Freshly Picked Peppers In December In Bulgaria

It was quite amazing as I walked out into the factory farm today at lunchtime. Still there before me were peppers ready to be picked and eaten and that was exactly what I did. From July to December (6 months) I have eaten freshly picked peppers daily for my lunch and more. The massive stocks that were picked at the height of the growing season are still in the freezer untouched for very good reason.

In Yambol there has yet to be a frost that would decimate the last remains of peppers that hang there and still grow on. This is unfounded so the Bulgarians tell me. Most of them pulled up all their old pepper producing plants and turned the earth over for winter months ago. It seems that laziness has its rewards here with my production still rolling on.

On other fronts, we have had to cancel our weekend trips to the farmhouse twice over the last three weekends as party invitation had to be taken up. And why not, there isn’t much to do on the Skalitsa farmhouse other than finish sowing the garlic and there’s no rush. The party starts at 1:00 tomorrow (Saturday) and the occasion? Well the family just fancied a party, that’s it!

Well after all we have spent the best part of a year working the land so it is about time we did a bit more socialising with the town folk during winter. It looks like whether we are in the town or village, partying is the main vocation with winter upon us, albeit a very warm one right now.

Lastly, I am still trying to get a digital camera sorted out; I never thought it would take as long as this and apologise for the lack of photographs in recent months.

Image by Martin LaBar via Flickr

Bulgarian Sunday Lunch In The Slow Lane

Snails are free food, but the appeal certainly isn't a favourite with most people and that’s not just vegetarians either. The thought of the slow, slimy, slippery creatures as a meal just puts many if not most people off. Snails are land lubbers where whelks are seafaring with a more popular following as a snack, but essentially they are the same in both physical looks, texture although having a more distinctive taste. So why the big ‘Yuk!’ to garden snails on the dinner plate?

It was snails on the menu this weekend for Galia and I as we stopped just outside Yambol after a night of rain together snails that large and abundant. Free food, but not restricted to Bulgaria, in the UK garden snails are edible albeit more polluted. We knew the snails we were picking up were healthy and succulent on the fresh green spring growth that had dinner written all over it for these lucky snails and the snails in turn had dinner written all over them for us. Oh the food chain is wonderful thing isn't it?

We must have picked about 30 to 40 snails and took them the farmhouse where we put them in a bucket with an iron grill off the barbecue system and weighted it down with a Skalitsa healing stone we had picked up last year whilst being healed, so any ill snails would be cured, but they couldn't escape. They could poke their heads though the grate but their shell houses couldn't be dragged through with them. To eat snails you need their digestive system to be clear and that means starving them for two days. It was Friday so they would be ready to cook on Sunday; this was our plan for Sunday lunch.

Each morning and evening I washed them out with water and put them back in the bucket. Sunday morning after their last wash they were put into some boiling water then winkled out with a skewer. Then the snail meat was fried in butter and home grown green garlic with a little rakia and turned out in a couple of ramekin bowls. Each bowl of snails was covered with breadcrumbs and grilled until brown.

Outside, Galia had set the table outside in the sunshine that had come out after the rain we had had for two days. This had some cold Sofia beer called ‘Ariana,’ waiting on the table to greet us along with the snail dishes that were ready to serve. We spend the next 20 minutes enjoying out free feed in beautiful surroundings being washed down with cold beer. Yambol snails and Sofia beer - A great combination!

I recommend snails for Sunday lunch to anyone, it is a superb no cost chemical-free food with little if no fat and no animal rights campaigners in sight! Notice I haven't mentioned the French - Oops I just did!

My own step-by-step snail recipe is being prepared in next post.

A Bulgarian Easter 2009 - A Joyful Family Occasion

There are so many things to write about this last weekend I am really quite confused as to which should preside. Perhaps just a run of events might just fit the bill this time round.

It was a sulky Lada that stood in the street last Friday as I mounted my bicycle to ride the 37 kilometres to the village farmhouse just to water the crops, get a rat trap and bring some gherkins seedlings back. The ride was fantastic, why I don’t ride more often it a complete mystery! Without Galia who was preparing for the Easter weekend it was a night on my own with howling wolves no longer scaring me as sat outside well beyond sunset before retiring to a rakia and well earned sleep.

