Cevapi, the Best Ground Meat Product in the World
"Nobody takes a ground up cow and grills it better than the Bosnians," says food-loving blogger Dumneazu in his post about his trip to Sarajevo. Cevapi from the Bascarsija district is the ground meat dish of devotion, specifically from the restaurant Zeljo. He describes what you'll find if you eat at Zeljo:
Like most cevapdzinicas, the menu is spare and no beer is served, but you can order fresh sour buttermilk by the glass to wash down the meat, which is served in a spongey flat pocketed bread known as somun. Traditional sides are chopped fresh onion and kaymak, a thick and slightly cheesy cream ball that melts over the cevap. This is the classic Sarajevo cevap: a small cylinder of meat, a mere morsel of amino acids and proteins that was once a happy little animal and is now a masterpiece, a high point of world cuisine, the excelsior of the grilled arts.
If you're not going to visit Bosnia anytime soon, you can try to make cevapi at home.
Related: Fresh Cevapcici from the Adriatic Meat Market
Add a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
5 Comments:
Biancardi's, one of the butchers in the Arthur Avenue section of the Bronx, sells these - they're absolutely delicious! It's traditionally an Italian neighborhood, but over the last 15 years, a huge number of Serbs, Croats and Albanians have immigrated and settled there.
Erisgrom at 3:33PM on 06/01/09
Wow, you guys brought back some tasty memories. I worked in Kosov@ for 5 years and had these awesome little qebapa(in Albanian) almost every week. Not all qebapa were great but there were a few select places that had lines out the door at lunchtime. The best were made of beef or beef/lamb combo (no pork ever) and came with fresh bread, onions and a cabbage slaw (optional). The closest I've come to duplicating the recipe is with FANT, a Croatian company that makes a seasoning mix for qebapa.
http://www.podravka.com/brands/products/food-seasoning/cooking-aids/fant-minced-meat-sticks-and-hamburgers
You can usually find this mix at European or Middle Eastern grocery stores.
zemer at 4:10PM on 06/01/09
Thanks for the heads up to my blog "Dumneazu" - but next up is the Banja Luka style cevap... there are two competing cevap styles in Bosnia, and it's hard to choose in Sarajevo, where both coexist on the same streets since so many Bosniaks from Banja Luka were resettled in Sarajevo after the war. Kind of like arguing White Castle versus White Manna... And "sac" burek... mmmm...
zaelic at 8:53PM on 06/01/09
What I like best about cevapi when I buy it from my local supermarket is that you can smell the garlic through the packaging! Thanks for sharing how it should be properly served!
threewiseOwls at 8:09AM on 06/02/09
OMG - I love these! I had them alot in Croatia, where they were served with a roasted red pepper-based sauce called ajvar (pronounced "eye-var"). Thanks for the recipe!
jodinynjco at 12:30PM on 06/02/09