Sunday 3 April 2016

Food glorious food

Part of the reason I came to this part of the world was food related. How could it not be? The freshness of the produce is legendary, and being a fairly saintly* type, I'm very happy to consume as much greenery as you put in front of me. Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage...you name a vegetable, I'll eat it. And fresh fruit smoothies, oh my...

Which is why I find myself demolishing more cake here than I've ever had before. There is a private joke regarding certain friends who post more pictures of their food on social media than I've had hot dinners, but in actual fact I'm not that bothered about my own photos of lunch. Unless I've really made an effort.

Or in this case, if my landlady has been slaving over a hot oven in her tiny place and her cakes deserve wider attention. I immediately asked for the recipe for these nutty delights because I know some cake fiends will want to try these because they are rather good.

This is how you make Croatian Grandma's Cake. Or Ivana's Cake.

Take a cup of sugar, a sachet of vanilla sugar (lidl ftw) and whisk until creamy with two eggs. Add a cup of self raising flour, two cups of mixed whizzed up nuts, zest of a lemon, a cup of sunflower oil, grated chocolate or cocoa, and a cup of milk. Mix it all together and pour into a greased tray. Bake at 150 degrees for 45 minutes. Dust with icing sugar and cut into massive slabs, to serve with coffee - or tea. Or gin. Whatever you like.

As a balance to this cake, tonight I shall be attempting blitva s krumpirom. I've already boiled my potatoes and prepared the blitva (chard or spinach). So I shall simply fry garlic in lots of olive oil, and then add the cooled veggies to stirfry. I like my potatoes quite soft in this so I have saved some potato cooking water to make it nice and moist. Moist... Season well with salt and pepper, but not as much salt as is generally added. I'm fussy like that, and I shall be trying it with a dash of chilli because I'm an English heathen.

I will be having this with some pre roasted chicken or something. Cant think why I'm having to run miles...




*Saintly in the sense I eat ridiculously healthily under normal circumstances. I'm not sure I could be generally described as saintly to be honest.

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