Bolas De Fraile
Executive Chef
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2010
- Messages
- 3,191
We stayed for the first 16 days in the family compound (five houses owned by my wifes Aunts) the 4 Aunts are all widows in their late 70s.Living with them are some of their children and their wives and their children.
They take it in turns to make the bread and a fantastic cornmeal scone or biscuit called Proja made from a mix of what you call grits, flour, eggs, oil,milk baking powder
these are they, the photo was taken in a restaurant, because they dont use recipes I am going to try to recreate them this afternoon.
My day would begin at about 7am, one of about 20 adults would walk up to our terrace with Turkish coffee and a bottle of 40% home made Rakija flavored with health giving herbs then another would bring the burek hot out of the oven, the bread and kajmak would arrive from another house, the plum and wild strawberry jam from someone else,home made yogurt made from raw milk to drink would appear other relative who lived outside the compound and were going to work or shopping would stop and bring us a small gift then invite us to their house for dinner.
Aunty Zorica who we stayed with is a chef in a restaurant the city, her mums chickens tasted like the chickens we ate as children, her mum was a 76 yrs old widow who lives on her own on a small farm nearby, she got rid of her cow and pigs last year and concentrates on the chickens, her veg garden and flower garden is as big as mine, she grows corn for her chickens so the egg yolks are the color of the sun, she then kills and preps them 10 at a time and freezes them, you just visit and take what you need she got angry if she found out one of the family had bought one from the supermarket.
I have never been amongst people like this who regard the family as their life, they fight over who should look after the children and the one baby in the compound would be carried about with pride by its uncles aunts and grandma's from the minute it woke up.Lubee a tough ex boxer would put the baby in the pram and we would walk about a mile for a coffee and cake at a cafe he liked.
This trip was filled with so much of what has been lost by our culture I was at times overwhelmed by my feeling of dismay.
They take it in turns to make the bread and a fantastic cornmeal scone or biscuit called Proja made from a mix of what you call grits, flour, eggs, oil,milk baking powder
these are they, the photo was taken in a restaurant, because they dont use recipes I am going to try to recreate them this afternoon.
My day would begin at about 7am, one of about 20 adults would walk up to our terrace with Turkish coffee and a bottle of 40% home made Rakija flavored with health giving herbs then another would bring the burek hot out of the oven, the bread and kajmak would arrive from another house, the plum and wild strawberry jam from someone else,home made yogurt made from raw milk to drink would appear other relative who lived outside the compound and were going to work or shopping would stop and bring us a small gift then invite us to their house for dinner.
Aunty Zorica who we stayed with is a chef in a restaurant the city, her mums chickens tasted like the chickens we ate as children, her mum was a 76 yrs old widow who lives on her own on a small farm nearby, she got rid of her cow and pigs last year and concentrates on the chickens, her veg garden and flower garden is as big as mine, she grows corn for her chickens so the egg yolks are the color of the sun, she then kills and preps them 10 at a time and freezes them, you just visit and take what you need she got angry if she found out one of the family had bought one from the supermarket.
I have never been amongst people like this who regard the family as their life, they fight over who should look after the children and the one baby in the compound would be carried about with pride by its uncles aunts and grandma's from the minute it woke up.Lubee a tough ex boxer would put the baby in the pram and we would walk about a mile for a coffee and cake at a cafe he liked.
This trip was filled with so much of what has been lost by our culture I was at times overwhelmed by my feeling of dismay.