Sapice

Traditional Bosnian Holiday Cookies

A Bosnian Table

Bosnian Coffee

It's always so delightfully satisfying to experience Bosnian hospitality! On my recent visit to a home bound friend who is originally from Bosnia, I was treated, as always, like a very important person the second I took off my shoes and walked through the door.

The coffee was put on the table in minutes and the small plates with heaps of meat, cheese, and a ridiculous choice of beverages soon followed.

Bosnians love their mid morning or afternoon snacks or meze and are very fond of indulging guests with food, drink and song or story telling.

An important prerequisite is definitely home made suho meso, beef that is slowly smoked and cured and a standard in most homes especially in the fall and winter season. This arrived first.

While I sipped some strong coffee and enjoyed some fragrant sliced meat, the  smell of  frying wafted out of the kitchen and soon enough, gorgeous lepinje appeared, hot and greasy from the cooking oil.

                                            



My visit would not be complete without some sort of sweet, either. A little bit ill from too much meat and starch already ingested I was never the less hoping for something I hardly ever make at home like Baklava, which is, I think, the most well known of the Bosnian delicacies.

Hurmasice

Fatima brought out Hurmasice instead, a recipe I know well because my grandmother passed hers on to me. She made hers with butter, but most of the women I know make it with vegetable oil.

 Here is the standard recipe:
4 small cups each of flour, oil, sugar,
4 eggs
1 packet of baking powder
Mix together till dough like paste forms and shape into appx 4 inch ovals
Bake at 375 till golden brown

Syrup:
4 cups sugar
4 1/2 cups water
1/2 lemon
4 cloves
Bring to a boil
cool for 10 minutes and pour over warm hurmasice

Making Pita

I liked this little story about a Bosnian woman who lives in Twin Falls and makes pita with tepsije that her mom gave her before she left for the states. Also, My Conscious Eating has a nice post about how to make pita, with recipe included. I'm like the woman in Twin Falls - I go by eye, not by cup measurements.

Baka's Christmas Cookies - Sape (Paws)

For years I've been making  “medvjeđe šape” for the Christmas holidays (Bozic in the Serbo Croatian language). Sometimes I also make them on other holiday occasions in the winter. The recipe I have from my grandmother is the following:
2 c Nuts, 2 c Crisco or Butter, 3 c Flour (you might need to add a bit more), 1 c Sugar, 2 eggs and 1/8 tsp Baking Powder. Mix, put in special tins, bake at 375 till brown (10-15) Take out of tins while still hot and dip in powdered sugar

My Baka  used Crisco, which in later years, finding my own way through the kitchen, I always found odd.  Once I did a bit of investigating I figured it out.
When the sisters married the Americans, they brought Crisco home along with the Folgers and the Smirnoff.  Baka used to call the 'mast' (fat) she used in the cookies 'kokos fett'.  My life long I could never figure out what she used- what could  'kokos fett' actually be? Sounded like coconut (kokos in Pidgin Bosnian/German) but I never remember seeing any coconut butter or coconut oil in the kitchen.
The big mystery was solved when exploring the possibilities with my mother as to what type of fat she might have used, I remembered that it was preternaturally white.
That's how we figured out it must have been Crisco.
Last year I made them half with Crisco and half with Butter. Crisco was easy to work with, but the taste was definitely compromised. It still tasted good - but that weird aftertaste of Crisco was really strong. So, I prefer to use Butter. I am going to assume that Baka used Crisco because my mom brought home  a new, cool,  American food that no one had ever seen  before.In that little Alpine kaf, we were definitely the glamorous and Bohemian off Broadway set.  In the day Crisco was probably pure awesomeness.

Dear Santa

Dear Santa, It's hard to keep my Ukranian/South Slavic/Italian predispositzione to indulgence in fat, fat and meat with fat quiet around the holidays. BUT. I'll promise to stop smoking for the New Year IF you let me eat as MUCH Sarma with sour cream  or Kajmak, cured slab bacon with Rye bread

via

  via and grandmother's Sape cookies

 made with walnuts and butter - as my little loving heart desires - 
without (here is the catch)
making me fat.

 Your good little girl,
Silvana
PS - please say yes, as everyone here is bugging me to quit with the dreaded/beloved stinky cigarettes, even though I  already banned myself to the porch years ago. Something to do with dying.