"CRF" is not a crime show you've never heard of, it stands for "Cutting Room Floor." It's been almost a year since we returned from Europe, and we've started to get seriously nostalgic. To give us all an extra travel fix, we're posting some of our favorite photos that never made it onto the blog. Here are our favorite unpublished memories and pictures of Croatia.
More than any other country, we associate Croatia with hedonism, sun and the scent of saltwater. Our trip never felt like a vacation, but Croatia is a vacation by definition. Everyone there was on holiday in one way or another - it was the same for the naked Germans and drunk Russians and sunburned Brits that joined us on those rocky shores. It was July. The sun never seemed to go down.
For a few happy days, we stayed at a huge campsite on Cres Island. There was squid to eat in town and beer to sip on the long oceanside promenade. When we swam, we were stung by tiny jellyfish. When we walked in the balmy evenings, we listened to cicadas and waves. Nearby, in a pine forest, a rusty amusement park spun its blinking, neon magic.
At home in the US, not long after the trip, someone told us that Croatia sounded "scary and Russian." It's true that in some places, like Zadar, one can find bomb-scarred buildings from the Balkan wars - but you have to look hard. The scariest thing about Croatia today? Probably the spiny sea-urchins that lurk in the shallow water.
The Dalmatian coast is mostly rock, and some salt-scoured islands feel almost entirely dead. Real, comfortable, sandy beaches are rare. Most people sunbathe on concrete slabs.
The heart of the summer - no rain, mild air, a sense that nothing bad can possibly happen - is best spent in a tent. We soaked up the sun and got into our sleeping bag coated with salt. We never went inside. We ate by the ocean, we napped in the shade, we swam and walked and came home to a crowded camping city that smelled always of grilling sausage and suntan oil.
This was the semi-permanent home of one of our neighbors there at Camping Kovačine - grandparents, small children and at least two couples used this one camper as a base. Did they all sleep inside? Hard to tell.
Late one night - well past midnight - we were returning to our campsite in Ičići and came across this streetlight game of volleyball.
These scales always remind us of communism. Every market from Minsk to Budapest to Sarajevo is full of them.
We spent a lot of time near the Mediterranean on the trip, but almost always during the colder months. The summer seashores are too crowded in Malta or Greece or Provence. At least, they're too crowded for serious travel.
But there we were, in Croatia during the high season. We succumbed because there was no other choice. It's Croatia that we think of first when our minds turn to sunny saltwater. It was unavoidably perfect. It was a vacation.
To see all our posts from Croatia, just click here.
To see all the Cutting Room Floor posts, with great pictures from the other 49 countries, just click here.
Today is our 700th official day of the trip and, in a bizarre coincidence, we just happened to publish our 700th post. So, in honor of both milestones, we've decided to pick a favorite post from each block of the trip. Looking back, we're a little embarrassed by some of our earliest writing and photography. We didn't quite have a knack for the whole blogging thing yet. There was also a matter of learning to balance the time spent experiencing things and the time it takes to sit in a dark hotel room and plug away at documenting it all. We hope you enjoy reminiscing a little with us. Centrāltirgus, Riga
- Lithuania
1-100, Holland to Estonia. The snow began to fall in Riga and we didn't see uncovered earth again until Ukraine, well into our next block. This was the beginning of our Slavic winter and wandering into the Centrāltirgus in Riga was surreal. We had never seen a market like it and still count it amongst the best we've ever encountered - and we got to a lot of markets. They're perfect gateways into a new place, an accessible entry into the authentic life of a place. Looking back, it was probably our experience at this one in Riga that really taught us that lesson. Monumental Brest - Belarus 101 - 200, Russia to San Marino. We began in one place and ended in quite another. In between was a lot of snow, a crash-course in Russian language, two Pope Benedict sightings and the last remaining dictatorship in Europe. Belarus. Monumental Brest was an experience of true Communist grandeur, propaganda and pomp. We are forever grateful to have made the effort, obtained the visas and crossed the border into Belarus at this point in its history. We've no doubt it'll be very different in the not-too-distant future. Puszta Horse Show - Hungary