The next morning, another bicycle ride, this time slightly faster than the day before back to Yambol. There is an increasing amount of traffic on the roads these days. Three years ago I could have travelled 20 kilometres and not passed any cars, maybe an occasional horse and cart. Now every few minutes a car zooms past, it is quite a depressing thought that this will get worse as each year goes by.

Many of these vehicles are 4x4 motors and of these many are expats or Brits on holiday here right now. The only problem I had with traffic today on the bike was the inconsideration of a Brit driver that came too close causing me to have to swerve into the grass verge. What I normally do in these cases is spit on their car window screen as they go past, it make me feel better that a message has been delivered. It may sound disgusting, but for me their total disregard and inconsideration for me is far more disgusting – A worse thought was that they must have thought it was only a Bulgarian cyclist.

That aside I got back to Yambol safely and the gherkins and rat trap intact. Oh yes, the rattrap is for a rat that ran across my feet as I entered the garage for my bike the day before. It had been eating our stock of winter potatoes. The trap is now set and we hope to drown it at some point in the future.

Saturday evening and barbeque mackerel was on the menu. The reason for fish was that today was meant to be the 50th and last day of fasting from meat (fish not included) as tomorrow spring lamb was planned to be eaten by most Bulgarians to celebrated the end of the fast and Easter.

Sunday, and a walk to the St Nikolai Church with Galia and Baba (pictured) to light candles, say a prayer and pay our religious respects to the occasion. You will find that most Bulgarian families attend church on these special religious days and a queue to get in is quite normal. As we purchase the candles and get blessed by the priest as we enter the grand church.

We went for a little stroll through Yambol after church and treated ourselves to a little ice cream from a stall. This is something we don’t normally do so it was a very special moment sitting in the flower borne park with an ice cream. There were many little stalls open today with bouncy castles, balloons and sweets as this was a weekend of Easter family celebration with many families out walking the city centre after church on this warm and sunny day.

We arrive back home to find that family guests were waiting outside out yard gate and we had the keys. From there on it was a further nine hours that elapsed with eating drinking and talking throughout. I am tempted to get on my Bulgarian food wagon again and detail the menu that was made up this evening, but will leave that for another time in another post. We had the egg knocking competition and one family member had brought his own decorated eggs that had been treated with varnish – He of course won with an unfair advantage. Within this time we also saw Everton knock Manchester United out of the English FA Cup as Ivo, Galia’s son (a Manchester United fan) and I commiserated together as Arsenal were knocked out by Chelsea yesterday.

A well-slept Sunday night led to today where this evening we are due to go to another house to spend the evening with friends instead of family. There will be another long session of eating drinking, berr and Skalitsa rakia and talking. In these instances you just can’t get enough of a good thing.

As I pause slightly between each celebration, I reflect on my past in the UK and the total lack of activities such as these. Family and friend gatherings, no expensive gifts expected, no commercial chocolate eggs, no need to entertain children who are well behaved and do as they are told. Food and drink that is all natural, homemade and produced locally. Simple things are the answer here, things that are not swayed by commercialism and high expectations. But the biggest joy here is the family unit where you can communicate on all levels, talk about anything and everything, there are no secrets in the family here. Nothing is held back and nothing taboo in conversation and this applies to all four generations that attended the celebration.

It really is a privilege to be here and be accepted as part of this family. It has opened my eyes to so many things I never knew existed in family life and I’d better stop writing now before I start breaking down with joyful emotion!

Bean Day On The Farm

Another day planned on the Yambol City farm, but it had been snowing overnight as I woke up to a white Yambol City and had doubts whether any grafting on the land would be done today. All I kept thinking about was my lettuce seedlings I have planted two days ago. All the Bulgarians had planted their under home made clotches, mine were exposed to the elements, had they survived the snow?

By lunchtime all the snow had disappeared, the sun was out and it was just like a summer day. So off I go with a plan for beans.

On arrival I checked the lettuce they were all in perfect order and now thriving in the rich dark chocolate coloured soil, this was a relieve - I had got away with it and previous thoughts of the first failure disappeared. The ground now was perfect for sowing, not too damp to work with as I hacked away at breaking up the soil ready for the laying of two sets of green beans. Within no time the first variety had been sown in five channels. This was done using the same techinique taught to me a couple of days with the potatoes which was to prepare a soft bedding and cover the seeds up making a grave like mound only this time on a smaller scale.

