Salt Pancakes

It's my next-to-last day at the elegant Metropol Hotel; I will move into my apartment tomorrow. I've been enjoying the lavish breakfast bar, which included lots of baked goods and hot dishes. Despite all of the choices, my breakfast every day has been pretty much the same: a bowl of muesli and yogurt, with a few hazelnuts, followed by a couple of decent smoked sausages and a generous portion of strawberries, which are in season right now, and quite delicious. I wash it down with coffee and a glass of orange juice, spiked with the sour cherry juice we fell in love with in Turkey almost twenty years ago (yikes). I slip an orange into my backpack for lunch and head up to the office, which is about a ten minute walk.

One thing I've been avoiding on the bar is the "salt pancake." The name itself was so off-putting that I didn't even open the tureen to have a look at them, but after walking around the college area last night and seeing a proliferation of fast food stalls selling the selfsame product, I decided to try one this morning.

I was underwhelmed, perhaps due to the fact that deep fried products don't do well on buffets. The pancake was also a little eggy for my taste, and lacking flavor. Turns out, perhaps I should have added some jam. I disovered, via Wikipedia this morning, that what I was eating was a mekitsa, described thusly:

Mekitsa (Bulgarian: мекица, also transliterated as mekica or mekitza; plural mekitsi, mekici, mekitzi) is a traditional Bulgarian dish made of kneaded dough made with yogurt that is deep fried. They are made with flour, eggs, yogurt, a leavening agent, water, salt, and oil, and are traditionally served with jam or white cheese (sirene). At breakfast, they are eaten with sugar or honey, and can also be eaten with yogurt.^[1] They are similar to Hungarian lángos.^[2]Mekitsa is conventionally a breakfast dish and is inherently similar to Hungarian lángos and Albanian petulla. After the dough rises, it is torn into small balls, spread into circles and fried in fat. In some recipes, yeast, bread soda, milk or yogurt might be used. 

Maybe my new landlady's mother will make some for me, or maybe I'll give one of the fast food joints a try. Not exactly my thing, but I think that, all things considered, they deserve another chance.