AUTOCHTHONOUS MEALS

Among the three seas and under the mythic mountain, by the biggest lake where the sunny fields bear fruits and vegetables and the rocky hills covered with aromatic herbs feed the cattle, through the merge of the Mediterranean, Mid-European and Ottoman cuisine, that came with the rulers and wars, the farmer from Ravni Kotari and Bukovica, through history more hungry than fed, but always shrewd, came up with an idea how to feed the generations.

Benkovački prisnac

A genius commoner created a meal that has been celebrated by generations and called the wedding cake of Ravni Kotari and Bukovica. It is made of corn, or rarer, wheat flour, eggs, some oil, milk skin of the skimmed sheep milk, young cheese and water. Even in the modern versions with cream and cow cheese, very often with sugar, too, which people hadn't had back in the old times, this delicacy will evoke its simple ingenuity created in times of need.

Spit-Roasted Lamb

The ode to the spit-roasted lamb has lasted for eight thousand years in the area of Ravni Kotari and Bukovica. That meal is older than the empire and the memory itself. The recipe hasn't been changed since the Premediterraneans and it's older than the literacy, which is why it's been in local people's nature and tradition for so long. They prepare it for the celebrations of birth and life, but also for the commemorations of the deceased.

Dalmatian Prosciutto

The name comes from the Latin word 'perexsuctum', which means 'dried'. The Croatian word is 'pršut'. The same as in many different countries, it stands for the cured pork hind leg. What's special about local prosciutto, besides the quality of the pork hind leg, as everywhere, is the authenticity of curing, local sault and the wind called 'bura'. It's impossible to get it by instant methods and with modern technology in just a few days or months. Pork hind leg is salted with Adriatic salt and pressed, then cold-smoked for more than two months, and cured for a year using the northern wind 'bura' that blows from the mountain peaks towards the sea and is dry and cold. Bura blows on the whole eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, from Trieste to the edge of Crna Gora towards Albania. 'Kolinje', i.e. the beginning of the whole process, happens in winter when 'bura' is more frequent, longer and stronger.

Bread under 'peka'

There weren't any bread ovens here so the bread was baked under 'peka'. Through the turbulent history of this area and with many years of famine, it was made rarely and eaten slowly. Once the lid or peka was lifted, the round bread would fill the houses and yards with its smell and spread the feeling of goodness and well-being. That bread is the favourite even today.
*peka – a heavy metal lid placed over food in the open fireplace and then covered with hot coals or ember

Meals under 'Peka'

The archaeologists have told us about the way the local people had prepared their food from the beginning of history. 'Peka' (čripnja, cripnja, in Arabic and Turkish sać), which was first made of ceramics, is more often made of metal than of clay today, and it is used as a half-round, bell-shaped lid for the favourite way of preparing a festive dish. A pan filled with meat, potatoes and other vegetables is placed on the heated hearth surface, then covered with 'peka', embers and hot ashes to be roasted long while absorbing all the ingredients, flavours and scents.