Serbia wraps up with Saran

Our last night in Serbia and we moved closer to the airport, New Belgrade. This is also close to an area called Zemun which is home to a well known restaurant called Saran (Carp). Heading down to Zemun was an experience, with streets full of people and cars, I'm glad we were in a taxi because there is no way I would have been able to get through without hitting someone or something.

When we arrived at the restaurant, the outside area was full of people, but luckily there was one table available. The service was great and the atmosphere, even though the place was packed, was still conducive to conversation - at least until the 5-man band decided to start playing right behind my head. They didn't stay there long though, moving off to play at other tables and the music wasn't too loud.

To start, since this is a fish restaurant, we chose the Riblja Corba (Fish Soup) which was full of flavour and the fish had a great texture, although there were a lot of bones and these can be a disctraction from enjoying the soup.

We also ordered the pate and this was delicious with lots of paprika and garlic.


For mains, mum chose the fried catfish which had a light coating of batter and was tender and juicy.
Dad chose the fish in tomato stew. This was light and tasty, full of fresh flavours and if I could choose again I would have selected this.

What I did order was the Catfish cooked in mashed potato and cream. This sounds great and it really was, but it was soooo rich I could not even eat half of it.
Overall this was probably the best traditional meal I had in Serbia, a great way to finish my time in this country and even though there is obviously still much room for improvement in the way Serbia sells and presents it's cuisine, there are places that are genuinely making great moves forward and I look forward to seeing what happens in a few years.

Meanwhile, back in Serbia

So, attentive readers will note that I didn't update you on my way to Novi Sad as promised. I had a plan to wrap up the Serbian chapter of my blog with a post about street food and I wanted to get photos of all the various types of street food available, especially after arriving in a beautiful ski resort (I know it's summer, but it was still full of people) called Zlatibor (meaning Golden Pine). The forests around this area are beautiful pine forests and people were everywhere on the first night. That was when I decided that the next night I would come back to town and photograph all the street food available in the area. Unfortunately, the weather took a turn for the worse the next morning and it didn't stop raining all day, so when I got out the umbrella and wandered into the town there were only a few brave souls wandering about, usually from a restaurant to a bar or the other way around. I did manage to take a photo of the most common type of street food.

The Rostilj.

As you can see, they have all types of meat available to grill; sausages, hamburgers, pork fillet, chicken, cevapi, etc some in various forms (different spices or flavourings in the meat). This meat is already cooked and usually just gets a refire on the grill before serving. Basically you select your meat and the type of bread you want it in - either a bun or pita bread - and they put it on the grill to heat up. You pay for that and then add any/all/none of the various free condiments or additions available; White onion, cabbage, coleslaw, tomato, cucumber, chili, ketchup, mustard, etc. The price is very reasonable, with most choices being in the 200-300 RSD range (which you can see on the board to the left if you click on the image above) which is about $4-5 AUD. Other forms of street food you will see often in Serbia include Pancake Stalls, Corn Stalls (popped or boiled) and of course Icecream stands.


While the street food is cheap and filling, I really wanted to find somewhere that was showing real signs of moving Serbian cuisine forward. I was hoping to find that in Novi Sad which is said to be the most cosmopolitan city in Serbia. Unfortunately it turned out that after all the driving through the mountains I was not feeling very well and couldn't face the thought of a meal on our first night, so I just had a sandwich. The following day, I still wasn't feeling great, but we made the march from the centre of town across the river and up to the Fort overlooking Novi Sad. The view was impressive, but the stairs were not so much fun.

We decided to stop at a Carda for lunch which was right on the river. A carda is a hungarian style restarant specialising in fish dishes. We were told by everyone we spoke to that eating at a Carda is a guarantee of eating very fresh fish and since my dad is obsessed with fish soups, we decided to go and try out their thicker hungarian style called a Perkelt. This is served with noodles and is a blended soup made from vegetables and fish (usually Carp and/or Catfish) which is boiled together to form the soup base which is then blended and then fresh fish (usually firm, white fish like Pike or Perch) is added to cook in the soup before serving.


