Country 22 - Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina is in south-eastern Europe on the Balkan peninsula. It is bordered by Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and the Aegean Sea. Parts of the country are very mountainous while to the north it is very flat. It has hot summers and cold, snowy winters. 
Bosnia and Herzegovina can trace human settlement back to the Neolithic age and it has a very rich and interesting history. The Slavic people, that populate the country today, first settled there in the 6th century. In the mid 15th century the Ottoman Empire brought Islam to the country and altered the cultural and social outlook of the country. After World War 1 Bosnia and Herzegovina became part of Yugoslavia only regaining its independence in 1992.
Today the country has high literacy, life expectancy and education levels. 
Bosnia and Herzegovina is home to three distinct cultures: Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats as well as minority groups of Jews and Roma people. About 51% of the population identify as Muslim and 46% as Christian. 

Bosnian food tends to be mildly spicing and light using tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, peppers, beans, mushrooms, zucchini and paprika. It is balanced between western and Eastern influences and closely related to Turkish food. Typical meat dishes use beef and lamb and specialities are Cevapi, dolma and goulash. Herzegovina produces most of the countries wine and plum and apple alcoholic beverages are also popular.

Gary made the food selection for our 'visit' to Bosnia and Herzegovina. He chose Cevapi - Bosnian finger sausages and Shopska salad. We were also intending to do Prebranac - Bosnian baked bean but in the end we decided the sausages and salad would be enough food.

First we made the Cevapi. Into the bowl went, ground beef, ground lamb, breadcrumbs, garlic, finely chopped bacon, baking powder, fizzy water, salt, pepper, paprika and parsley. We mixed everything together and formed them into small sausage shapes. We left them to rest in the fridge for a while before we fried them in olive oil until cooked through.

 

    

Next we put together the Shopska salad. Green pepper, tomatoes and red

onions dressed with olive oil and red wine vinegar and topped with feta cheese. Neither of us are great lovers of raw onion or green pepper so we dressed the salad early and left the vegetables to 'cure' a bit in the dressing hoping that the vinegar would take away some of the harshness.

Bosnians eat their Cevapi with a pita bread called Somun. They dip the bread in a beef broth before grilling it. We used naan bread and sprinkled them with water before heating through. (we were going to use beef stock but we forgot!)

Our Bosnian and Herzegovinian meal.

A cevapi ready to be eaten!

The Verdict! 
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! 😋
We added some sour cream to the Cevapi and also put the salad into the naan. It was very good! We both like lamb anyway and the mixture of both the meats enriched the flavour. The raw onion went well with the sausage but as usual was still being tasted at bedtime - and, indeed, the next morning! I think caramalized onion would have been delicious too - if not very Bosnian.

Country 21 - Bolivia

Bolivia is in central South America. It is bordered by Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile and Peru and one third of the country is in the Andes mountain range. It is a landlocked country.
Before it was colonised by the Spanish it was part of the Inca Empire and it now has a multi-ethnic population although there is a lot of segregation among the different cultures.
In the last 50 years the population had tripled with 60% of the people being under 25. Over half of the people originate from Indigenous tribes but there are also Africans, Japanese and Lebanese, people from other South American countries and Europeans from Germany, France, Italy and Portugal.
The country recognises 36 different languages although Spanish is the official language.
The food of Bolivia is influenced by Spanish cuisine as well as that from Germany, Italy, Basque, Russia and Poland.

It seems to have been ages since we visited a country. Sometimes the food and recipes we explore just don't inspire us to cook them! That is why we kept putting off Bolivian night! We spent ages looking at various recipes but nothing really made us want to cook it! In the end we returned to the Global Table Adventure website (our initial inspiration for this journey) and decided to use a couple of the recipes she made.

We made La Sopa de Mani (Bolivian Peanut Soup) and Llajua (Bolivian Hot Sauce).

Gary did the cooking while I lolled around ready my book and wondering if Dry January was such a good idea after all?!!!!! 😁  

The first thing to make was the hot sauce. It's meant to be the Bolivian version of ketchup - just a bit spicier! They eat it with everything. It's just tomatoes, chillies, basil, cilantro (coriander), salt and olive oil. 

It's meant to be a bit more liquid than this I think but this is how ours turned out and it smelt delicious! (I love the smell of coriander leaves!) 

The soup or stew contains, garlic, onion, oregano, cumin, beef, beef broth, potatoes, peanuts, rice, milk and green peas. Yummy! 

Grinding up some peanuts. Considering 'peanut' is in the name of the soup there weren't that many in it!

Nearly ready! The recipe said it should be stewed for one and a half hours - we figured the potatoes would have disappeared into the broth if cooked for this long so we didn't add them until a bit later. We also added a bit of stock cube as it tasted pretty bland.

The finished meal - the soup with a large blob of hot sauce on the side. I mixed the hot sauce into the soup to add flavour.

Verdict?  Well it was ok. We ate it but it won't be on our list to cook again. It was as bland as we expected it to be - it needed the hot sauce! Even though we added the potatoes and peanuts later than the recipe said they had both gone mushy which meant there wasn't much texture to the dish. We did manage to have two servings each and I think Gary quite enjoyed it but it really did nothing for me! 

The next country is Bosnia and Herzegovina - now I wonder what they eat!