Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Street Food
If you just fancy a quick bite, there's a wide choice of cheap and tasty street food avail-
able all over Bulgaria. By far the most popular takeaway snack is the
banitsa
, a flaky
cheese pasty, freshly baked and served hot from simple counters and kiosks. They are of-
ten eaten for breakfast. Fancier bakeries will offer variations of the basic
banitsa
, adding
spinach, egg, ham or other ingredients. Sweet versions (
mlechna banitsa
) are made with
milk.
Sweet and savoury pancakes (
palachinki
),
buns (
kiflichki
), filled with marmalade, chocol-
ate or cheese and deep-fried doughnuts (
mekit-
si
) are all worth sampling.
Bulgarians are great snackers and in big
towns you will see old ladies in parks selling
toasted sunflower seeds (
semki
) wrapped in pa-
per cones. Steamed corn-on-the-cob is served on street corners and around parks, and
bagel-like, ring-shaped bread rolls (
gevrek
) are commonly sold by street vendors.
Traditional Bulgarian Cooking
by Atanas Slavov
gives more than 140 recipes you might like to try
out, including all the favourites such as
kavarma,
banitsa
and
shopska
salad.
Cheese & Yoghurt
Considering that there are only two traditional kinds of Bulgarian cheese,
sirene
('white',
brine cheese, similar to feta) and
kashkaval
('yellow', hard cheese), it's amazing how
much Bulgarians make out of these traditional ingredients, and how regularly it turns up
on the menu. The lactose-intolerant and non cheese-lovers may need to read menus care-
fully.
Bulgarians claim to have invented yoghurt (
kiselo mlyako
; literally 'sour milk'), and,
indeed, the bacteria used to make yoghurt is called
lactobacillus bulgaricus,
named in
honour of its Bulgarian origins. Yoghurt is used in many sweet and savoury dishes, in-
cluding salads and deserts, and drinking yoghurts are very popular;
ayran
is a refreshing,
chilled, slightly salty, thin yoghurt drink that makes an ideal accompaniment to light
meals.
Drinks
Coffee is the beverage of choice for most Bulgarians, though tea is also popular. Most
common are the herbal (
bilkov
) and fruit (
plodov)
varieties; if you want real, black tea, ask
for
cheren chai
and if you'd like milk, ask for
chai s'mlyako
.
