Staying With the Grain

So I'm on a bit of a whole grain kick in 2014. I haven't seen quinoa, but brown rice is readily available, as well as barley (with which I  had a humorous encounter in December), wheat berries and bulghur. I keep them all on hand in the pantry. On my way into work yesterday, I wondered about making brown rice risotto. Risotto works better with short grain rice, but I've made it with barley before, so it might work. And the local rice is not that different than the classic arborio.

Luckily my boy Mark Bittman had already weighed in on the topic in a 2012 article. Brown rice can be turned into creamy risotto same as the refined version. You just need to parboil it for 10-15 minutes by itself, and then do everything else the same. I tried it last night, stirring in at the end some spinach, smoked salmon, butter parmesan and some other mild white cheese I had lying round, along with a squeeze of lemon and a little oregano and red pepper flakes.

Tomorrow, red beans and brown rice, Serbian style.

Shepherd's Lunch

A couple of weeks ago, in my neverending quest to put up numbers, I decided to try and find a restaurant in my neighbourhood that a colleague had recommended. It's about a twenty minute walk from my house, and I found it easily enough, but right across the street was something even more intriguing.

It looked like a fast food restaurant, but there were no customers and "Odmor" in the title means rest or vacation in Macedonian, and the building and staff looked like they were selling country getaways. And the menu was in cursive, which I cannot really read.

I noted that the menu, where everything seemed to start with "chobanski" (??) mentioned a website and I enlisted Google translate to help me out when I returned. Aha! "Shepherd's Break" is the translation and all of those "chobanskis" on the menu were signalling that the stews, sandwiches and beans were just like the real sheep herders eat in the heartland.

I returned the following Saturday, having already selected the "rolled lamb sandwich with cheese" from the online menu. I ordered it at the window, and the girl, who reminds me of Judge Reinhold after he was fired from All American Burger and gets the job at the seafood restaurant where he has to dress like a pirate, asked me if I wanted a prilog.

No thank you. What's a prilog? Turns out it's what you add to a sandwich (not as I had thought, fries, or some other accompaniment). So I don't know what else I might have put on it, but I do know that the lamb and white cheese on a bun was pretty much exactly as advertised.

I took my bag to the park and sat down on a bench. The sandwich didn't exactly rock my world, and, in fact, it was kind of boring. The bread was a little chewy (and there was a lot of it) and the lamb slice was also, as well as tasting a little processed.

Not a great lunch. But not a bad subject for a blog post. My two regular readers may remember that I made the opposite mistake almost a year ago when I asked for "everything" on my first pljeskavica. That mistake turned out a little better, but it's hard to draw any lessons from the dataset.

Hey buddy.

One of the things I was wrong about was thinking that Serbia would be a lot like Macedonia. It is, but not nearly as similar as I thought. The language is much different, for instance. Nobody drinks Turkish coffee. There's a lot more pork, dumplings and sour cream. I'd say Belgrade is closer to Budapest than Skopje, which I think it is geographically, at least. But I base my assessment of Budapest knowing only that they make goulash up there, so it's not the most informed conclusion.

Anyway, Macedonian has a word, "dechko," that is very useful. It is similar to "boy" or "bro" and it great for getting a waiter's attention and other situations when you need to address someone whose name you don't know.

At the bank, yesterday, my colleague called the teller, who we see every week, "devojke" which is the female equivalent. I asked her if that was something I could use to address a waiter. "Oh, no," she told me. "You only use it with someone you know well." I asked her what she would say in that context. "Iz vinite," she said. "Excuse me. We're more formal in Belgrade."

Yesterday I was having coffee with a colleague and as the waiter was going back inside, we decided it was time to pay the bill. "Dechko," I called out. "Mozhe racun." He nodded, and she laughed. "That's not so polite," she told me.

Sorry, bro.

Tastes Like Chicken

Last week I was in Subotica for a media event commemorating our project to pilot electronic filing in the Serbian courts (you can see the Hungarian TV news coverage here).

After the event, the court presidents (Higher and Basic Courts share the facility) took us to lunch. Lunch is always a little awkward, as everyone always looks to the foreign guest to determine the parameters of the meal ("Would you like something to drink?" for example, is really a determination of whether it will be OK to have a glass of rakia. "Whatever is customary" is my usual reply, and that opens the door to the liquor cabinet.

I like the local rakia (usually made from quince, grapes or apricots), so that's easy. The more difficult question is soup. I tend to agree with Jerry that soup is a meal in itself, and that, if you are having, salad, appetizers, entrees and dessert, especially in Serbia, there is no need for an additional course. So I usually decline, and, since everyone is getting their brandy, there usually isn't much complaint.

So everyone looked to me as the waiter was describing the available soups. Our translator rattled them off for me, and I wasn't really listening until something caught my attention: "Fish, Chicken, veal, pigeon, round chicken."

"Round Chicken?" I asked. "It is our specialty," the waiter added. "Round Chicken?" I asked again, mentally recalculating our interpreter's proper salary. "Morka," she shrugged. That's what we call it.

A quick internet search today for "Morka" revealed that  it is a guinea hen, but Google translate didn't know that. But if you are ever offered "round chicken" in Serbia, you will know what you're getting. And guess what it tastes like?