This had a very nice fish flavour and had a dense creamy texture, although there were several bones still in the fish which was a little annoying.

The next day we went for a drive and decided to eat a a place called a Salas there are many of these around and they are basically like hobby farms. We were recommended to try one called Salas 137. On arrival, we walked around the property which was neat and well cared for, had many horses and looked to be a working horse farm. The restaurant is mainly outdoor seating and the mismatched tablecloths and rustic chairs of various colours - rather than detract from the overall ambience - really gave a warm, friendly character to the place. The menu supported this feeling with dishes like Neighbor's Pork - A pig stolen from the neighbor and it's loin stuffed and rolled so even the neighbor wouldn't recognise it. The menu was quite extensive, with many foods used in different ways to what I had seen previously, but also some very traditional meals I had eaten when I was young in my grandparent's house but hadn't seen available in any restaurants so far. Seeing things like Koh (a sponge cake soaked in a bowl of milk) and Snenokle (egg white islands floating in a custard sauce) really brought back a lot of memories from my childhood. I was looking forward to this meal.

Firstly, my parents both ordered the traditional chicken soup, which is something I remember being served on Sunday lunches since I was a baby. I chose the Daska (or Board) which is a chopping board filled with various cheeses, pates and meats made either on site or locally.


This is an entree for one and yes, I did sample it before I took the photo...:) On there you can see from top left, Persut (prosciutto), pate with paprika and garlic, kajmak (a creamy cheese), above that is Gibanice (a cheese filled filo pastry), a fish pate (trout is my guess), cornbread, above the cornbread you can just barely see a slice of the house-made Kulen (spicy salami) which was the best I had yet tasted, then on the bottom row another piece of the Kulen, 3 different cheeses and a slice of a beef salami. The black thing in the middle is a prune...you'll see more of these later.

For mains, my dad liked the sound of the Neighbor's Pig, mum chose the Ham Hock cooked casserole style with cream and I chose the Goulash in mustard sauce.

Neighbor's Pig

This was served cold with raw radishes, raw hot pepper and a side of horseradish. The raw vegetables were no surprise, but this time I think they added to the rustic feeling of the dish and in this setting they seemed to work, although they were all very spicy according to my dad. The skin on the pork was rubbery, but the taste overall was ok.

Ham Hock with horseradish and cream

As promised, another prune! This dish was rich and decadent, but unfortunately the garlic and horseradish were was too strong and killed what should have been a nice smoky flavour from the hock.
Goulash in Mustard Sauce with Mashed Potato

Yes, I know you've already noticed....another prune! They might want to look at some variety in their garnishes at some stage. The mash was creamy and delicious, the meat was tender and broke apart at the touch of the fork, but the sauce didn't taste at all like mustard and the entire dish was cold. I put this down to the fact that even though they used a cast iron dish to serve it, they didn't cook it in there or even heat the dish before serving so as soon as they put the hot food into the cold dish, it started to get cold.

The portion sizes were again way to big and I couldn't even eat half of mine, although I was saving some space for dessert.

Snenokle have long been one of my dad's favourite desserts so he had to try them here.
The flavour was quite good, being enhanced by the caramel sauce and the custard was a smooth texture.

Mum chose the Krempita (literally Cream Pie, but similar to Vanilla Slice).
This was much lighter than any vanilla slice you would find in Melbourne, with the custard being more of a light whipped cream texture than the dense custard you would normally get.

I was going to choose the Koh, but once I say the baked palacinke filled with walnuts and cooked in milk I had to get that instead since this is so similar to a dessert that my grandmother and mother taught me to cook and that I have always enjoyed.

Unfortunately, this was also served cold. The crepes were tough and took several tries to cut through with the spoon, the walnuts tasted great, but 30 seconds in a microwave would have made this a much better dessert.

Overall, Salas 137 is showing real signs of wanting to move forward and even though the execution really leaves a lot to be desired, I'm encouraged by what I see here and recommend anyone who visits Novi Sad to make the 10-15 minute drive out to this place and support what they are doing. Don't miss out on the Kulen!

The Village People

Once again thanks for the comments and emails, keep them coming!