201 - 300, Switzerland to Croatia. Sometimes we resent this blog for keeping us in on a sunny afternoon, keeping a camera in hand when it only adds to our conspicuousness, taking up time we could be spending doing something wonderful and exotic... but more often, we realize that actively thinking about content has lead us to do so many things we wouldn't have otherwise. For example, the Puszta Horse Show. Basically a Hungarian rodeo, how could it not make a good post? It also made for a hysterical, wonderful afternoon. The Water Cave - Slovenia
301 - 400, Slovenia to Spain. Like Marketplaces, Caves are a common theme for us. We love spelunking and never would have even known it had we not gone to Slovenia a few years before this trip began. That time, we went to the Škocjan Caves (which doesn't allow pictures). On our return trip, we upped the ante with this once-in-a-lifetime tour of The Water Cave. One of our very favorite days of this entire trip. In a Land Far, Far Away... - Azerbaijan
401 - 500, Georgia to Malta. At the beginning of this year, we became backpackers. Our loyal companion Nilla (our Subaru Outback) had been sent home. We left Christmas with our families and took one, two, three planes to get to Georgia. It was exhilarating and scary and with our comfort zone punctured, we decided to really just go all-in. We never would have driven to Xinaliq, Azerbaijan ourselves. And staying with a family whose house was heated with dung was a homestay to remember. The Beautiful Lake Komani Ferry - Albania
501 - 600, Albania - Bosnia & Herzegovina. We found ourselves missing Nilla a lot. Wishing we could camp, have our own cooking equipment, just have the freedom to get from point A to point B on our own time. But any time we start thinking this way, we inevitably think of all the experiences we never would have had if we'd kept the car around. All the situations we were thrown headfirst into. We always think of the Lake Komani ferry, a bus made to float which carried us, a man showing off his machine gun, elderly people in traditional clothes and whoever they randomly picked up at the water's edge of nowhere to northern Albania. It was beautiful, yes, but also bizarre, adventurous and unlike anything before it or since.
Forty-Eight People - Iceland
601 - 700, Iceland - United Kingdom. Iceland is sort of Europe and sort of nowhere. At the edge of the Arctic and in the middle of the Atlantic, it's very much its own thing. Huge swaths of the country can only be seen by hiking for days with everything you need on you. In some places, we got a tiny insight into what it must feel like to be in space. The deepest sense of isolation in an unimaginably beautiful place. On the eastern coast of the Westfjords, only a small number of resilient people have remained. Forty-eight to be exact. We contemplated staying put and bringing their number up to fifty.
"Is that this week? There are so many happening in Helsinki, it is hard to keep up." - the woman who runs our hostel. The Helsinki Baltic Herring Fair certainly IS happening this week, all week, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a happening that would get us as excited as a 270 year old annual festival dedicated to herring. As Merlin recently waxed poetic about in Sweden, we both think herring is a small, simple dose of perfection. Luckily, there were plenty of other people who were well aware of the Herring Fair. And on Opening Day, the crowds at the Port of Helsinki were thick. The excitement was palpable.
The fishing boats had been arriving all weekend and Sunday morning, they officially opened up shop. The Fair has been held at the beginning of October every year, without fail, since 1743. That's 70 years before this even became capital of Finland. In the beginning, Helsinki was just a port town that was easily reached by the nearby islands and the Åland archipelago. So, it was the entry point for Baltic herring to the mainland and the annual fair would determine herring prices for that year throughout the country. The participating vessels needed to show proof that all the fish on board had been caught and processed by that fishing boat and its owner. It's a rule that still applies today.
