It’s a busy week. Mum and Dad have been helping me organise our Croatian food stall at the school’s Summer Fair. We’re going to be selling cevapi rolls and oblatne, a Croatian wafer cake. I’ve had a devil of a time trying to find cevapi in the UK. Cevapi are small sausage like snacks, made of beef and pork mince and blended expertly with loads of garlic. There is a small ‘Balkan’ contingency here, but not huge and certainly not exclusively Croatian, rather a mixture of ex-Yugoslav food products and specialties. They all seem to be in the Ealing/Acton area, and it looks like we’ve found a winner. Mum and Dad spent last week cooking up and eating three kinds of cevapi available from a store I found that specialise in Balkan foods.
They’re called Magaza, and they sell all the favourite brands including Podravka, Gavrilovic, Kras and Minas along with a good range of cured and frozen meat products. They even sell the special bread rolls that the cevapi are served with, in places like Zagreb, so we’ll be getting some of those too. We’ll serve our rolls with ajvar (a red pepper dip) and diced raw onions. I think we’re going to bring the house down with our stall – I don’t think the kind folk of Maidenhead will have ever tried anything like this before. Dad managed to get some little trinkets and decorations from the Croatian Embassy and he’s going to bring his flag. Me, Mum and VC are going to be wearing our Croatian aprons and generally being awesome. Mum is going to make oblatne, a dangerously addictive wafer slice, which is simply layers of wafer and a chocolate cream which is then sliced into diamond shapes. My auntie makes the best kind and she has been kind enough to share her recipe with us (I might ask her permission to put on the blog).
Image courtesy of Stef (click here for her recipe)
I’ll take some snaps and fill you in next week. Wish me luck!
Good luck with your Croatian stall. I was introduced to Croatian food here in Sydney some 30 yrs ago by a young lad of croatian descent that I worked with. He would bring in all sorts of delicious food delights. So my love of Cevapis began and thankfully they are now an everyday sight in supermarkets here, but it is the specialised butchers who sell the best ones. You know the delightfully spicy ones that you still reek of days later! I guess we don’t realise how lucky we are being able to obtain ingredients for every cuisine going.
How different to when I first came to Sydney 40 yrs ago! I love our amazing mix of cuisines that migrants have brought to this country!
Thanks for the recipe for the Oblatne, I have seen those packets of huge flat wafers and never knew what to do with them. (other than pig out on them!)
Looking forward to seeing your pics of the stall. Have a great day!
Hi Lyn, thanks for your well wishes! I guess you found out that the oblatne recipe was in Croatian….but like I said I’ll try and get a recipe in English on the site. I know what you mean about those cevapi that make you smelly for days…ahhh…the things we sacrifice for our stomachs!
Ooooh, nice one for the Magaza link, I just moved back to London after 10 years in Split and I’m missing the food! Definitely gonna take a trek over to Acton soon.
can I buy a peka in London
Hi David,
I’ll ask around…and let you know.
Hi Lara!
Do you know any good Balkan restaurants here in London? Trying to find good cevapi 🙂 Tried to make them home, but the beef is too lean and they didn’t turn out ok.
Lovely blog by the way. Goes in my feed.
Hi Vesna, sorry I can’t help you with that. But if anything changes I’ll let you know! Likewise, if you find any good cevapi, please let me know.
Deal!
I ate them here: http://mugicoffeebar.wordpress.com/menu/
They were pretty good, but looking for more places…