This update has been a while coming, but there is a reason for it. We have spent the last week in the countryside of Serbia, mainly based in a town called Sremska Mitrovica. Mainly, this time has been spent catching up with family and friends I have never met (or met a very long time ago), but who are very important to my family.

I didn't feel that in depth discussion of each visit would relate to the subject of this blog and I know this would have had very little relevance to many of you. However, it has revealed many things about the hospitality of Serbian Villages and the food and drinks associated with it.

Firstly, some background info. From anecdotal evidence, the unemployment rate in Serbia is currently near 50% and this is reflected in a very big way in regional areas. Driving through the various villages and towns, I noticed a large number of older people and very few young people. There are very few jobs available in these areas and many of the factories that had previously supported the regional economy are now sitting empty and derelict. The pensioners who have lived here most of their lives are surviving on pensions that are roughly in the range of $200 - $300 AUD per month. This may be barely enough to sustain a minimal existence for one person, but often this money is being used to support a household of people due to the lack of jobs.

To supplement their incomes, many of the homes we visited raise animals to support some of their food needs. Almost everyone has at least a handful of chickens to supply eggs and some raise pigs, cows and/or goats either to sell for extra income or to slaughter for food for winter. Also many households have much larger gardens than we are used to in Australia. This is still barely enough to support families that are at or below poverty levels.

One more thing that is very different to the way we know things at home is that many of these villages are made up of farming families. They don't actually have residences on their farms in most cases as their land is spread out in various lots, not all in one place. They head out in the mornings to work their land and come home at night. This means that instead of being spread out like many of our farm families are in Australia, the villages are a concentrated population of people who work the surrounding farmland.

Having said all that, every single house we walked into, we were offered shots of Rakija (often made in that particular family), coffee and food - many times a full meal. As much as we saw how poor these people were, they were also very proud of their home-made foods and would not accept any refusal. I can't say I felt hungry once in the last week.

Sorry for the lack of photos, but I don't feel quite comfortable about taking pictures of people's cooking inside their homes. Some of the highlights were: Rakija (of course) in copious quantities and varieties and many people offered to pack a bottle for us to take home to Australia, Sarma (cabbage rolls filled with rice and meat), Kulen (home made salami), chicken livers and giblets, snails and the cakes.

I did eat out at the local pizzeria and tried the icecreamery and both were sensational. The pizza base was delicious and thin, just the way I like it and the local salamis, hams and bacon really work well. The local specialty seems to be a combination of the above with a topping of sour cream, I recommend it wholehearedly, but don't expect the sizes we have in Australia, the small is easily larger than most of the medium pizzas in Melbourne and the largest size is close to a meter wide! The only note of discord here was that the tomato sauce they use for the pizza is actually Ketchup and they serve their pizza with a side of ketchup to add onto the pizza as you eat. I tried this once to see what it was like, but never again. For anyone coming to the area, the restaurant I sampled was Pizzaeria XL which is in the mall in the centre of town and the beer is great, with local 500ml beers only costing 90 dinars (about $2 AUD). The icecreamery of choice by the locals is called Sport and is in the same area. If you don't understand the name of the flavour, just try it anyway. They won me over when I couldn't make up my mind and the server took a very small amount from each flavour so that each scoop had about 5 or 6 flavours. I have no idea which were my favourites, but as a whole it was great!

Another highlight of this week is that it is right in the middle of cherry picking season. Almost every house we went to had a cherry tree and many had more than one. On a 30 degree day we went out to help one of the farmers harvest cherries from their orchard. This involved a group of about 8 or 10 people loading into a trailer towed by a tractor over land that you wouldn't be able to take a normal car through. With no suspension, this was a fun, but painful journey while hanging on for dear life. When we arrived, most of the group went about picking cherries, while I and a couple of others worked on building a fire to grill the meat we had brought with us. The beer was placed to cool under a nearby flowing spring of cool, fresh, delicious water. After we had built the fire, we placed the grill on top to heat and got cooking. On the menu were cevapi, kobasice, various salads and lots of bread. Not to mention all the cherries you could eat. To drink we had - yes, you guessed it - rakija, beer and fresh water directly from the spring.