Back in the day, the fierce competition would drive fishermen to unsavory behavior. Things are more friendly today. Still, I wondered, all day long, how people chose which back-of-the-boat they'd buy their herring and bread from. The pickled, marinated and salted fish on hand were almost identical from place to place. There were probably some people who are from the same town or island as the vendor. Others may have been drawn by the decorations or the free samples. But mostly, people matched up as you'd expect them to. Nice older ladies went to nice older ladies. Gruffer guys went to gruffer guys. Families went to boats that had their own little tykes helping out.
The Herring Fair used to mark the end of the fishing season. Harvest Time. It's that time of year that you begin to think about your cupboard and in the first two centuries of the Fair, it was especially important for folks on the mainland to stock up on protein reserves for the long winter ahead. The cold Autumn water would bring in a wealth of herring and sprats,
which needed to be caught, canned and sold before ice made any trips in
or out of the harbor impossible. Today, the herring at the fest isn't just seen as sustenance. The offerings are creative, colorful (and, in some cases, perishable). The can has mostly given way to the more visually enticing plastic tub, in which rowanberry, mustard, pepper, garlic, sliced carrot and beets are all locked away with the silver fish
Two stages were set up, a Mainstage and a Small Stage, and the Opening Day entertainment was decidedly fishy. Finnish celebrity chefs Sami Garam & Janne Pekkala ran back and forth between the stages, handling the schedule of events mostly by themselves. At a kitchen set up, they'd cook up herring recipes and banter with each other and the crowd. Up on the Mainstage, they introduced Duo Timjan who sang "songs of the sea in the spirit of Helsinki." On the small stage, they ran the Herring Filleting Competition, duking it out themselves and then bringing two laymen onstage to get their hands bloody. (They say that the Baltic herring is particularly hard to fillet, with a spine smaller than its Atlantic cousin.) The two men also moderated a panel of discerning tasters who took their Market Food Jury duties very seriously. Other competitions included "The Most Beautiful Fishingboat Competition" and the, probably most important, "Herring Product Competition." That judging was kept a little more private.
Like any great fair or food festival, there was a plethora of eating options. This wasn't the type of fair with easily handheld food or generic
treats. Nor was it one where the smell of sweet or fried (or sweet and
fried) things eclipsed all other odors. October and ocean weren't
buried under waffle and fry. Stalls filled the main and market squares and dozens of picnic tables allowed for unhurried savoring. While herring wasn't the piece de resistance of the prepared foods scene at the fair, we managed to find some excellent Baltic herring soup, served with an already split and buttered piece of Åland bread. It was just about as good as you can get on an October afternoon (as was the non-alcoholic glogg and heart-shaped spice cookie we followed it up with).
There was a hot dog van tucked away and a few strips of bacon on one of the giant skillets, but it was essentially meat-free. See? Not your typical fair to say the least. The best part was the Finnish-ness of it all. The Helsinki Baltic Herring Fair has grown from its roots in some modern directions, but none that feel disingenuous or that make this fair indistinguishable for others. Sure, there was a crepe griddle and a waffle press at work, but they were specks in a sea of Finnish pastries like karjalanpiirakat. These huge paella pans fried up heaping portions of crispy little muikko, (a smelt sized whitefish specific to the Baltic). Instead of french fries, fingerling potatoes and veggies were fried up alongside in bulk. There was smoked salmon on rye, fried salmon with crumbled blue cheese, salmon soup, salmon, salmon, salmon.
The salmon darn near stole the show with theatrics like this drool-inducing smoker/flame roaster. A red-faced husband and wife duo kept this baby going all afternoon long. She threw more wood on the fire. He fetched a slab when it was done and carved at it or sold it whole. Where there weren't flames and smoke, there was grease and sizzle. Then, there were the herb crusted logs of salami, that were actually salmon and the golden brown, cinnamon bun spirals that were - you guessed it, rolls of salmon. Herring was the star, but salmon was its shape-shifting side kick. It was the beef of this particular outdoor get together, the marbled lunch meat, greasy steaks, and flame broiled crowd favorite.
