Tag Archives: macedonia

M&M Enterprise Cooking, Vol. X

Srpska salata

local crockery helped presentation

It’s been a few days of rich and bountiful eating, so I decided to go for something lighter, not to mention the cucumbers and tomatoes, so fresh a few days ago, were in danger of getting overripe. It’s immediately obvious to me what to do with these two delicious and cooler summer vegetables (technically fruits to the pedant). In a Spanish-speaking country where I could get sherry vinegar, and if I had a blender, it’d be gazpacho. But šopska salata is also a fine choice, especially given that the stalwart Italian PX stocks DOP feta cheese.

Now, I’m treading into the Balkans here, and I know that emotions run high about most all questions of national identity in that part of the world, and I know the Greek battle to secure DOP labeling for a kind of white sheep milk cheese that is produced in innumerable forms all over the Balkans was seen as a nasty nationalist move by many. But this is war zone cooking, and although I’d prefer real sirenje, that ain’t happening, and DOP feta is not a bad substitute, especially for my countrymen used to eating bland and hard stuff at salad bars and in gyros most of their lives.

I can’t think of any foreigner who, when traveling in the Balkans, didn’t immediately fall in love with the šopska salata. (I feel particularly strongly as I lived in the Šopluk for a bit.) Now, there is a lot of information on the internet about what is and what isn’t in a šopska, which seems common to all ultra-simple regional foods.

What I knew was this: the freshest possible tomatoes and cucumbers, cubed, topped with the most finely grated sirenje. Maybe a single black olive for decoration at fancier places. Possibley trace amounts of sunflower oil, not that you could taste. To Americans used to bland, tasteless iceberg topped with ranch or thousand island dressing, this was a new frontier in salads.

In the cafés in Belgrade, they’d add some finely diced and fairly hot fresh pepper. Every few bites, you’d get a bit of heat that could be instantly ameliorated with the cooling cucumbers and creamy cheese. Delightful on a sweltering summer day. That’s what I replicated here, to, I think, great effect. My only gripe is that the south Slavs rely on sunflower oil far too much. With a few drops of Zucchi organic, it was delightful. My only regret is not having some hearty Macedonian white bread to sop it up with.

I should probably have a post at some point about similarities between the Balkan and Central Asian kitchen — the fresh vegetables, grilled meats, and good bread all doubtless have Turkish roots. But that’s a subject for a different post.

 

 

Friday AM briefs

Unctuous?

There’s way too much news this week, from the Libya to the milleproroghe, from Macedonia’s electoral crisis to the role of social media in the events that have shaken the Arab world.   Fini’s proclamation that the PM was not ‘anointed by the lord’ may hint at the beginning of the end on this side of the Mediterranean as well.

Look for a more thorough weekend update as your chronicler has other deadlines to meet this mild Friday morning.

For those who’ve spent time east of Apennines, ponder this bit from the Economist’s review of David Gilmour’s The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples.

Italy’s north-south divide remains gaping, too (though, as the author says, there is a less well known east-west divide either side of the Apennines).

More on Bosnia

It’s turning out to be a Bosnia-focused weekend here.

Marko Hoare has an excellent and sober assessment of Angelina Jolie’s Bosnia “imbroglio” up here.

For those who don’t know, the British left often has an odd — to say the least — way of viewing the Balkan Wars.  Mainly it consists of lionizing Milosevic as some kind of “anti-imperialist” simply because he was able to get his country bombed by NATO.  This is an old article from Indymedia Ireland that explores some of the myths and flat-out denying that go on amongst some British leftists when they discuss the Balkans.  It should serve as a useful warning for a treacherous path to “sinister idiocy” that sadly continues to influence thinking on the region.

Finally, it seems that Greek nationalists have managed to clean the internet of any photos of their paramilitary unit, the Greek Volunteer Guards, with Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb leadership.  But fear not, Takis Mikas’ intriguing book Unholy Alliance is up on Google Books.   The above photo is from it.  It’s worth pointing out he’s being sued for for stating that the Greeks were in Srebrenica, and it’s further worth pointing out what the name of the organization that’s suing him is. And here’s Hoare on the same issue.

The Artist is Presented

It’s voting season. And this year in the US, it will be important to vote. But that’s not what I’m pushing here.  You need to go here and vote for Igor Tosevski for Wooloo’s artist of the month.

The Piano Has Been Drinkin' (Not Him)

When I lived in Macedonia, I met one Igor Tosevski through a series of mutual acquaintances. After long periods in rustic and rural places, going for a coffee or a meal with Igor and his longtime parter, Tanya, was always a breath of life. Conversation was never limited. Their horizons seemed to be continually broadening at a time when mental space in Skopje was continually shrinking. No mean feat, that.

In addition, I got an education in situational art beyond the passing acquaintance I’d had with pompous and effete fops in the US.   Sure, guerrilla art has been the provenance of a certain urban class of elites since its inception. But what does it mean to do this in the former Yugoslavia and in Macedonia, especially during the nineties, when it was prudent to keep one’s views to oneself? What does it mean to do this during times of nationalism and small-mindedness? The stakes are much higher than what they might be in Milan or New York.

In 2004, I had the good luck to see Process at a time when the Macedonian government’s inability to regulate or commodifiy any kind of production — much less art production — was making the lives of most people a bureaucratic hell. The use of a rubber stamp to create a giant self-portrait in a room festooned with the actual legal text stipulating that artists must register as ‘traders’ was a biting commentary on the attempts of post-socialist bureaucrats to privatize virtually everything.

In the same year, I had the even better luck to go with Igor on some of his missions to paint occupied Territories at various sites around the country.  Macedonia had just narrowly avoided the kind of senseless violence and partition that still plagues places like Kosovo and Bosnia today, so the act of painting arbitrary (or, sometimes not-so-arbitrary) lines in the people’s common spaces, delimiting them for obscure motives, was even more trenchant.  The looks on people’s faces ranged from apathy to disgust to — rarely — joy.  It was a project that bound the absurd with the deadly serious in an active, physical, even fun way.

Igor’s art is compelling and actually makes one question what is going on in one’s surroundings. It accomplishes that very rare thing of succeeding where so many others have failed miserably.  (In that way it reminds me of another artist from the same country that once upon a time, there was.)  It is timely; never hectoring, always thoughtful, with a keen eye to the political but not overtly so. It’s good art. That’s uncommon.

And after two and half decades of work he’s finally getting some recognition, so go over to Wooloo and vote for him. With any luck, you may be seeing him somewhere familiar soon.