There are plenty of green lizards running around and someone did say they spotted a snake, but don't anyone tell my dad, ok? I'm not sure that we were a huge help harvesting cherries as we only spent half the day out there and there were still plenty left on the trees when we left, but it was a fantastic day.

New friendships were made:



And we loaded onto the trailer for the trip back.

Two Restaurants In One Day

During the dinner party (see previous post) we were discussing the state of restaurants in Belgrade and my impressions so far (I wonder how THAT subject came up). It turns out that my cousin and one of the other guests know a chef who has returned to Belgrade after an extended time working at restaurants in Melbourne and has just recently opened a new restaurant. We made a reservation then and there for the following night and I was really looking forward to see what we would find.

The next day arrived and knowing that we had a restaurant dinner that night I wasn't planning on a big lunch, so my project for the day was to find some great street food. For those of you that don't know, in Australia we have these little take away places everywhere that sell deep fried foods: dim sims, spring rolls, potato croquettes, chips, potato cakes, etc. I have yet to find anything like that here. I have seen grills, which serve serbian hamburgers, cevapcici
(skinnless sausages) and other grilled meats and on this morning I found a place that served freshly made crepes with any number of savoury or sweet fillings. These are quite common and they sell many other baked products and sandwiches. Since it was breakfast, I went for an apricot jam filled crepe. This was delicious and a little messy, served in a triangular shape in a paper bag, just what you want for a walking around snack. If you ever come here, make sure you try these, they are less than $2 AUD and taste great.

Next we caught a bus to an area where there is an island in the middle of the river. I don't mean a small island, this place is huge, with roads, walking tracks and beaches. As it is only very early in the holiday season over here and the weather hasn't been great, there weren't many people around, but I'm told that once the weather starts heating up, this place gets packed with people.

After that we went to the biggest orthodox cathedral in Belgrade, which is still under construction (or repairs), but is a very impressive sight. It is modelled in Haiga Sofia and will amazing to see once it is finished, but that may still be several years away.

I really wanted to do a review of one of the street grills, so on the way back to the apartment, we were looking for one, but with very little luck (there are plenty in town, but they are a little harder to find once you leave the main area). After asking around, we were recommended a restaurant called Lovac (Hunter). We decided to go in and try their food and try to have a small lunch just as a sample. Our waiter was the best I have seen so far in Serbia, he spoke fluent english, was friendly, excited and eager to recommend dishes and even offered combinations that were not on the menu. Choosing the veal soup to start and asking him to come up with a combination platter of some of their main dishes and to include venison (with a name like Hunter I had to try some game, right?) and the Serbian hamburger.

I haven't mentioned this before, but the traditional Serbian appertif is a fruit based brandy or rakia. For this meal the waiter recommended we try the quince brandy and I'm very glad he did. It was fantastic and the fruit flavour really came through, which it doesn't always.


According to many of the Serbians I know from Melbourne and the ones I have met here, a meal is never complete without bread. In fact, my mum was asked to cut the bread for a meal with one of my aunts the other day and was told "You cut bread like an Australian, I can almost see through it!" Bread should be cut thick and there should be plenty of it. The bread that came to our table next was a selection of three types, including white, dark and the traditional flatbread. I didn't try the white, but the others were great.

Soup came next and as it was placed before me I was a little put off by the amount of oil floating on top. When making soups in school we are always taught to skim any fat from the soup during cooking. I wondered about this out loud and my mum told me that it is traditional to thicken certain soups with a roux. This is a common thickening agent made from a combination of fat and flour, often the fat is butter, but oil is another possibility. Also, dried parsley made another appearance, which I think is really disappointing with the fresh stuff so easily available.


Apart from these issues, this was a very flavourful soup and I'm glad we ordered it.

We wanted something a little different from the normal plain garden variety and were recommended one but I forget it's name.

Lightly dressed and with a good selection of vegetables, this was a great salad. The radishes go really well with fattier or richer meat dishes and that's exactly what came to the table next.

