North Macedonian Cuisine
We have loved getting to experience new foods and cuisines on this year away. And North Macedonian has been some of our favourite food. It is such a mix of Greek, Balkan, and Turkish-inspired foods given where they are located and the 500 years they were occupied by the Ottoman Empire. There is such variety and flavour. And being inland rather than on the coast, very little fish! Which, being allergic to fish, I appreciate.
While walking through Ohrid one day, we saw a sign advertising a Macedonian cooking class and were instantly intrigued. We contacted them and set up a date to learn to cook some traditional foods! Even better, it ended up being a private cooking class just for the four of us. We learned a lot about the traditional spices (mainly mint, red peppers/paprika), foods, drinks, and country in general. We learned that Macedonia has been a traditionally very poor country where beans were the staple food for a long time. The mint worked well with the beans to help aid digestion. And there is really no such thing as a traditional Macedonian dessert. So, while they tried to be as Macedonian as possible, they taught us a traditional Turkish dessert.
We started off by learning to make sarmas. We prepped and sauteed up ground beef, ground pork, and onions. Then we added in lots of mint, uncooked rice, salt, and pepper. There are two options for wrapping the sarmas: cabbage leaves or grape leaves. They use grape leaves, which they keep in a jar that’s filled with white wine to preserve them. Once the mix was ready, we started rolling up our meat and rice mixture into the grape leaves. We needed to layer the bottom of the pot with leaves before then carefully arranging the sarmas in layers. Once it was ready, we filled the pot with water to cover the sarmas, put a heavy plate on to keep the sarmas from floating away, and cooked them on the stove for a long while, making sure to check on them periodically and add water as needed when it boiled down.
Next up we started making komat, a spiral-baked pie that’s similar to burek but is prepared and cooked slightly differently. We made the dough and divided it into small balls to roll out into disc shapes, which we oiled and stacked before leaving the dough to rise. We were given the option to make leek or cheese pie, and we couldn’t decide as we were split as to which to do. So, we did half and half. After prepping up some leeks came the fun part. Putting down a tablecloth on the table, dusting it with flour, and pulling and stretching the dough disc out to paper thin consistency. We put the cheese or leeks on the dough and started rolling by lifting up the tablecloth slowly! Once you had a long tube, you snaked it around the pan to make a coil like a snake, repeating the process with each dough disc and going until the coil in the pan was full. I initially thought I’d like the cheese one more, but actually loved the leek one the most! Though both were very good.
We learned how to make kiflicki, which is a celebration dough ball. You can make them in any shape you want, or none at all. Apparently, no celebration is complete without a tray of kiflicki! We made the dough, which is slightly sweet but not overly, let it rise, and then shaped it into little ducks, complete with peppercorn eyes! The ducks accidentally baked a little too long, but we still got the gist of how they tasted!
We sat down to eat our sarmas first, which were served with a LOT of thick yogurt and this delicious sauce made mostly of coarse paprika, sunflower oil, salt, mint, garlic, and water. It was such a simple process that took less than two minutes, but produced the most amazing and flavourful sauce!
I’ve tried dolmades back in Canada, which are a similar Greek food. Neither Emmeline nor I like dolmades at all, so my expectations were quite low. But these sarmas were outstanding! All four of us loved them and couldn’t get enough. They also served them with lots of fresh bread, some wine for Jon and I, homemade juice for the girls, and a shot of their homemade rakija, which is a strong Balkan spirit made from grapes. Again, the rakija was just for Jon and I!
After eating our sarmas, the komat and kiflicki were ready to eat, so we ate tons of those, too! We were so stuffed and didn’t know how we could eat anymore. But we managed to find the space to try the sutlijas that Sonja made. This was the only part of the meal we didn’t make ourselves, but she taught us and we watched her as we were sitting around the table. This was essentially a rice pudding, with lots of cinnamon added in. It was served warm and was so good. I’ve tried rice pudding in Canada many times, especially as a child. But those were all bland and boring. This was bursting with flavour and creaminess. It was a little on the sweet side for us, so I think we will dial back the sugar when we make it back home in Canada. But it will definitely be something we make back home!
While we were here, we also learned how to make fresh cottage cheese (which is a very different form of cottage cheese to what you would buy in Canada!) and had tons of opportunities to sit and chat while food was in different stages of preparation. She was soooo great with the girls, making sure they were always included and had tons of interaction. And when we had the pauses and we adults were enjoying our chatting, the girls were happy to run outside to play with her puppy or relax in the hammock.
We had such an amazing afternoon. We loved the hospitality of our hosts, the quaint traditional house outside the city, learning about the history and culture of food and how it evolved over time, learning to make delicious foods, and, of course, getting to eat and drink some local and authentic North Macedonian foods! We hope to have a North Macedonia-themed dinner party at some point when we are back in Canada and put our efforts to the test! But perhaps first, we will need to do lots and lots of practice sessions. Yum!