Traditional Bulgarian Recipes

Banitsa with spinach
Ingredients: 1kg flour, 1kg spinach, 300g. white brined cheese, 3/2 cupful of yoghurt, 200g butter, 1 spoonful sunflower oil, 1 spoonful vinegar, salt. Cook the cleaned and finely cut spinach in some of the butter. After having cooled, stir in crumbled cheese and yoghurt. Knead a hard dough from the flour, oil, vinegar, salt and water. Roll into five sheets (1kg of ready rolled pastry sheets may also be used). Line a baking dish with butter, place 1 sheet on the bottom and top with the spinach filling. Add a second sheet, filling and so on. Baste in a moderate oven. The same recipe may be used for making banitsa with leeks.

Bulgarian Potato Salad
Posted Tuesday, May 29, 2001 by PAF-Recipes
Serve as garnish to grilled or BBQ'ed meat. Or enjoy on its own.
Ingredients for 4:
4-5 large potatos
salt and pepper to taste
2-3 spring onions
juice of 1/2 a lemon
olive oil
fresh parsley or dill
How to prepare:
Peel and boil the potatos for about 20-25 minutes, drain and leave to cool.
In a salad bowl - add the finely chopped spring onions, salt, pepper to taste, the lemon juice and olive oil, and mix gently. Cut the potatos into cubes and add the the salad bowl. Gently mix, sprinkle with parsley or dill if you serve the salad with fish.

Fruit Cake
Products: 1 teacup milk, 1 teacup jam, ¾ teacup oil, 2 eggs, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1 teacup crushed nuts, 3 teacups flour, 1 vanilla powder.
Mix all of the products. Pour out it in lubricous and dusted with flour large baking tin. Bake the cake with moderate temperature. When the cake isn’t hot serve it dusted with soft sugar.

Noodles With Eggs Baked In Oven
Products: 250 g noodles, 3 eggs, 150 g sugar, 50 g oil, 750 g milk, 25 g soft sugar, 1 vanilla powder.
Boil the noodles in salt water. Press out it and add the oil. Stir it and put it in smeared with oil baking tin. Smash the eggs with the sugar and thin out with the milk and the noodles with the mixture. Bake it in moderate oven and dust it with soft sugar.

Boyar's tyle meat ball
Ingredients (serve 4):
600 gr. minced meat (60% pork, 40% veal)
1 onion
100 gr. mushrooms
80 gr. yellow cheese (for ex. Gauda)
1/4 tsp. cumin
Pepper
Salt
Preparation and serving:
Chop fine the onion and add it together with the spices to the minced meat. Mix everything well. Chop fine the mushrooms and the cheese to make a stuffing. Shape meat balls inserting the stuffing in the middle. Flatten the balls and roast on barbeque.
Serve with a garnish of fried potatoes, or stewed vegetables.

Patatnik
Ingredients:
2 kg. potatoes
4 eggs
300 gr. white pickled cheese
2 tsp. dry mint
1 tbsp. salt
125 gr. butter
Preparation and serving:
Peel and grate the potatoes. Add salt and leave them to drain. Crush the cheese and mix together with the eggs and the mint. Add the drained potatoes and stir well. Melt the butter and put the half of it in a baking tin, then pour over the potatoe mix and make it even. Pour over the rest of the butter. Bake in an oven at 220°С for about 20 min.

Yogurt - cucumber soup (Tarator)
Ingredients:
500 gr. yoghurt
1 cucumber
1 tbsp. olive oil
3 cloves garlic
1 tbsp. grinded wallnut kernels
1/2 bunch dill
Preparation and serving:
Press the garlic, chop fine the dill, dice the cucumber. Put them together and mix well with the olive oil and the walnuts.Add the yoghurt and 500 ml water. Mix well and add salt.
Serve chilled.
The dish could be cooked in a pan turning it on the both sides, instead of baking in oven.
Serve hot.

