2024-08-17 16:53:26
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- Banitsa is in 5th place in the world, ahead of the Turkish burek, it was first described 11 centuries ago
In the whirlwind of small and big crises, Bulgaria has reason to be proud, apart from its Olympians, who finished 26th at the Paris Olympics, and its national cuisine.
Bulgarian feasts are in 30th place with a score of 4.31 among 50 tempting national cuisines around the world, recognized as the most delicious. The ranking is from the popular culinary site tasteatlas.com.
The most loved and appreciated native specialties all over the world are the banitsa and three types of salads – shepherd’s, shop’s and “Snezhanka”, the rankings by types of food show.
The first places are occupied by Italian cuisine (4.65), those of Japan (4.65) and Greece (4.64). However, it is not bad to note that only 34-35 hundredths separate us from the prize winners.
It is curious that in addition to ours, there are 5 more Balkan cuisines in leading positions in the world ranking – Turkish is 15th, Croatia’s – 19th, Serbia’s – 20th, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s – 27th, Romania’s – the 29th.
Balkan cuisine is visibly gaining in height, because it is airing Vienna schnitzel, Czech dumplings, Swedish meatballs with blueberry jam, and a bunch of other delicacies that the refined Western European taste has labeled “high class”.
There is no doubt that special
Bulgarian cuisine stands out with delicious salads, baked goods and meat specialties
But although we have magnificent fruits and vegetables, our table in past centuries was filled with what gives the most calories: beans, lentils, rice, bread and cereals, baked goods, historians testify.
Remember how native classic writers describe cooking in a Bulgarian house from centuries past – a simmering pot of beans, fragrant bread at night, the warm smell of fresh cheese and pink crusts of a pie, just taken out of the oven… If you don’t know, it was first mentioned in the 10th century by Teofilat Ohridski, who described the traditional dishes of the Bulgarians from Pirin Macedonia, among which is the pie. It is also found in the Bogomil notes about the creation of the world, where it is written that God created the earth as bread, and the sky as a leveler (clay or metal vessel for baking bread – n.b.). But when he tried to put the ruler on the loaf, ie. heaven on earth, it did not fit. That’s why he crushed it like a pie and that’s how the mountains were formed.
They connect the name “banitsa” with the Proto-Slavic form “gabanitsa”,
which probably derives from the verbs “nagibam se” (bend, bend) and “sbigam se” (bend, shrink), since the sheets of the pastry bend, shrink, twist. However, there are numerous dialectal names of the dish in the Bulgarian lands, some of which are “mill”, “bilnik”, “topeinitsa”, “klin”.
Banitsa as a typical Bulgarian pastry was also mentioned by Petko R. Slaveikov in the first Bulgarian culinary book in 1870. His critics reproached him for describing Tsarigrad cuisine and the only recipes he recognized as Bulgarian were precisely those for the delicious pastry. However, he calls it by the Turkish name burek, and in the interpretation at the end – as “mill”, “pogacha”, “greasy pita with cheese”.
11 centuries after the Bogomils and nearly a century and a half after Slaveykov, the pie is part of the history of every Bulgarian family and its holidays. At Christmas, a fortune pie is made – the tradition is with dogwood buds, which are called for health, luck, fertility, success, happiness.
Today you can buy a pie on the streets of any Bulgarian city. And not only grandma’s home-made, but also its version probably enchants the diverse foreign audience and makes us so important on the world’s tables. Our cheese pie is rivaled only by the first two places
Portuguese rolls and tarts
with milk and egg cream, the Italian focaccia di reco (thin crusts of dough, between which soft cheese is placed) and the Swedish cinnamon rolls. The Turkish burek is 39th, surpassing even the Croatian one (12th), just behind the Bulgarian mekita (32nd), according to the tasteatlas.com pasta ranking
We don’t know why, but in general, the pie in all its varieties – with spinach, potatoes, pumpkin, meat, lapad, nettles, rice and all kinds of other fillings – was ranked 19th by the participants of the tasteatlas.com survey. However, it leaves behind Russian pirozhki (47th), French eclairs (37th), French chocolate croissant (45th), and Macedonian cabbage (50th).
According to master chef Ivan Zvezdev, foreigners really like the pie when they visit Bulgaria. But number one is the Shop salad because it is available everywhere.
“Bulgarian cuisine, unfortunately, cannot be known because our restaurants do not offer it. They are limited to tarator, shop salad, steak, liver. There are almost no restaurants for real Bulgarian cuisine, except for those dedicated to it. But they also offer universal specialties, not homemade ones,” Zvezdev told “24 Chasa”. According to him, the only way to popularize Bulgarian dishes is by translating the recipes into foreign languages. His interesting idea is that Bulgarian films and series should show more of our dishes. Such methods are used, for example, by Korean and Turkish series.
Many fans of this cinema specially travel to try their traditional cuisine. If there are scenes in our films where the characters eat beans, lentils, pie, cheese, yogurt, airyan, tarator, Bulgarian cuisine will quickly find new admirers, Zvezdev is convinced.
Shepherd’s salad is the other culinary masterpiece that gourmets ranked 5th in this category. However, according to Zvezdev, it is not so tasty because it is prepared with low-quality products in restaurants.
Shopska, which is part of our tourist PR and national symbolism, is the 9th, and “Snezhanka” – the 10th. They certainly win with the skillful combination of vegetables and cheese, and separately, the snowball includes another typical Bulgarian culinary specialty – yogurt.
It is a fact that the cold tarator soup, typical for the Bulgarian latitudes, does not enjoy such widespread approval as “Snezhanka”, also called “dry tarator”.
Bulgaria also fits into the world cuisine with its sausages and dried meat specialties, show the rankings of the culinary site – sausage is ranked 18th, and at the top of the ranking are Spanish chorizo, German bratwurst and Italian sausage, followed by German weisswurst and Leberwurst and Portuguese Alheira. “Elena” fillet, Gorno-Oryahov sujuk, Panagyur sausage, Banski starets, beef pastrami, venison leg, “Trapezitsa” roll, Stanjanski dado – all this delicious palette is in the ranking of dried meats. Next to them, among the herbs and spices, salt is popular, but it is surprising that savory is absent.
Although not so popular, specialties with trifles such as tripe soup, village liver, tongue in butter are associated with Bulgaria. Among the vegetable specialties, the mish-mash stands out, followed by the bean soup.
Which is the most delicious Bulgarian dish – vote in our poll.