The Helsinki Baltic Herring Fest was refreshingly free of schlock. One guy sold balloons, but otherwise, the non-food items for purchase were steeped in 270 year tradition. A bulk of the fishermen at the fair have always come in from the Åland Islands. The vessels would arrive with fish, still alive and kept so by men who would stay up through the night rocking the boat back and forth to allow water to slosh in and keep the fish from dying. On board would also be black Åland bread and knitwear made from island sheep wool. Today, round loaves of Åland black bread are as plentiful as the herring and hand-knit socks hang from booms. We ran into the Albanus, which we'd seen filled with apples back on the archipelago. Here, the crates were unloaded and the fruit sold, alongside Åland applejuice. It was like seeing an old friend again. Perhaps the real reason the people of Helsinki have held onto their Herring Fest for so long is that it's a yearly meeting between mainlanders and islanders. It is the time-honored tradition of welcoming fellow Finns in from days, lives out on the sea.
Just a little video compilation of Opening Day at the 270th Annual Helsinki Baltic Herring Fest. Some groovy tunes, beautiful boats, spattering salmon oil, herring filleting competition footage, a panel of tasting jurors and people stuffing their faces with delicious food. Enjoy.
"We're cooking cloudberry jam today!" the woman behind the counter at Syltkrukan, ("Jam Pot,") announced. We'd just been served our light lunch and
coffee, a slice of rye bread each - mine topped with hard boiled egg and
herring, Merlin's with liver pate and pickles. A man had just come out to
fetch more empty containers to bring into the back room, of which we
could make out the gleam of steel machinery and busy people. She could
tell we were curious. Before we could take another bite, we were
whisked back into the work room to behold the spinning of gold.
Cloudberry jam is a delicacy in Sweden and we've been looking out for it
since arriving. Stumbling upon the jam family business was a little like finding a cloudberry, I'd imagine. We were muddy-booted and off the beaten track, it was tucked away in the Uppland forest. It was magical.
A heavy box that said "FRAGILE" once arrived at the doorstep of our
New York apartment. Inside, were a half a dozen jars of jam all the way
from Sweden. Merlin had taken a trip to the country recently and fell
in love with the never-before-tasted cloudberry and lingonberry
preserves. The delivery, which he'd ordered, had three of each. Most
of the precious cargo was repackaged and sent off to family for
Valentine's Day, but one jar of cloudberry was tucked away in our
cupboard. Merlin knew that once it was opened, it would vanish (and
that each jar had cost nearly $20). Swedes take cloudberries just as
seriously, as was affirmed by our visit to Jam Pot.
"We call it Norrland's Gold," Per Wetterholm told us in the jam making room at Syltkruken. An average of 50,000 tons of wild berries grow in Sweden's forests every year and about 96 - 98% of them go unpicked. But not cloudberries. If they are there for the picking, they are found for the jamming. Hjortron, as they are called in Swedish, are rare for a number of reasons. They are difficult for even the most skilled forager - of which there are many in Sweden - to find. Tucked into swamps, marshes and bogs amongst fern plants, they have only one berry per stalk if that many. It can take up to seven years for a fruit to be produced. Some years, there are no cloudberries at all. Cultivation would make matters a lot easier, but even a group of Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish scientists whose job it is to figure some sort of commercial production out have pretty much written cloudberries off as un-farmable on any large scale.
The berries - which look like pale yellow raspberries - are found, picked and then flash frozen before being sold and made into jam. They are considered too tart to eat raw. Per told us that in Sweden, almost 99% of cloudberries picked are made into jam and that jam is almost always eaten warm over ice cream, waffles or pancakes. There is tradition and reverence in the consumption of hjortronsylt. And the making of it. They say that the higher the fruit content the better the cloudberry jam. Syltkruken's was delicious, with 60% (that fancy imported stuff we got years ago only had 45%). What does it taste like? I'd say tart, but bright. It reminded me of fresh apricot, Merlin of honey, someone else of sour apple. Maybe there are as many impressions of cloudberries as there are of clouds.