Mince meat stuffed peppers - this is a main meal (Bulgarian Recipes)
Ingredients for 4
8 mixed peppers (red, green, yellow),
500 gr. minced meat (beef, pork or chicken),
60 gr. rice,
2 onions, chopped parsley,
1 can of chopped tomatoes,
3 tbs. oil, paprika,
salt and pepper
How to cook:
Take the seeds out of the peppers by cutting a hole on top, wash and dry. Chop finely the onions. Heat the oil in a pan, fry the onions for 2-3 minutes, add the minced meat and cook for about 5 minutes, add the rice and tomatoes (keep the tomato juice for later), season with salt, pepper and paprika, cook for another 2 minutes and take off the hob. Stuff each pepper with the mixture (about 3/4 full), arrange in an oven proof deep dish, add the tomato juice and top up with water to half fill the dish, cover with foil and cook for about 30 minutes in a preheated oven (190 C), uncover and cook for another 15-20 minutes until the peppers are cooked. You can serve them on their own or with Greek style joghurt.    
Stuffed pepper - traditional bulgarian dish.
Broun in 3 tbs sunflower oil 500g minced meat. Add fine choped onion and carott and 1/2 cup rice. Mix well, season with solt, red pepper, persley and add 1/2 cup water. Boil 5 min.
Stuff the peppers, put in the baking dish, add 2 cups water and bake for 30 min. Cover during the baking, the last 5-10 min remove cover.
For the sauce - brown 2tbs flour in 2 tbs sunflower oil, add the sauce from the peppers and boil 1o min. Mix well 1 yolk with 2tbs yogurt and add in the sauce.

Roast Chicken With Tomato Juice
Products: 1 chicken (around 1 kg), 1 bottle of tomato juice, 100g oil, 5 cloves of garlic, salt and pepper for taste
Add salt to the cleaned and washed chicken and grease lavishly with oil and crushed with salt garlic. Put the chicken in electric pot, pour on with the tomato juice and the rest of the oil. Roast the dish in oven, covered with top, around 40 minutes.

Fish Fillet Fried In Eggs
Products: 500g fish fillet (hake, white fish), 1 coffee-cup vegetable oil, 2 eggs, 2 coffee-cups flour, 1 coffee-cup beer, pepper and salt for taste
Shape pieces from the fish fillet, sprinkle with pepper and salt. The pieces have to be fried in pasta prepared of eggs, flour and beer. Fry in hot oil.

Ingredients:
1 cupful milk
1/2 cup yoghurt
1 spoonful salt
1tsp sugar
1/2 tsp soda for bread
1 egg
1 spoonful yeast
1 yolk
flour
200gr. cheese
100gr margarin
oil
Mix milk with yeast and sugar, yoghurt with soda, egg with salt. Knead it all. Let it rise. Divide into 3 pieces. Roll out each piece. Grease a large baking dish and put the first pastry. Spread with butter(margarin) and sprinkle with cheese. Put the second one and repeat. The third lubricate just with the yolk. Cut the loaf in 8 pieces. Twist every piece. Let them rise and roast. Before remove it from the cooker you could strinkle with yellow cheese.

Lozovi sarmi
Ingredients:
25 leaves of grape vine
1 cup rice
1 cup haricot beans
100gr raisins
2 spoonful tomato sauce
1/2 cup oil
2 red onions
oil
salt
pepper
dill
cinnamon
Stew the minced onion, add rice,then 1 cup of water. Add raisins and the haricot beans cooked beforehand. In the end add spices on taste. Mix everything and let it to cool down. Put some filling in each leaf and wrap them up. Put them in a pot, pour with water and boil for 45 minutes on a low fire.

Nikuldenski sharan
1 carp (1.5kg)
4-5 onions
150gr. walnuts
1/2 cup rice
5-6 spoonful oil
1 tsp savory
1 tsp red pepper
salt and pepper
Clean the carp(scales, entrails, gills). Stew the chopped onions in oil. Add the cleaned and washed rice. Pour on with water and leave to boil until rice take it. Spinkle with red pepper, savory salt, coarsely ground walnuts and mix up. Put that filling in the carp, sew it up and roast in warmed oven(180 degrees) for 40-60 minutes.

Tikvenik
Ingredients:
1pack prepared sheets of pastry
1kg pumpkin
1 cup of sugar
100gr. roasted walnuts
cinnamon
1 cup oil
Grate the pumpkin and add the sugar, crushed walnuts and some pinches of cinnamon. Pour each sheet with oil and put filling. Roll each sheet and arrange them into an oiled dish. Roast in not very hot oven. Before serving dust  with powdered sugar.