By the time the second variety of beans were sown the factory was closing for business as the workers began to set off home, I could have stayed longer, but didn't want too overdo it. Most of the workers there tell me to just spend 20 minutes a day there, 'Leka po leka' they'd say, which roughly translated means little by little. I know there is no rush and always start off really slowly, but of course I'm English and after a few minutes it's 100 mph again over a four hour session. It's not even April yet when the real work on the land really begins - I'ts a good job I'm fit otherwise this could be very bad for your health, even fatal.

There was another 10 minutes or so before the factory locked up so it was out with the radish seeds and sowing a 4 metre line parrallel to the lettuce already standing to attention after two days in their new home. The radish don't take up much space and won't affect the progress of the lettuce crop. Jobs were now completed for the day.

As I walked out through the factory gates onto the road where the Lada was parked, I could see the plot clearly. How lucky we are to have this to work on and get the rewards later in the year, the money our family will save on food will be quite substaintial during the coming year. There is also the additional produce from the village farmhouse that will stretch saving even further! Life just doesn't get better than this right now with 8 months of warm weather to look forward to as well.

Back home, Galia had prepared a simple meal of salad, fantastic bean soup as small glass of rakia and ice ridden ayran to wash it down. This is a life well worth waiting for.

A Weekend Retreat

Galia is now making good steps on her road to recovery from her first operation before having to endure another operation in a few weeks. I really to feel for her as she has been in pain throughout the ordeal, sometime you can't see the benefits ahead with this upon you. Reassured, time will see her through and the pain will have been a forgotten history in due course.

This weekend, we relaxed in Skalitsa at the farmhouse, we both love it there and if it wasn't so far away from town we would both be living there full-time. It just takes too long and is far too expensive to commute to Yambol and back on a daily basis. I used to do this and know it is not practical, and Bulgaria is all about being practical.

So two days in the Skalitsa farmhouse what did we do?

The answer is quite simply, Galia did nothing, I wouldn't let her. She wanted to cook clean and all the usual things that Bulgarian women are brought up to do. She knew it was wrong right now to exert herself with these chores so she just lay down on the sofa bed and watched television, while I did my English thing of not being able to relax.

While Galia was engrossing herself with Bulgarian television, I was drawn to the farm and land, big ideas again on the horizon about what to produce on this fertile land this year, I was almost in a trance as I walked around the grounds planning away. There wasn't much I could do outside right now, the ground was sodden and we all know there will be another major bout of snow and sub-zero temperatures before April, which is when work takes off here. I do have plans to start another blog about managing a farm in April when the new season starts, there will be a lot of work involved, but then who's scared of work? Back to today, there was one chore that could be done right now, that was to prune the fruit trees and a walnut tree that was impinging onto the summer house, so it was cutting and sawing branches for a couple of hours.

When I went back into the farmhouse to check up on Galia, she had dusted, vacuumed and mopped the whole house while my back was turned. I could never be angry with Galia, but just had to accept that not allowing, or trusting in my case, men to do housework is something that has been bred into women here for generations, so why be any different today? Galia also knew that when I did get back in the house after the pruning, I would have been doing these household chores instead of her despite her unwillingness to allow me. Well it was now all done and dusted and Galia was none the worse for it, seemingly. I was now in the house for the remainder of the day and was allowed to cook dinner that evening, something that I haven't done for a while.

Having now both completed necessary work inside and outside the farmhouse respectively, we relaxed in our own company. Well actually relaxing with our laptops with no work other than top up the wood burner ever few hours, but that's not a chore that's a pleasure. There is the story about the supermarket chicken this weekend, but that will keep until the next post.

Tikvanik - Bulgarian Pumkin Banitsa

Food, that’s all I seem to be blogging about at the moment, but you can’t expect anything else in the season where food is coming from all directions. Right now it prime time for pumpkins and walnuts, I won’t mention all the other goodies that are still pumped out in the Bulgarian kitchens and summer houses, I’ll need a good couple of days to cover it.

This weekend was a strange one, it was the first weekend we hadn’t had any guests in Skalitsa this year. Can you believe that? We were so used to catering for others that by the end of the weekend we were absolutely stuffed with home cooked food made from home produced ingredients.