The Fish Market in Bergen wasn't what I was expecting. We love food markets, we count on them - often - for that first introduction to a new country. Or that experience that lets us really connect with a city. Usually, there's the sense of frenzy at food markets with an added dose of gore at fish and meat ones. The fisketorget in Bergen is a different sort of fish market. This isn't really where the locals get their fish. It may be where some get their lunch. More than anything, it's a showcase of the best the Norwegian seafood world has to offer and an excellent place to grab a meal. Go with an appetite.
This, right here, is the first bit of blue sky we'd seen in days. Our last three days in Iceland and the first in Norway had been clouded in... clouds. With a break in the weather, everyone had an extra spring in their step. The orange rubber overall wearing vendors had their game faces on, which were big, inviting smiles. Because of the rain, and the fact that high season is over, we weren't in the crowd that we'd been warned about. There was plenty of browsing and eating room for everyone. A lot of the offerings were the same down the line, more smoked and cured salmon varieties than my heart could dream up, caviar, dried cod, live lobster, crab legs, prawns, mussels, whole beautiful fish de-boned and ready for portioning out. It's a compact, mostly redundant market that leaves you salivating.
While there was plenty of fish to buy that you'd have to go and cook yourself, the real star (and what the emphasis was definitely placed on) was the prepared food. Picnic tables lined the exterior of the stalls and tourists from around the world sat with plates and had the condiment of their choice at hand. It's rare that you find a centerpiece with Tabasco, HP, thousand island dressing and soy sauce in a neat little huddle. Sure, the local feel of a food market gets diminished by a high rate of tourism (take the excellent but flash-bulb filled Central Market in Bucharest or Seattle's Pike
Place Market which is jam-packed with people just browsing... but you can't blame them with the game of fish catch being played). But the real live commerce and fresh, local products still make any food market feel authentic in its way.
The authenticity that Bergen's fisketorget held for me was, firstly, in the history of it all. Bergen is one of the most historically important ports on the Atlantic and the dried cod trade was an enormous part of the city's rise. As far as modern Bergen goes, the fish market was a perfect representation of the culinary scene- this is a city in which it easy to eat exceptionally well - and the social one - the number of immigrants have been growing exponentially in recent years and, with them, have come new groceries, ethnic cuisines, and flavor influences. Here, you had fresh, amazing fish being served as fish & chips, fish kebabs, sandwiches. You had it steamed, smoked, cured, dried, raw, grilled, packaged. It felt a lot like a New York street fair in which the stuff worth buying is eaten on site, platters are set out, aromas waft, the choices are different to a point, but all fall into a few categories and there's a definite international feel.
The fish market vendors were a lively bunch. Chef's knives were outstretched with cubes of cured salmon on them. They laughed and joked with each other in languages that I could tell weren't Norwegian and interacted with customers in accented English. This man, who was busy grilling up some whale meat, told me he was from Spain. "We all are," he continued, asking me if I wanted a taste of whale (I declined). The ones that weren't from Spain hailed from Italy, both countries that give a worker some serious food cred and also the need to go find a job somewhere else.
I read somewhere that there used to be a rule, from 1630 through 1911, that wealthy Bergeners and restaurant owners were banned from buying their seafood at the fish market. I can only assume this was to make sure that "commoners" got their fair share of the inexpensive, local catch before it was all bought up. Nowadays, there seems to be a different sort of delineation between who is at the fisketorget and who's not. It's essentially local foreigners selling to visiting foreigners. Nary a local Norwegian in site. At least in the outdoor tents. Inside the main buildings of the fish market are a number of upscale restaurants and then a sort of fishmonger boutique.
