A Cookbook for War

from Sarajevo Survival Guide

(Partake of these recipes at your own peril)

Contents:

Appetizers
Main Dishes
Pies
Sweets
Non-alcoholic Beverages
Alcoholic Beverages




Appetizers

Cheese a la Olga Finci

4 demi-tasses of milk powder (bought at the black market)
1 demi-tasse of oil (from humanitarian aid)
a demi-tasse of water (boil it first!)
0.5 demi-tasse of vinegar, or one lemon
1 small spoonful of garlic powder (present given by a good friend)

Mix it all with a plastic spoon which can be found in the USA lunch package. The mix will thicken immediately, just like a pudding. If you were lucky enough to grab a bunch of expensive parsley, cut it finely, pepper it, and add into the mix. All then should be taken to your balcony, where the temperature is -10 C. ; you can as well leave it in the kitchen, where it is only -8 C. It should get hard. Even if you had other ideas, this dish has to be served cold. Enjoy!

A side dish - pommesfrites

1 cup of corn flour
1 cup of white flour
1 spoonful of bicarbonate (use vinegar to neutralize)

Mix all the ingredients with lukewarm water. Make a dough, and cut it in in the form of pommesfrites. Fry in hot oil.

Mayonnaise with no eggs

1 soup spoon of milk powder
4 spoons of flour
1 dcl of water
1 small spoon of lemon juice

Mix milk, flour and water until it becomes thick. Let it cool, and then gradually add oil, and seasonings--if you can find them. Keep it in a cool place, before serving.

Bean Pate

250 grams of beans
2 dcl of oil
salt, pepper, mustard, seasonings

Cook the beans and paste them. Slowly add oil and seasonings--as much as you like and have. Keep cold.

Pate '93 or Bread-crumbs Pate

200 gr. of bread crumbs
some yeast
3 demi-tasses of oil
pepper, salt, onion, mustard

Saute the onions until they are soft. Add bread-crumbs, yeast and seasonings, and cover everything with lukewarm water. Mix it well and leave in a cold spot before serving.



Main Dishes

Brodetto

Canned mackerel floating in humanitarian aid.

Cut two onion heads and fry them. Add tomato paste from the can, salt, pepper, vinegar (or white wine), some rosemary and a bay leaf. When this is cooked, add a piece of mackerel from the can, and cook for five minutes more. As a side dish, cook porridge, polenta, or, since you might lack all the ingredients, try some rice or macaroni.

Garden Snails

After a rain, in the park or in a garden, find snails, wash them and cook them as long as it takes them to leave their homes. Put them in cold water, extract the meat, and cut it into tiny pieces. Fry two onions in some oil, add salt, pepper, some canned tomato paste, a spoon of vinegar, a spoon of flour and two spoons of water. Cook well, add snail meat, cook more. Try. Add whatever necessary. Serve with rice.

Grape Leaves (or some other tasty leaves) Stuffed With Rice

History: Once upon a time this dish was made with beef, or a mixture of beef and lamb, or beef and pork, with very little rice. Thos was stuffed in cabbage, grape leaves or sour cabbage leaves.

Today:
30 leaves, young
10 dg of onion (or green parts of scallions)
rice, as much as you need
salt, pepper, fresh or dried mint

Blanch the leaves, cut the onion and saute it in oil. Add the rice, mix it with onion, and then add salt and seasonings. The mix should be placed on the end of the leaf. You should twist the side parts, and form a roll. Place the rolls in an oily pot, cover with water and cook on a low fire.



Pies


Pie used to be one of the specialties of Bosnian cuisine. A woman's pride. It consists of a dough and a filling. Depending on filling, there were about fifteen kinds of pies. Now it's difficult to speak of choice.

Dough

0.5 kg of flour
2 dcl of water
1 teaspoon of salt
1 spoon of oil

Make a cone of flour, with a little hole in the top that should be filled with oil. While mixing slowly, add some lukewarm water. Mix it until it becomes elastic. Divide in three parts, and knead each of them with very little oil, until it turns into an elastic ball. Leave the balls covered with clean linen on an oiled surface for at least an hour. Then start stretching them, best using your hands, until you get the needed thickness of the dough. Should be thin as silk. Thicker ends should be cut, fried in hot oil--and eaten as snacks a la Bosniene.

Rice Pie

Rice was never used in pies before. Now it substitutes for cheese.

Take 60 dg. of rice, for about three leaves of thinly rolled-out dough. Rice should be cooked with desiccated soup, or in salted and peppered water. It is recommended to fry rice a little bit, before cooking--that way it won't fall apart. Put the rice on the edge of the dough and roll it. It would be desirable to pour milk, sweet or sour, over the baked pie, but if you don't have milk, water will do. Cover the pie, and let it soften.

