This Little Piggy Went To Market

One of my favourite things to do even at home is to visit the market, but even more so in a new town or country. Today was no exception.

I've been looking forward to see what the Belgrade markets have to offer and knowing that most of the stall holders are the farmers themselves only makes it more exciting to see what they have. To say that the produce is amazing is an understatement, but lets start with breakfast. After the cooked breakfast from yesterday, we decided on a traditional Serbian breakfast of baked goods.


I wanted to try everything here, it smelled and looked so good, so I had to drag myself away and left the ordering to my mum and went across the road to grab some Kiselo Mleko (literally Sour Milk) which is the same thing that we call yoghurt, but what they call yoghurt here is what we call buttermilk. Anyway, here is what breakfast for three looked like this morning.

As you can see, while many of these things look a similar colour, the flavours are very different. The mini-pizzas on the right had a very thin slice of proscuitto, some shredded mushrooms and cheese on a base of puff pastry (nice enough, but not outstanding). The darker rolls on the left were fairly plain with a flavour I couldn't quite identify, probably some sugar based coating brushed onto the loaves before baking like molasses which gives them that beautiful brown colour. In the front left is something called a Pogacica (similar to a scone, but made with lard so it has a strong savoury flavour. This is what we had the yoghurt with and while very nice, I have had better ones made by my grandmother). To the right is a cheese filled burek which was the absolute highlight for me, these were flaky and delicious, with the cheese filling being crumbly and slightly salty. Lastly for a little sweet finish, at the very back and small scones filled with jam, which you have to be a little careful with or the jam may spurt out all over you.

On to the market.

The first stall we encountered sold some dried cranberries which were delicious so we bought some of these to keep in the apartment as a snack (I'm muching on them as I write this). We walked to one end of the market which was where the cheese stalls were set up inside a building.


One thing I noticed immediately is that the cheeses at this market (and that the Serbs usually eat) is very fresh and very plain. There are no mold cheeses or smoked cheeses. They have cheese made from cow's milk and sheep's milk and a product called kajmak which is basically the cream skimmed from the top of milk and turned into a cream cheese which you can buy mild or aged. The other main cheese is a delicate, smooth, mild cheese similar to fresh mozarella. The thing that struck me the most about these stall holders is how proud they all are of their product. Every single stall we walked past, we were offered tastes of almost everything in the stall with the stall owner wanting to tell us all about his cheese and how it had been produced.

Behind the cheese area we found heaven.



I mean the smoked meat area. Now we're not talking about champagne ham or ham on the bone here, or "chicken" lunch meats. We're talking about home made sausages, cabanas and BACON. Bacon with so much flavour you can see it.

Wow. I wanted to bottle the smell in this place and use it to spray around my guests at dinner parties to generate an appetite. So, after spending surprisingly little in this room, we moved out into the fresh produce area.
It is just the beginning of summer here and you can tell by all the amazing berries and stone fruits that were on offer at the market stalls. There were fresh raspberries, strawberries, cherries, even red currants, which I haven't had since I was a kid. This tiny, round, smooth-skinned berries explode with flavour when you bite into them and have an amazing taste that wakes your tastebids up. Most of these berries were around 200 dinars per punnet (or about $AUD4). The most amazing of the berries was the strawberries...these things were bigger than golfballs and smelled absolutely fantastic. We bought a bunch of these to take home too.

The colours and smells from all the stalls were amazing, and I could wander for days just sampling a little here and a little there.
I had a preconception (as much as I try to avoid them) that Serbs, while very good with meat, didn't really have an appreciation for good, fresh fruits and vegetables. I am happy to say that this is not the case, as everywhere I went, I saw amazing variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs and fresher and better looking than those you would find in our larger markets back home. I guess this is due to the fact that there is no wholesale market in Belgrade, these stalls are all run by the farmers themselves and while we have farmer's markets back home, they are often hard to get to or only open once a month.
By the time we left the market we needed a coffee, so we stopped at a cafe just outside the market and started thinking about how we were going to go back to our apartment and prepare some of the fresh ingredients we had purchased. We got up and started to walk home, when my Dad wondered off and came back very excited, telling us to forget eating what we had bought, he had found what we had to have for lunch. We followed him to a shop called a Pecenjara (or Roasting House) which was a tiny little shop that just sells roast meat. You probably have an image in your head of a nice piece of roast beef or pork from which slices are carved for sandwiches, but what I mean is this:

Yes, that's a whole piglet and a whole lamb. You simply tell the owner how much you want and he cuts it off the whole carcass with a huge guillotine. I thought the smell of the smoked meats was the best I would find all day, but I was wrong. So wrong! We asked the owner how many he goes through in a week and he said about 50-60 whole animals. I can see why.
So we bought a slab of each and took it back with us for lunch and while I expected the pork to be good (and it was), the lamb was absolutely sensational, tender and juicy and delicious.
What a day!