If the outdoor tents felt like a New York street fair, the indoor market section was Dean & Deluca. A black and white photo from Bergen fish market past was blown up to cover the back wall. Everything was chrome and glass, clean, shiny, filled like a jewel case with the diamonds and rubies of the sea. There was a make your own sandwich station, crustaceans galore, gourmet salt, rubs and seasonings to accentuate the culinary slant of this versus the other market stalls. The staff was Norwegian and offerings included sushi.
Our choice of lunch? These gravlaks sandwiches from a stall outside. They stood out from the salmon sandwich crowd for three reasons: 1) the bread was brown with seeds and cut into much longer slices than some competitors 2) the salmon itself wasn't smoked and sliced like all of the rest, but rather salt-and-sugar cured and flaked apart 3) the normal iceberg lettuce and mayonnaise had been brushed aside for mesclun greens and aioli. We were very happy with our choice, even if it was a bit much to try to get your mouth around.
Kosovo isn't even that smoky a country - but, for a few reasons, there are lots of cigarettes around. Here, on one of the busy market streets in the heart of Pristina, a man sells cartons of cigarettes, some legal, some probably contraband, some possibly counterfeit. The bars and restaurants of this capital don't have the tobacco-smog problem that places like Belgrade or Bucharest do (much less St. Petersburg, Andorra la Vella or Minsk), but that hasn't stopped a strangely frantic culture of lawbreaking around tobacco.
There is smuggling into and out of Kosovo, counterfeiting, tax dodging and a whole flurry of other activity.
The most unusual part of cigarette selling in Kosovo are the men who wander from cafe table to table with boxes of cigarettes, offering them to late-nigh patrons. They move quickly and smoothly, stopping barely a moment or two to complete a sale. They are always men or, in some cases, boys. They bear almost no resemblance to the "cigarette girl" Americana image. In Pristina, there are dozens of them. In smaller cities, like Prizren, the four or five cigarette men make smaller tours, appearing every hour or so. Many of them also sell phone cards.
The cigarettes these men sell are often contraband, smuggled in from outside Kosovo. Often, they cost significantly more than ones bought at a newsstand. Why would anyone buy cigarettes from outside the country if tobacco is so cheap here?
Kosovo's neighbors have trouble with cigarettes smuggled out of the country. Two years ago, a Serbian Diplomat was arrested in Austria on charges that he had smuggled 25,000 cartons from Kosovo to Western Europe. Although the taxes have risen recently, Kosovo's prices have historically been below those of Serbia's, Macedonia's, and Montenegro's (and way below those of more wealthy countries) making smuggling basically profitable. Serbia, in particular, is plagued by organized-crime smuggling from its southern neighbor. Often, the wholesale sellers at markets are providing small-scale smugglers or trying to lure smoke-tourists. It's only an hour by bus between Skopje and Pristina; why not stock up on one side of the border and pay lower taxes?
But that doesn't explain why anyone would smuggle tobacco into Kosovo.
The answer is somewhat amusing. According to balkaninsight.com, the cigarettes that are sold legally in Kosovo are of lower quality than those sold in EU countries - so people pay more for contraband smokes than they might at legal, tax-paying stores selling Kosovo-spec products. Apparently, because of health concerns, "safer" EU smokes go for a few Euros more than in-country products.
This hasn't stopped smuggling in the other direction, of course - wherever there's a significant difference in price between two countries, there will be illegal trade. A now-famous 1994 example, showed that, when Kosovo raised its excise tax on kilograms of cigarettes from €2 to €17, imports decreased by more than 50%. Of course, nobody smoked less - smuggling just increased. And, because Kosovars, in general, have less money and lower product-safety thresholds than other Europeans, the higher excise tax has also resulted in lower-quality cigarettes flooding the market at cheaper prices.
There's also counterfeiting, believe it or not. Fake, name-brand cigarettes are apparently very common, part of a widespread problem in Southern and Easter Europe. In 2003, as part of a crackdown, Police found and destroyed more than 20 million counterfeit cigarettes - or about half a pack for every resident of this little country.
