#49 Bulgaria
- Jen
- May 8, 2022
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 4, 2022
Bulgaria is one of the many countries that historically has been under Ottoman and Soviet rule. It is situated on the eastern side of the Balkan Peninsula on the western edge of the Black Sea, sharing land borders with Romania, Serbia, North Macedonia, Greece and Turkey.
Bulgarian cuisine is characteristic of the regional Balkan cuisine, which is a delightful blend of the traditional foods of Greece and Turkey, the Levant , North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia), and the region itself.
So often, experiencing a country’s food is like looking back at its history. This is true in Bulgaria where dishes hint at links with other former Ottoman countries. For instance, Bulgaria has its own version of musaka, which is most commonly known in Europe as the Greek dish moussaka. Where the Greek version alternates layers of minced lamb and aubergine with a bechamel topping, the Bulgarian dish alternates layers of minced beef or pork and potato with a topping made from egg and yoghurt. Another such example is stuffed peppers, with recipes found all over Europe and the Middle East. In Bulgaria they’re stuffed with minced meat and called palneni chuski, or chushki bjurek if stuffed with cheese. Similar fillings can be found stuffed inside cabbage leaves, called sarmi, very similar to the sarmales I made for Romania, which were DELICIOUS!
Banitsa
The banitsa is Bulgaria’s breakfast pastry: filo pastry filled with cheese (top drawer breakfast!).
The Bulgarian banitsa is made by rolling sheets of filo topped with a cheese, egg and yoghurt mixture into long sausages, and then arranging them into a snail shape (which is very therapeutic) and baking.
In Bulgaria, the cheese will be sirene (see below) but feta is a good substitution.
Banitsa tastes exactly as you would expect; it’s a cheesy pastry. It’s great hot and still pretty good cold. It’s so simple to make, you can’t really go wrong. Bulgarians have loads of variations with spinach, onions, cabbage, etc. but you could put anything you like in. I think I’d like some thinly sliced chorizo rolled into it next time.
Meat & dairy
Cattle farming in Bulgaria is predominately for dairy, and good job too because Bulgarians love yoghurt, a lot. In fact, Bulgaria claims to be the country that invented yoghurt, AND one of the bacteria used in the production of most yoghurts is called Lactobacillus bulgaricus. Bulgarian yoghurt a probiotic yoghurt with a mildly sour taste, and is known as kiselo mlyako. It was traditionally made at home in villages using sheep’s milk, but it is now produced on a commercial scale with cow’s milk.
Yoghurt is such an important part of Bulgarian culture that it’s served in and with almost everything: as a dressing, in the musaka topping, mixed with cheese in the banitsa…Bulgarians even have yoghurt drinks called ayran and a cold yoghurt soup with cucumber and dill, tarator soup.
Another dairy product you cannot miss in Bulgaria is sirene cheese, which is very similar to feta and can be made from goat, sheep or cow’s milk or a combination. Sirene is a key component of the side dish, shopska salad, which is dressed in red wine vinegar and also includes cucumber, tomato, onion and red pepper. The shopska salad is served with almost every meal and is considered to be the national dish of Bulgaria.
There are lots of stewed meat and grilled meat dishes to try in Bulgaria. Lamb is traditionally eaten on St George’s Day, which incidentally is 6th May, not 23rd April. As well as beef and pork, veal is common, a by-product of the hot dairy industry for all the yoghurt!
The Bulgarian term for a mixed grill is meshana skara and rather than paraphrasing, I’ll just drop this description I found online here:
“…consists of one kebapche, one kyufte, one pork steak and one skewer of pork meat. All this comes with French fries, bean salad with chopped onions and lyutenitsa. Eat with at least three beers and follow up with a rakia.”
The kyufte is a meatball and the kebapche is spiced minced meat shaped into a sausage shape…
…and speaking of sausages…there is plenty of charcuterie to enjoy in Bulgaria, the most popular being lukanka, a dried, spicy, salami-esque delight made from pork and veal.
Palneni chuski
I’ll be honest, I was going to stop at the banitsa for Bulgaria but, despite it being an absolute treat, it’s just a bit beige…so I made palneni chuski to add some colour (#forthegram).
Bulgarian stuffed peppers are almost identical to ardei umpluți (Moldovan stuffed peppers) that I made two years ago, which were absolutely delicious, so I have no reservations whatsoever about my decision to repeat dishes!
To make palneni chuski:
1. Buy peppers – one of every colour.
2. Saute onion and pork & beef mince, add uncooked rice, some water, paprika, thyme and fresh parsley.
3. Stuff the peppers.
4. Fill the tray half-full with water, cover and stick in the oven until they look delicious.
5. Serve these bad boys with a yoghurt dressing, made by cooking yoghurt, eggs and a little flour together with some of the liquid the peppers were cooked in.
Bulgaria has been wonderful…fingers crossed for an equally wonderful time in…ZAMBIA!
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