Finally and after almost five years from my first glimpse into the most famous Serbian dish, our cooking thread matured enough to step into the adventure of making the royalty. The well known, the most popular and the most amazing of all BBQs in these parts of the world. And by that I mean many of Balkan countries, If you are resident here you probably know what I am talking about. If not and you are just a traveler visiting Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and/or other neighboring countries and stumble to some restaurant with a grill and hesitated what to order just say "ćevapćići' (pronounced 'chevapchichi') and you will experience one of a kind and one extraordinary dish.
The quote from the beginning was from the Sci-Fi TV Shows "Eureka" that aired 2006-2012 and the central gathering in many episodes was in the town's great diner called "Café Diem" and its chef Vincent once selected "Serbian cevapcici" as a daily special. He made it from lamb patty, paprika and garlic and literally described it with "a little hunk of Balkan heaven". However, and in the nutshell, for a dish so widely prepared there is not just one recipe out there. Instead different people and restaurants use their own (secret) ingredients and little sausages can be very different from one place to another. Yesterday we were in the mood for a BBQ and this is the resulting new video in our "Little Chef" series.
Viktor and I were little nervous during entire filming as this was the first time we did it in front of the audience (grand-parents, relatives and neighbors) and also outdoor. At least two bloopers ended after the 'post-production' with our not so stable table and chair. However, ćevapćići were great success - and this was also the very first time Viktor's endeavor are tasted by others and when we saw people are 'fighting' for another piece all the tension evaporated into thin air. All I will say is we should have prepared more. ;-)
Beside five different meat, it's not that obvious what exactly goes into the mixture so here is our own recipe that originated from my earlier post Serbian Chevapchichi. Minced meat includes beef, lamb, pork, turkey and bacon. Combined there was around 1kg of the mixture and for spices we used 1 onion, 3 cloves of garlic, and 1 tbs of all of these: oregano, cornflour, curcuma, paprika, sea, black pepper and brown sugar.
Second dish in our today's cooking thread are tacos and our previous video we made couple of months ago. Cooking can be hard. Sometimes it's more than art and pure joy but if you add all the effort and 'sweat' into it, the very result never disappoints. It was just like that in our today's kitchen play. Making tacos only looks easy and cheerful, but if you are doing it for the first time.. Well I will just say there was three hours of preparing, shopping, cooking and filming that was all intense and on the edge of disaster, but we managed to go all the way through it, and at the end, our Saturday's lunch included these six 'extremely' edible tacos that vanished into tin air in a fraction of just couple of minutes.
Making tacos includes several parallel tasks and one of them was watching the tortillas in the oven during their seven minutes burn and they should be monitored closely to avoid over-burning. The color of our lunch today might went little more brownish I was hoping for, but trust me, they were extra crunchy and delicious nevertheless.
Frying beef in onion rings took around half an hour and olive oil and spice mixture designed for lasagnas actually were great hit - the meet was extra spicy and beautiful. You can also use vegetables according to your taste, but grated cheese and sour cream goes extra tasty with fried beef, so try not to avoid them to get full experience of beef tacos recipe we used for this occasion, which you can also watch here: beef taco recipe.
Little Chef series:
http://www.milanzivic.com/2015/01/little-chef.html
http://www.milanzivic.com/2015/03/little-chef-2.html
http://www.milanzivic.com/2016/02/little-chef-3.html