Hey good cooks, I am looking to purchase a good balkan cook book as a christmas present for my sister as she is really into food and has lived and travlled across most of the balkan countries.
Not Balkan specific but ‘The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean’ by Paula Wolfert is great. It’s older though so it isn’t Instagram worthy photos, just great recipes, and commentary about how things are done. Like baking/ cooking in large Tandoor in Georgia.
There is also ‘Croatia at Table’ by Ivanka Bilus. This does have the photos and explains about different regions, things like butter/ cream in the north, olive oil in the south etc. The recipes are fine, but no standouts to me at least.
I have Black Sea by Caroline Eden. It’s as much of a travelogue as a cookbook, so it does make for an entertaining read. You might guess that it doesn’t cover the entire Balkan region…just the parts around the Black Sea.
It’s certainly not grandmas secret, but everything I’ve made from there has at least been well received by Romanians. Then again, it’s as good of a starting point as an American BBQ cookbook if you read it with the understanding that similar ingredients might yield quite different results regionally.
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