Cevapcici (Vegan MoFo 10/2/11)
Tonight’s new ingredient: Cevapcici!
When I saw this “Vegetarian Balkan Finger Food” on Pangea’s website I knew I had to try it. I’ve never had any sort of Balkan food, and according to the packaging it’s made with “Happy Organic Ingredients.” Doesn’t get better than that- I like my food happy.
I set out to find some information on this cevapcici, and learned that traditionally it is a kind of sausage or kebab made of lamb, beef, or pork, usually served on a flatbread called somun, with chopped onions, sour cream, a dairy product called kajmak, and a condiment called avjar. Avjar is also known as “vegetarian caviar” and consists mostly of roasted eggplant and red peppers, along with garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper (recipe here). So of course I had to make that since it sounded awesome. I considered just going to the store and getting some pita bread to serve the cevapcici with, but really I think I’m just sick of the gross cardboardy pita that is available in stores. So I found a recipe for somun (scroll down to get to the recipe) and decided to go for it.
Both the avjar and somun were pretty easy to make. The avjar just involves roasting eggplant and red peppers, grinding them up in the food processor, adding lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper. The somun is just a basic flatbread- yeast, flour, salt, sugar, water. The recipe called for two risings, but it didn’t take very long for the dough to rise and I just prepared the other things while waiting. The cevapcici just needed a quick sautee in a skillet and they were ready.
I did a little more research and found that many pickled foods are often served as accompaniments to a meal in the Balkan region, so in addition to the avjar and vegan sour cream I also served some pickled pink turnips, sliced tomatoes, pickled jalapenos, and some dill pickles my dad made.
I might have made the bread too thick, since it wasn’t really bendy at all. So I ended up making sort of an open-faced sandwich with everything piled on top. The cevapcici themselves were quite good- a little spicy and a very nice texture. They went really well with the bread and all the condiments. I think next time I might put a little less cumin seed on top since it was really the dominant flavor, but other than that I was really happy with this meal.