Roast Lamb and scalloped potatoes. Plus the rest.

Clockwise from the top: More potatoes, Venison, a very large pljeskavica (hamburger) cut in three pieces and ten cevapcici.

The potatoes where tender and delicious, the lamb falling off the bone tender and very nice. The venison was disappointingly dry, but had a very powerful smoky flavour which I liked. The hamburger was my favourite, juicy and smoky with plenty of garlic this was the example of what this dish can really be. The cevapcici were good too, but tasted a little plain next to the hamburger.

I probably don't need to say this, but there was no way we could finish all this and the waiter was happy to pack the rest for us to take with us. They also offer a take away service.

Overall, this was a great lunch, but what really made the meal was the waiter and it wasn't just us he was this good with. We saw him serving several other tables and they all had as good a time as we did, regardless of their age. The prices were reasonable by Australian standards, roughly $35 AUD per person inclusive of drinks, but expensive in relation to other local prices. I would definitely recommend it. The main problem was that we were so full and still had dinner to look forward to.

That night we went down by the river to an area very similar to Melbourne's docklands, old warehouses along the water, many of which have been turned into trendy shops and restaurants. As we came to Iguana, I knew we would be in for a treat. The decore is very classy and modern with a well stocked bar and impressive wine list. The food is heavily asian, with Malaysian and Thai dishes making several appearances. In general there is quite a bit of seafood on the menu and most dishes look quite light. It is also worth noting that the menu is written in both English and Serbian. We were seated on a table adjacent to the stage on which a live jazz band was playing most of the night, but I never felt the music was intrusive. When we arrived the tables were only half full, but not long after we were seated the restaurant was full with people sitting at the bar and waiting for seats. Obviously this is not a secret and the locals are enjoying it already.

As I was still working on building an appetite after lunch, I wanted to eat something light. As my appetiser I chose the Calamari with Shitake Mushrooms.


This was a little larger than I expected for an appetiser, but after seeing the sizes of servings at other local restaurants, I can understand why. The flavours here were very well balanced, the calamari cooked perfectly and with just the right amount of heat. You can't see them in the photo, but this also as a bed of noodles underneath. I didn't feel like this added anything to the dish and personally would have left them out.

Since this was larger than expected, I chose to go for the Duck Salad as my main course.

Another great dish and I was really happy to see someone using the beautiful lettuces that are available at the moment. My one complaint about this dish is that it was a bit too bitter for my taste, most of these lettuces having a strong bitter flavour, I would have replaced the orange slices with a slightly sweetened orange sauce to contrast and bring this more into balance. The duck was cooked perfectly, tender and still red as it should be.

I still had a little room for dessert and even though I had been recommended the Sticky Date Pudding, I chose the daily special Cheesecake.

The base of this cheesecake was particularly nice, with the filling being light and delicious I finished the lot.

The owner also made an appearance during our meal and he spent some time at each table making sure each guest was having a good time. It really added a personal touch and we got to talk to him a little about his experiences in Melbourne and of his work in Serbia. This was an excellent way to spend our last night in Belgrade and I highly recommend it to anyone who is thinking about coming to this city. The prices are quite reasonable, being comparable to most of our cafe prices in Melbourne.

Well, that's it from Belgrade for now, I'm not sure if we'll be spending any more time here before we leave the country, but I've had a fantastic time here and hope the rest of my trip is as good. For now it's on to Sremska Mitrovica, a country town about and hour or so drive from Belgrade.

Thanks to those who have left comments on this blog so far, I really appreciate knowing who is reading and what they think. Keep it up and let me know you're out there!

Trufflicious

What do you do when you are offered a chance to use a product that you rarely get to work with? In my case I was asked if I wanted to cook for a dinner party using truffles. Of course I said yes and honestly any chance to cook with the produce I had seen at the market in the last few days would have been great, but the truffles were an added bonus.

What do I know about truffles? Not a huge amount. They are a fungus that grows under oak trees, have a strong earthy taste and are usually used in very small quantities (just a few grams per serve). Traditionally they were hunted with pigs who are specially trained to be able to smell them underground, but dogs are used quite a bit now and gave the benefit of not eating the truffles like the pigs sometimes do.

