The Cookbook of Pata. This is the name of the first Serbian printed publication about cuisine which was released back in the 1907. It is interesting to know that this book is still popular in Serbia. The Serbs prefer traditional dishes as we have always been set to traditions. The Serbs love traditions and everything about history very much.

 

In the Kitchen

 

Maria is cooking two courses each of which can be cooked in at least two ways.

 

According to the old original recipe we should use a few sorts of meat and some offal. And today we are cooking it out of one sort of meat. The second course is stuffed pepper with cheese. With pepper. The pepper is ready and this is cheese, onion, pepper, greens and garlic. We’ve added salt and pepper. We can stuff it like this. This is a traditional course and earlier they made it in a slightly different way. The pepper was marinated in kaimak,  in sour cream. It was marinated and left for about a month. Then it was stuffed. It softened and became more sour. The vegetable is filled with the stuffing, poured over with vegetable oil and put into the oven. In order to make the pepper more stable, we can cut the bottom as Maria has done.

 

A vegetarian snack. Though Serbian cuisine is not vegetarian. We like fatty food. First we stew the meat and then add pepper, tomatoes and onion. The pepper and tomatoes should be almost raw and meat should be cooked. To 70% of its readiness. And then we add pepper, onion, tomatoes and spices. The Serbs do not overuse spices and fresh greenery. Despite the fact that many traditional dishes are made using cloves, coriander, bay leaf or garlic, Serbian housewives still prefer adding parsley, black pepper and paprika. Serbian housewives don’t like spices. We add paprika. It’s the most popular. Paprika, black pepper powder, salt and greens. We don’t like the rest. The Muchkalitsa that we are cooking is good as an everyday lunch or dinner. It is easy to make and the necessary ingredients are always at hand. Though there are much more costly recipes in Serbian cuisine. Maria considers this from the professional point of view.

 

Serbian food is not for catering or restaurants since it takes long hours to make any course.  We have a course similar to Golubtsy, stuffed cabbage. Then we add various smoked food and smoked meat.  Then tomato paste is added to make the tomato sauce. The meat has browned and it’ time to put some onion in. We can use any, but the red one is the nicest, it gives good colour. Тhere’s enough vegetables there.

The oil is poured into the frying pan only at the very beginning to fry the meat. Muchkalitsa is a stewed course rather than a roast one. That is why it is better to add water when needed. We add other vegetables to the meat. The sequence is not important. The main thing is that the course shouldn’t become an overcooked mess in the end. 

 

Garlic is better added at the end, in order to keep the aroma of it. We can squeeze or cut into fine pieces, as you wish. Well, this is nice. The most important thing is that all the ingredients can be seen. Muchkalitsa in Serbian means something mixed. When I first heard this word I thought it would be necessarily flour there. But as we can see it is not like that. Only meat and vegetables. So, now we can add tomatoes. The final one and the spices in the end.  According to the recipe the beef shouldn’t be too soft. It is necessary to keep the taste of fried meat. Is it necessary to leave the frying pan open? When stewing the top is usually closed. We can close it but the colour of the vegetables is better preserved then, if we close it, the colour is lost. If the vegetables are half ready we can add the spices.

 

Earlier when they cooked, they added the spices at the beginning. But because of the spices that we add in the beginning, various reactions occur in the meat. Sometimes, the taste is spoiled. And when I went to school our teachers used to teach us to add salt and all other spices at the end.  Always add salt and spices last so that you preserve the taste of the products. This concerns not only Serbian food. 

All the recommendations have been observed and it’s time to taste it.

 

It must be very spicy. Yes, that’s spicy! That’s all. We add some greens and the dish is ready! By the skin. It begins to climb round and peel off. This means our food is ready.  We can add some squash or aubergines, we can even add some pot roast with cheese and rice. When dishing up the ready stuffed pepper they decorate it with greens and paprika, and sprinkle the top with some vegetable oil.

 

This is a quick homemade dish, but still it’s so bright and nice and the smell is just funky. And we add some sour cream here and mix it with hot pepper, one teaspoon on the top, then mix it. This time Maria proposed topping the Muchkalitsa with cheese and spring onions, rather than sour cream. These products are particularly popular in Serbia.

Now they are ready and decorated. It’s time to entertain our guests!

 

RECIPE

 

Muchkalitsa

Beef – 500 g.

Tomatoes – 300 g.

Sweet pepper – 200 g.

Onion – 150 g.

Paprika – to taste 

Red pepper – to taste

Black pepper – to taste

Salt – to taste

Vegetable oil – for frying

 

Stuffed pepper

Bulgarian pepper – 300 g.

Cheese – 300 g.

Hot pepper – 10-20 g.

Vegetable oil – 50 g.

Garlic – 20 g.

Greens – 10 g.

Salt – to the taste