Bosnia and Herzegovina
The Ottoman table at its most generous — grilled meat, flaky pastry and coffee brewed like a ceremony.
Follow the smoke through the old Ottoman bazaar of Sarajevo and you'll end up where everyone else does: at a grill house, in front of a plate of ćevapi — little hand-rolled beef sausages, ten to a portion, tucked steaming into a puff of somun bread with raw onion and a spoon of cream-soft kajmak. It's the most Bosnian thing you can eat, and half the country will tell you their town does it best.
The rest is the Ottoman kitchen at its most comforting: burek, a coiled rope of paper-thin pastry packed with meat and baked until bronzed; sarma, cabbage leaves rolled around rice and mince; bosanski lonac, a pot of meat and vegetables layered and cooked down for hours. End it the only proper way — a tiny copper džezva of thick Bosnian coffee, a cube of rahat lokum and no reason at all to hurry.
- ćevapi (grilled minced-meat fingers) in somun with kajmak
- burek/sirnica (meat or cheese filo pastry)
- bosanski lonac (slow-cooked meat & veg pot)
- sarma (stuffed cabbage rolls)