The highlight of the weekend’s courses was the tikva (pumpkin) banitsa that Galia delicately made. Actually they are called tikvanik. It is such a simple dish but aren’t the favourite dishes just that? It was made this weekend by accident as stupid me being at the farmhouse on my own for a couple of days previous, forgot to make the sirene as I was too preoccupied with digging the land over in preparation for winter. This is really uncanny as tikvanik actually also means ‘fool’.

So it came to be that we had given to use three pumpkins that had been given to us the weekend before. We had the filo pastry the sunflower oil, sugar, walnuts and cinnamon. This was all we needed for the sweet banitsas that were about to be conjured up by this angel of a cook of mine.

No Skalitsa banitsas this weekend as I took a reluctant back step from the kitchen area. Galia doesn’t like me watching her cook, as she gets nervous. “It’s only curiosity!” I tell her, ‘Not a judgement.” It doesn’t make any difference me telling her though as I walk with my tail between my legs back in the living room and carry on blogging, but my mind is on what is happening in the kitchen.

To be quite honest I know exactly how these tikvanik are made, as well as having seen Galia and other friends here making them each year during the pumpkin season, I’ve even made them successfully myself on a number of occasions. Despite this, it is the love of being involved in the process as well as watching that is a passion. Before in England it was me who did all the cooking, I’ve never had a woman who could cook before and I was obviously still trying to come to terms with that.

It was a near disaster today though, as we both got distracted outside with neighbour talk. We forgot the banitsas were in the oven and it was a couple of Linford Christies up the flight of stair and into the kitchen when we twigged. We had just saved them in time as we put cloth over the well-cooked tikvanik to cool down and keep the moisture in.

We knew this was going to happen right from the moment of the conception of the idea of making these melt-in-the-mouth tikvanik. In fact is was more a case of melt-the-mouth as 10 minutes later we both had burnt tongues!

I suppose you are expecting the recipe to follow now. Well it isn’t! For tikvanik to taste as good as they do, you need to make and eat them in Bulgaria. And if you are in Bulgaria you wouldn’t need the recipe anyway as any Bulgarian worth their salt knows how to make them anyway.

Skalitsa Banitsa Recipe - Now World Recognition

Skalitsa Banitsa Recipe - Now world recognition

This is probably the most famous Bulgarian recipe bar shopska salad and with the pastry now bought in a ready to use form from shops is very simple to make.

This particular recipe was given to me by my Bulgarian neighbour Rosa who is also local nursery schoolteacher. It is as far as I'm aware only local to my village Skalitsa which has in my totally unbiased opinion gives better results than the original National recipe. Hence the name 'Skalitsa' Banitsa

Ingredients Needed

All the ingredients are readily available in most villages and every town and city in Bulgaria.

One packet (500 gm) of filo pastry
3 eggs
1 cup Plain flour
1 cup yoghurt
1 tspn Baking powder
Sunflower oil
Sirene chopped up (Bulgarian white cheese)

If you are not in Bulgaria you can use self raising flour instead of the plain flour and baking powder and feta or cottage cheese (adding a bit more salt) instead of sirene.

Step by Step Method

- Turn the oven on to a temperature of 170C.

- Put the eggs, flour, baking powder and yoghurt in a bowl and mix well together and put to one side.

- Unwrap the pastry and lay all the sheets on the plastic wrapping on the work surface.

- Lightly grease a baking tray big enough to take the width of the pastry when rolled up.

- Trickle oil over the whole area of top layer of the pastry and then dribble the mixture randomly over the pastry.

- Sprinkle sirene evenly over the oil based pastry.

- Roll two layers along the length of the pastry and place it on the baking tray - Make sure you roll the pastry very loosely.

- Repeat the same process until all the sheets of pastry have been used.

- If there is any mixture left over brush the top of the parcel rolls in the tray, if there is none left brush some oil over the tops of the skalitsa banitsas.

- Place the tray in the now hot oven and bake for 20 minutes.

Suggested Serving

These are best eaten hot or can be reheated or eaten cold later in the day. I make mine every Saturday and use them reheated a couple in a microwave for one minute every morning for breakfast.

A Good Bulgarian Tip

To get the oil evenly spread over the pastry - pierce a small hole in the top of the sunflower oil
plastic bottle cap and use it as a squeezy bottle.