Yugoslav Cookbook Yugoslavian Cuisine

Additional Details

Description: In the dietary of every nation there is a differentiation between everyday cooking and dishes intended for festive occasions. In a sensible diet – a diet which is one of the foundations of health – what is "good" from the standpoint of culinary skill is not necessarily advisable food. Festive foods are prepared with lavish ingredients and cost tends to be disregarded. They are as a rule much richer than need be. Everday cooking, on the other hand, is cooking matched to economic possibilities. The range of recipes in this book is very great indeed, and it is up to the user to make his own selection. 

How indeed should one introduce to the reader a work so varied, both in the ingredients of the various recipes and their style? De gustibus nihil disputandum, indeed. At the same time the reader may well wonder at the range displayed, so great that every reader is bound to come upon an "old friend". This will perhaps give a feeling of being, after all, "at home" in the Yugoslav kitchen, though it does also call for a hint, how it comes about that the familiar stands side by side with so much that is strange. 

What are the origins of this so varied dietary? Who, indeed, are the many "authors" of these recipes. In methods and styles of cooking in Yugoslavia, just as in so many other fields of life, we in fact find preserved the imprint of an ancient past and all the many influences which have through the centuries been accumulated by very varied and highly contrasted social and historical changes. Indeed, it may be pointed out that often enough those vestiges of the past are most firmly, stubbornly rooted and preserved precisely in the kitchen. 

The influences which have shaped the Yugoslav kitchen taken as a whole are unquestionably more numerous than those of any other country. In the first place, a very wide range of natural conditions is the very first characteristic of the country, with a very long littoral, rolling arable and forest regions, vast fertile plains, and rugged mountains with extensive upland grazing ground. There are times of the year when inside an hour one can pass from the gentle Adriatic climate to harsh winter and deep snow. Olives, figs and other southern fruits characterize the coast, where the principal harvest is from the sea, while the Pannonian plain offers rich animal livestock and is a great granary. In some parts only fine wheaten bread is known, others are by tradition still based on maize, rye, millet, in some olive oil is the basis of cooking, others think almost exclusively in terms of lard, yet others use mutton fat. Here meat is the staple, there fish and other "fruit of the sea". 

---- 

Condition: Cover has thin crack in paper at lower corner. Further good condition.