On one corner of Pristina's bazaar district, five small vendors compete with each other based on some metric of price and quality. It's hard for an outsider (who doesn't smoke) to distinguish what the parameters of this little market are, why a customer might chose one wooden box over another on a late, humid night.
It's always a concern of ours when we enter a new country - what will the smoking laws be like? Will we be able to enjoy ourselves indoors or get forced, bleary eyed and coughing, out of every bar or restaurant we visit? Smoking is generally permitted indoors in Kosovo, which is bad. People don't smoke that much, though, which is good. We've come to like the cigarette men, moving so smoothly through the darkness, and the fantastic displays of cartons and boxes that appear in every market. Kosovo isn't a visibly corrupt or crime-ridden country, so it's sort of thrilling to know that so much of this activity is illegal - it's exciting and comforting to feel like you're in a lawless place with such low stakes.
Tarator (таратор in cyrillic) is the soup version of a gin and tonic: refreshingly cold, simple, herbal and perfect for a summer evening. A cynic might call this cucumber and yogurt soup, but it's more than that. Tarator's a curative. As we endure a Balkan heat wave, this is the kind of food we crave.
Tarator is served in countries from Albania to Turkey (with varieties popping up, we've heard, as far away as Iran and Armenia), but it feels particularly Bulgarian to us. Why? Because this is the heartland of yogurt. Bulgaria even claims to have invented the stuff (though others doubt this) and traces its "culture" of culturing to ancient Thrace, some 2,000 years ago. In 1908, a bright young Bulgarian named Stamen Grigorov identified the bacterium that causes natural yogurt to occur and later named it after his homeland - Lactobacillus bulgaricus. Bulgarian yogurt really is tasty, with a wonderfully clean sourness that is more refreshing than other types. The strong tang is perfect for mixing with the other soup ingredients.
We started with cucumbers and fresh dill bought from this old woman on Graf Ignatiev street in Sofia. She was wearing an adorable little paper hat.
We picked up some walnuts from another stand, and some garlic. We didn't have time to go to the big market, so the yogurt came from a bodega near our rental apartment. Olive oil, mustard and salt - the only other ingredients - were already in the kitchen. This is partly what makes tarator so great: it's incredibly simple to make.
Start by julienning two sizable cucumbers into less-than-bite-sized pieces. Grating the cucumber will make it mushy and slimy, it's better to put in the extra knife work. Add to this about a third of a cup of finely chopped walnut, two crushed and minced cloves of garlic and a good dose of fresh dill. Then, add two cups of plain, unsweetened yogurt and between two tablespoons and one third cup olive oil. Salt generously. Add two tablespoons coarse mustard - horseradish also might be good, or wasabi. The mustard isn't a traditional ingredient, but we liked how it supplied a deep, complex note to the soup.
Stir everything together thoroughly. At this point, the mixture is essentially what is known as Snezhanka salad (Салата Снежанка), or "snow white" salad, which is a relative of tzatziki. It could be served as is, with soft bread or pita.
If you're still set on soup (you should be), slowly mix in cold water until it's a good, soupy consistency. Put in the fridge for at least two hours before serving. That's it. It's delicious. Serve sprinkled with a little more dill and crushed walnut and maybe a drizzle of olive oil.
The sourness of the yogurt is a perfect foil for the sweet crispness of the cucumber and the grassiness of the dill. The walnuts add earthiness, the mustard provides spice. It's a refreshing, bright mix.
It takes about twenty minutes, most of which is spent chopping, to do the "work" part of the recipe. The rest is waiting - you could have a gin and tonic in the meantime.
