What to Eat Around the World | Page 6 of 70
Kebapi: Balkan Grilled Ground Meat Rolls
Kebapi are short rolls of twice-ground meat grilled straight on the coals, a dish North Macedonia shares with the whole Balkans, from Bosnia to Albania. They're ordered by the ten, served with raw onion, lepinja flatbread and ajvar or pindžur. Why they're not a skewered kebab, how they differ from Serbian ćevapi, and why they sometimes end up on tavče gravče.
Šarska Pleskavica: Macedonian Pleskavica Stuffed with Cheese
Šarska pleskavica is a large grilled patty of ground beef and pork with a slice of kaškaval sealed inside before grilling. It's named after the Šar Mountains in the northwest of North Macedonia, even though šarsko cheese never actually goes into it. At Skopje's grill houses it's a staple alongside kebapi, served on a plate with fries or tucked into lepinja.
Selsko Meso: Macedonian Meat with Mushrooms from a Clay Dish
Selsko meso is a Macedonian dish baked in clay: cubes of meat, most often pork, browned with onion and mushrooms and then slowly stewed in the oven until the juices thicken into a sauce. The name simply means "village meat" and, unlike the names of the neighboring tava dishes, it isn't Turkish at all. It's cooked all over the country, and they make it in Serbia and Bosnia as well - where even there it's called Macedonian.
Turli Tava: The Macedonian Baked Mix of Meat and Vegetables
Meat bakes for two hours in a clay dish together with whatever has just ripened in the Macedonian summer - eggplant, peppers, okra, potatoes and often rice as well - and turli tava then arrives at the table in that same dish. The name comes from Ottoman Turkish and literally means "mixed pan"; relatives turn up all over the southern Balkans, from Turkish türlü to Bulgarian gjuveč - but only the Macedonians cook it under this name, with meat, in a clay dish. In North Macedonia it belongs to summer, to home kitchens and to gostilnicas alike.
Makedonska Salata: A Cold Salad of Roasted Peppers and Tomatoes
Makedonska salata is a cold salad of roasted, peeled peppers, raw tomato, onion, and parsley, dressed with oil - and it's the missing cheese that sets it apart from shopska. Peppers get roasted all over the Balkans, but only North Macedonia has a name of its own for this salad. In a kafana it comes with rakija as meze; alongside grilled meat it turns up as a cold side.
Teleški Džiger: Veal Liver off the Macedonian Grill
Teleški džiger is veal liver, grilled in thick slices over charcoal and piled with parsley and garlic - a fixture on every kebapčilnica menu in North Macedonia, right next to kebapi. It's a dish shared across the whole former Ottoman world, with every country grilling it its own way; the Macedonian version is the simplest of them all.
Pindžur: A Macedonian Spread of Roasted Peppers, Tomatoes, and Eggplant
Pindžur is a thick Macedonian spread of roasted peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant with onion and garlic - a coarser, more tomato-forward sibling of ajvar. It's eaten as meze with bread, cheese, and grilled meat, fresh in summer and from jars of autumn zimnica the rest of the year. It originated in Macedonia, though it's kept alive in Serbia and Bosnia too.
Makalo: A Macedonian Dip of Garlic or Peppers
Makalo is a Macedonian dip you scoop bread into - and one name here covers two completely different dishes. Ohrid and Bitola make a smooth white version from crushed garlic, oil and vinegar, served with trout from the lake; Skopje's grill places serve a warm orange one made from roasted peppers with grilled meat. The name comes from the verb "to dip".
Prženi Tikvički: Balkan Fried Zucchini
The zucchini is the youngest vegetable on a Macedonian plate, and yet it gets fried as if it had always been here. Prženi tikvički are thin slices coated in flour and fried until crisp, a summer side dish or starter that all across the southern Balkans calls for something cold and garlicky. The name is a diminutive of gourd, quite literally; Bulgarians, Greeks, and Turks know the same dish by other names.
Banica: A Balkan Filled Pastry from Hand-Stretched Phyllo
Banica belongs to the Balkan family of pastries built from paper-thin sheets of dough: crumbled white cheese with egg goes between them, often leek or spinach too, at home it is layered in a tray like a savory pie, in bakeries it is coiled into a roll. In North Macedonia the home version is called zelnik, bakeries sell it by the piece as banička, and it is eaten for breakfast with sour milk or ajran.