My first thoughts were to do something that really showed off the truffles and something I knew how to do reasonably well. I narrowed it down to pasta or risotto.

Next I had to think about what other ingredients would support the truffles without overpowering them. I decided on bacon as part of the risotto flavour base and pan-seared duck breast which would be sliced and just a few slices used to top each dish – something rich and flavourful to match the earthy taste of the fungus.

I also decided to do a risotto and that I would not prepare a dessert, but would make an appetiser. Thinking back to the market I remembered that there were some great looking zucchini available and decided on an antipasto recipe from Gordon Ramsay, cheese-filled zucchini rolls with pine nuts and basil.

Shopping list in hand, we headed off to the market and my first mission was to find two cheeses, parmesan (for the risotto) and ricotta (for the zucchini rolls). After our third delicatessen we found some Grano Padano parmesan cheese, but ricotta proved impossible so we found a local fresh cheese with a very similar texture and flavour. One thing we couldn’t find was pre-made stock, so I opted for powdered chicken stock rather than making it from scratch (don’t tell anyone though, it’s our little secret).

The next hurdle was the duck; there was none at the market at all. There had definitely been some on our last trip, but they were all out this time. I quickly tried to think of a replacement ingredient, but decided to go with just the bacon risotto instead until we stumbled across these:

Absolutely amazing! Fresh Chanterelle mushrooms! I don’t even know if we can get these in Australia, but I’ve seen them on TV and love their colour. There were also fresh Porcchini and other mushrooms I had never seen before. I bought some of the chanterelles and the main ingredients of the night were complete. Finishing off the shopping trip, we grabbed the rest of the ingredients: Some amazing fresh garlic, onions, thyme, basil, parsley, zucchinis, pine nuts, short grain rice, and lemons.

Let’s move on to the dinner. The first thing I prepared was the zucchini rolls, follow this link to Gordon Ramsay's recipe.

It is important to note that I had several eager (and not-so eager) helpers and my thanks go out to them, it made the whole night go much smoother.

For the risotto, I brought approximately two liters of stock to the boil and turned the heat down to low to keep the stock hot. While this was happening the chanterelles, herbs, garlic, onions and bacon were being chopped.

In a hot pan, I sauteed the chanterrelles in butter with thyme leaves, salt and pepper. The next thing I did was get the bacon into another pot with a little butter and olive oil. I like to leave the bacon in slightly larger pieces because it tends to shrink quite a bit as the fat renders. After the bacon was nice and brown and the kitchen got that amazing fried bacon smell, I added the dices onions and garlic and let them sweat for a while.

Once the onions were nice and soft, I added approximately 2 cups of the rice and stirred until the grains started to become transparent. At this point, I added a cup of dry white wine and let the rice absorb it, stirring all the time. Next I began adding the stock a ladle or two at a time and stirring until the liquid is absorbed.

I added the chanterelles for the last few minutes before the rice was done. Once the risotto was nice and creamy with just a little bite left in the rice, I turned off the heat and added the thinly sliced truffle.

One was enough for six people, so I didn't use both. Once the truffles had time to heat through, I added the grated Parmesan and chopped parsley. Here is the final product.

The result, even if I do say so myself was delicious and if the feedback from the guests was any indication, this was a definite success. If you'd like to try this but don't have access to truffles or chanterelles, you can substitute other mushrooms and I would suggest trying two or three different types.

Next update will be two more Belgrade restaurant reviews, stay tuned to see if they were better than the last one.

Are Three Hats Better Than One?

After sleeping through my first evening in Belgrade, I was conscious of my dwindling remaining nights in this city. I needed to see what a restaurant dinner was like here. especially after seeing the availability of great produce earlier in the day, I was eager to see how that translated onto the menu and ultimately the plate. Now I'd like to apologise at the start for the quality of photos in this post, I'm still working out the settings on my camera and I'm trying to avoid using a flash so as not to annoy other diners.

Was it a revelation? A life and perception altering experience? You'll have to keep reading to find out. Don't scroll down to find out because I'm watching!