Bulgarian Tarator Ingredients: 2 large cucumbers, julienned into short pieces 2 cups unsweetened, plain yogurt 1/3 cup crushed or chopped walnut (plus a little more to garnish with) 2 crushed and finely minced cloves garlic 1/3 cup fine quality olive oil 2 tbsp coarse mustard 2-4 tbsp fresh dill, de-stemmed and given a cursory chopping Cold water and salt
Method: - Combine cucumber, yogurt, oil, walnut, garlic, mustard and dill in a large bowl. Mix and salt well. - Pour in cold water and mix until thoroughly combined, adding more water if not yet a "soupy" consistency. - Refrigerate at least two hours before serving.
This, by the way, was the first bowl of tarator we encountered in Bulgaria, at our very first meal in the country. This was on a hot day in Balchik, sitting by the placid Black Sea. It was delicious. We were hooked. It made up for a particularly bad bowl served to us later, in Vidin - that one tasted as though the restaurant had just poured milk over grated cucumber.
It was impossible not to notice the cherries at Kalenić market in Belgrade. It was like all of our thought bubbles that read "It feels like summer," were manifested right there in the red, shiny, orbs. We wanted to buy some, we really did, but we'd just eaten about a pound of fried fish from the market's fishmonger and were already carrying the ingredients we'd just gathered for our tomato paprika Kačamak. Everyone else was buying cherries in bulk along with slender, pointed strawberries. A little helper, not much higher than the market table, embezzled berries from her family stock when no one was looking. Women in kerchiefs and men in coke-bottle glasses manned the stations. Shriveled, wrinkled and old, their presence made the fruit look even riper.
Many of the fruit vendors were obviously from outside the city, their shoes still had countryside clinging to them. Behind most of the market stands were the carts, suitcases and boxes employed to make the trip in. They say that if you don't have a chance to make it outside Belgrade, Kalenić Pijaca can give you a glimpse of life in the country. Sure enough, when we left Belgrade and headed for Smederevo, the scenes from the market stretched out before us. We had no idea we were driving through "Little California" - Zaklopača - one of the most famous fruit producing regions in Serbia.
Orchards stretched out on either side of the road. Tractors putted behind us. One of the few non-farm-vehicles we saw was a black BMW. A ladder stuck out the back, in amongst a trunkload of cherries. Ladders were propped up against trunks all over. People were hard at work. An absolutely ancient woman bent over a row of strawberries. I'm not convinced she'd be able to straighten up if she wanted to after a lifetime of working a patch like that. Cropland covers about two thirds of Serbia and even with three quarters of that land focusing on grains, fruit is still produced in massive quantities. In fact, one third of the world's raspberries come from here.
85% of cropland in Serbia is owned by private farms. So, you can count on hand-picked, insecticide free fruit grown by people who have been in tune with their land and their plants for generations. Along with their perfect microclimate, the villages around Zaklopača also have the Danube right there to their north. The Balkan fruit basket has been sending produce upriver to industrial Germany for centuries. Recently, the cherries and berries of Serbia are beginning to get more attention from big juice and frozen food companies. They're heartier varieties, more flavorful fruits, they freeze better and keep their flavor longer than a lot of the competition.
Plums are probably Serbia's most famous fruit, raspberries are definitely their most plentiful, but it's hard to argue with cherries and strawberries. In Belgrade, we'd told someone about going over to Kalenić market and they immediately asked, "Did you buy cherries?!?" I'm pretty sure I lied and said we had, embarrassed to have passed up such an obviously beautiful bounty and not wanting our decision to be any comment on the fruit's irresistibility. On the road, we were able to make up for it.
We parked and bought a kilo of each, cherries and strawberries. It was more than we needed, really, but the women shook away our pleas to stop adding more to the bag. The price was for a full kilo and they weren't going to short change us even one little pit. I mean, bit. We drove away happily weighed down and began to eat right away. We remarked on each one, sweet or sour, ripe or riper. Oo, I just got a good one. The corners of our roadmap were stained red by my fingers. It felt too early to be indulging in fruit like this. Only May? Spitting cherry pits out our open windows, we christened the roadside "Summer."