Burek--Meat Pie

Once upon a time you would use fresh beef or lamb meat, cut into small pieces or ground; some liked it lean, some preferred it with fat. Today, look for meat in the cans from the humanitarian aid. You should grind it, add salt and pepper, and minced onion, if available. Dough should be divided into two pieces, oiled and filled with meat, then rolled. Arrange it following the shape of the baking pan--the traditional shape was round--sprinkle with some oil and bake in the oven. When the pie is ready, sprinkle it with water, cover, and let it soften. Serve warm.

Nettle Pie

Cut the nettle leaves in the garden or in a park, wash it, mix with salt, pepper, and corn flour. Cover the baking pan with dough and cover the dough with filling. Repeat, in layers, sprinkling each new layer of dough with a little oil. Put it in a heated oven. It would be great to add, once the pie is baked, some milk, or yogurt, or sour cream. But lukewarm water will do too, nowadays.



Sweets

Bread Tart, a la Rajka

1 kilo of old, white bread
5 spoons of milk powder
3 spoons of cocoa
1-1/2 spoons of sugar
walnuts, hazelnuts, raisins,rum, vanilla
1 tin of apple jelly
1 liter of cold water

Cut the bread into small squares; mix other ingredients, cover them with water and let them boil. Then add the mix to the bread and mix it with a fork, or with a mixer, in case you have electricity. Pour it into a mold, and spread apple jelly on top and sides of it. The same can be done with pudding or chocolate. (Jelly is sometimes lurking in the aid package.)

Sweet Zwiebeck, ekmek kadalf

In a shallow pan put mildly wet zwiebeck. In the meantime make sherbe (hot water with sugar, and some cloves), not too thick. Cover zwiebeck with powdered sugar, mixed with cinnamon, and top it with sherbe , which should be added as long as zwiebeck doesn't take it all. Serve cold.

Easy Cake

2 cups of flour
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of oil
1 cup of water
3 soup spoons of cocoa
1 teaspoon of baking soda

Mix it all and bake. Top it with mix of one cup of sugar and one cup of water. Top it with coconut flour, ground nuts--anything you can find.

Halvah

1 cup of flour
1 cup of oil or butter
1 cup of sugar
2 cups of water
a bit of powdered sugar or vanilla

Heat all in a deep skillet until it boils, add flour and mix constantly, for it must not burn. Flour should get a caramel color. In the meantime, boil water with sugar and add this mix, sherbe, to the flour. Mix until halvah thickens, and then form small cakes with spoon. Toss with powdered sugar mixed with vanilla. Halvah is a very popular delight known since medieval times.



Non-alcoholic Beverages


Anything tastes better than boiled water. What are we going to do once all the trees are gone?

Birch juice

A young birch tree should be drilled. In the hole a few centimeteres deep, one should install a tube. Leave it for forty-eight hours, while the juice is being collected in a tin. During April and May, one can get 8 liters of juice during forty-eight hours. Juice can be mixed with wine, sugar, yeast or lemon, and then left to ferment. This process demands several days.

Fir-tree Juice

Cut the needles of young fir trees, and keep them in hot water for two or three minutes. Then cut them into tiny pieces, press, and put in cold water for two or three hours. If days are sunny, keep the jar in the sun. Filter and sweeten before serving. Pine trees and juniper trees can do just as well.

Boza

Once a well known and very popular refreshment, gone out of style. Could be found only in two or three pastry shops on Bascarsija.

0.5 kilo of corn flour
1 package of yeast
8 liters of water
sugar and lemon powder, if you have it and as you like it

Put the corn flour in some water and leave it for 24 hours. Then cook it on low heat for about two hours, mixing occasionally and adding water. When it cools, add the yeast and leave for 24 hours. Then add sugar and lemon powder, leave it for three more hours, and add 8 to 10 liters of water. Should be served cold.



Alcoholic Beverages

Sarajevo Cognac

3-4 spoons of sugar
water
ethyl alcohol

The quality of cognac depends on the brand of alcohol and on the quality of the Sarajevo water, preferably brought from one of the protected wells. Fry the sugar, add some water to melt it, and bring to a boil. Mix the water and alcohol in a ratio of 2.5:1, and add the sugar.

Wine

1/2 kilo of sugar
5 liters of boiled water
1/2 kilo of rice
1 pack of yeast
10 cl of alcohol, or 20 cl of rum

Mix all the ingredients, and pour them into a hermetically closed canister. Ten days later, extract the wine through a Melita coffee filter.

Saki

5 liters of water
0.5 kilos of rice
0.5 kilos of sugar
0.5 kilos of yeast

It should sit for seven days and ferment. Then filter the drink and use the rice in a pie.




PLEASE SEE:

DART GAME--The beginning
THE ESSENTIALS--Everyday life
THE EXTRAS--Non-essentials
DIVERSIONS
FUTURE AND PAST--End of the beginning

OR RETURN TO:

THE INTRODUCTION