140 for each of the 10 layers and 215 grams for the upper and lower side layers.

To make the layers in a good shape I cut parchment paper with the same shape as my oven mold.

Sprinkle a little quantity of flour over the parchment paper, take one ball of dough , spread it over the parchment paper with the help of a rolling pin.

Then you should place the layer in the oven mold.

Don't forget to grease the mold with a little of clarified butter (see point 6) before putting inside all the layers.

I had a 35 x 27 mold

 6- To clarify the butter you should follow this procedure.

Heat butter in a casserole, once it is melted , turn off the heat and get rid of the white part that you see on the surface.

A little quantity of white will remain on the bottom of the casserole so be careful when you take the butter to avoid this part too.

7- After the first layer of dough (215 grams) is in the mold, paint all the surface of the layer with some clarified butter until it is brilliant (use a kitchen brush).



8- Now put some of the filling (point 4). I had 900 grams of filling 900/11 = 81 grams . So I took 81 grams of filling and spread it evenly over the first layer.

9- Now prepare the second layer using the same procedure : Layer of dough, clarified butter and filling.

Until you arrive to the last layer , here you don't have to brush with clarified butter,  no filling either.

After every layer be careful to place it evenly all over the surface of the mold.

10- To have baclavas with a rhomboid shape, cut the dough with diagonal strips:

 and now horizontal strips:

11- To decorate, brush the surface with a mixture of egg, saffran infusion and oil, this is to have a good colour after cooking in the oven. Place half a nut in the middle of every baclava.

12- Preheat oven at 180 ºC and cook baclavas in oven for 20 minutes.

13- Take out of the oven, spread 125 ml of clarified butter over the surface.Cook in oven for 15 more minutes.

14- Prepare syrup, mix water and sugar and cook for 20 minutes at low heat. Then add honey and lemon juice , stir and let cook at low heat for 10 more minutes.

15- Take out the baclavas from oven, with the help of a knife recut the baclavas in case they have stuck together.

Pour syrup over the baclavas.

16- Cook baclavas 5 more minutes in oven.

17- Let the baclavas get cool.



18- When baclavas are still a little warm separate them and place them on the serving dish. you can eat them now or wait until they are cooled . This baclavas last some days.