We decided on the restaurant Tri Sesira (Three Hats) as it is in an area full of restaurants that is usually buzzing with people and each restaurant has a live band that wanders from table to table playing traditional local music. What better way to immerse ourselves in the culture?

The weather was a little on the chilly side, but in true Melbournian style, we opted to sit outside and experience the atmosphere of the area. We had arrived a little early for our 8pm reservation, but there was only one other table with people on it outside and perhaps half the tables inside were full.

Starting off with a shot of Zuta Osa (Yellow Wasp) which is a brand of plum brandy, the waiter suggested a cold appetiser to share consisting of some smoked meats and cheese. How could we say no after the fantastic smoked meats we had seen at the market earlier?


The prociutto was quite nice and the fetta a little too salty for my taste, but overall this was a reasonably good dish to go with our drinks.

The menu was extremely meat-centric (as I expected) but I was disappointed to see very little reflection of the gorgeous seasonal produce we had seen and experienced earlier in the day.

For main course we opted for a selection of mixed meat platters and (because I have to try something a little different) a serve of Gigerice (chicken livers). As a salad I ordered the roasted capsicum.

The salads came first, which smelled amazing and you can see in the photo below how much garlic was used for the dressing.


One disappointing aspect of this dish was that is wasn't cleaned. Normally roasted capsicum would be served with the skin, stem and seeds removed so that the diner just enjoys eating the dish without having to clean around the stem and work their way through the skin. The taste was very nice and perhaps a little more roasting would have brought out more of the sweetness of the paprika and I would probably use less garlic as it was a bit overpowering.

Next came the main course, lots and lots of meat.


There was cevapcici, chicken breast, pork cutlet, shashlik, steak and the livers (wrapped in BACON!). On the side were chips and raw white onion without dressing. Since this is what Serbian cuisine is known for, I was expecting the meat to be delicious and juicy and while I know that Serbs don't usually use spices or sauces in a big way to flavour their meat I was hoping that the natural taste of the produce would stand out.

Unfortunately I was disappointed on almost all counts. By far the best part of the meal so far was the roasted capsicum. The meat was almost universally overcooked, dry and very hard to eat. As far as the meat went, the cevapcici were the juiciest on the plate but couldn't even hold a candle to the ones we get in Melbourne even from the supermarket. The livers were by far the most flavoured thanks in large part to the bacon and were possibly the only item that wasn't completely overcooked. The onion was far too strong to eat and seemed to only have been put on the plate as an afterthought or garnish or just to fill up the empty space.

After the morning at the market and seeing what is available as far as produce goes, I find it very difficult to reconcile in my mind such a sad example of the local cuisine.

Well, putting the main course aside, I hoped that dessert would be able to make up for it at least in some small part. Trying to go for something that was traditional and that would hopefully be something that would be common and hard for them to mess up, I selected crepes with walnuts (something I remember my grandmother making when I was a child). Also the menu suggested that these were then cooked in milk, something a little different but similar ot another dish common to my grandmother's kitchen. Unfortunately I was told this was not available at this time, but having decided on crepes I chose another dish with an interesting description. The one line menu item seemed to be saying that the crepes were served in a zabaglione-type sauce made with wine. This is a sauce made with eggs and sugar and is usually quite sweet and fluffy (very rich and decadent) but I didn't know how the addition of wine would affect it, thinking that perhaps they used a sweet or fortified wine.

Technically, the sauce was smooth, velvety and rich, but the wine they had used had a particularly high acidic taste and could almost be described as sour. I really didn't like this flavour combination and felt it really took a lot away from what, otherwiseW, was a really nice dessert. The crepes were great, the walnuts were a nice textural contrast to the smooth crepes and silken sauce and really held their own, but that wine flavour was just too distracting.

Another distracting thing I thought deserved a mention was the band. There were five of them and they were playing and singing at the top of their lungs and making it impossible to talk to other people at the table. It was ok when they were in another room or at a reasonable distance, but the pair of guys at the table next to us were well and truly into their rakia (perhaps a bottle each) and were tipping the band and signing along.

Overall I felt a little betrayed by this meal. Not necessarily on my own behalf, although I feel I was promised a lot more than was delivered, but I felt betrayed on behalf of the hard-working people I had spent the morning with in the market. People who were proud of their produce and were eager to have people try what they had to offer. I say this because most tourists would experience their first taste of Serbian produce from a restaurant like this one and most would never get a chance to see what is really available to these restaurants as far as raw materials go.

I had to take a step back and reassess how I was judging this meal. Was I being too harsh and judging them unfairly by standards I have become accustomed to in Australia? Sometimes I tend to do that, but I also don't want to make excuses and begin saying things like "This was a pretty good meal.....by Serbian standards" or "As far as Serbian food goes...". I had to know if I was the only one that felt this way, but after asking my parents - who have been to Serbia many times and have eaten at this restaurant previously - their response was similar to mine. They said that this was worse than an meal they have eaten at that restaurant before and perhaps the worst they had eaten at any restaurant in Serbia.

Maybe this is a one-off thing and I guess it would be good to get a bad experience out of the way first and move on to better ones as the days go by, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't starting to become concerned about what I would find.

Stay tuned.

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!

Good Morning Belgrade

Waking up at 6:45 am was a bit of a surprise, but I wasn't too tired, so I got up and started thinking about breakfast. My parents (who I am sharing the Serbia/Montenegro stage of my trip with) were also up and we put it down to jetlag and decided to go for a walk into the city and find somewhere for breakfast.

Our apartment is close enough to the town center of Old Belgrade to walk there within 10 minutes, so it was a great way to check out the local area as well as the town. There were bakeries and little cafes everywhere, but I wanted a hot cooked breakfast of eggs and bacon, so we kept moving. Eventually we found a nice restaurant in town called Biblioteka (Library). After realising that people were smoking, we asked if there was a non-smoking area and were told that it was upstairs. Now this sounds fine until you realise that upstairs is not closed off and is directly above the smokers, but it wasn't too bad as we sat down and took a look at the menu.

Now if I was expecting Eggs Benedict or Florentine, I had to readjust my expectations. Poached eggs were not on the menu anywhere, only scrambled of fried. There was an omelet also, but I quickly found something that grabbed my attention: Bibloteka Dorucak (Library Breakfast) which was their version of a big breakfast. This consisted of a fried egg, vienna sausage, ham, cheese, fried potato chips, tomato chutney and mustard. Now I have to apologise for not taking any photos but I was hungry and didn't think to grab the camera before I was already well into it. My mum ordered the bacon and eggs, which was 3 fried eggs with bacon, dad ordered the omelet. Both came with the potato chips and sauces. This wasn't the best breakfast I've ever had, but it was very nice. The ham and cheese both seemed a little flat and after tasting the bacon, I would have gladly substituted the ham and cheese and had bacon instead. We all had juices and coffees. The total if this meal was about 1650 dinars for three of us, about $AUD33. At these prices, I'm gonna love this town.

Deciding to do some more walking to compensate to some extent for breakfast, we continued our walk through the old city and headed for the fort in Belgrade, Kalemegdan.

This is a huge sprawling fort set on a very high hill in Belgrade, overlooking the meeting of the Danube and Sava Rivers.



The views from here are spectacular and it is surrounded by parks and gardens full of people from teens to senior citizens. Some just enjoying the view and the day and others gathered around chess boards, playing and chatting away.

Walking back through town we saw some poets from all over Europe sharing poems about Belgrade and their impressions in several different languages. We would have stayed and listened to this longer if we weren't already fairly tired and we also had to head over to my cousin's place for a late lunch at about 3pm.

Now I don't think I've walked this much in a long time and I was very tired when we got back to the apartment, but we soon headed out for lunch and had a great afternoon with several members of my dad's side of the family and got home around 7pm. Being as tired as I was, I decided to take a nap before figuring out what to do for the rest of Saturday night. I'm sure you can guess what's coming, but I didn't get out of bed until about 11 hours later.

Let's put it down to jet lag and see if we can make up for it today (Sunday).