Real food, locally sourced, harvested with the seasons, with nothing added or subtracted to make it saltier or sweeter, seedless or skinless, lower in fat or higher in something else.
Ingredients that taste like the thing it is, rather than foamed or deconstructed and reconstructed into something that bears no relation to its original form, however dazzling such sorcery might be.
Treating food simply, without undue over-complication or trying to be too clever and letting nature's brilliance shine through with just as little human intervention as necessary - THAT is what makes me salivate.
Nowadays they call this the slow food movement and we're all taking to it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Which, of course, it is.
Dalmatian food is nothing if not authentic. These are the meals that made me swoon (and balloon).
Konoba Roki's, Plisko Polje, Vis Island
What a special place. You place your order on the phone earlier in the day when you book a table, and their courtesy van will deliver you to their konoba-slash-vineyard-slash-olive orchard, with its own cricket pitch, located on a former WWII airstrip. Massive contradictions, but it works.
You'll then wander through the open-air grill where your peka has been slow-cooking all afternoon to a magical al fresco dining area. There, you'll indulge in a light entree of tuna proscuitto (yup, dried tuna, and its delicious!), with shavings of a local hard cheese similar to pecorino and sweet baby tomatoes tossed through the house-pressed olive oil.
OK, now for your cultural immersion class. A peka is a domed clay or metal pot, which you fill with meats and vegetables, cover and then place on an open hearth and cover with hot coals. Its a bit like a weber barbeque, in reverse. You can sort-of see it behind the gent in this picture. Concentrating the flavours and aromas under the lid of the peka together with the smoke created from the hot coals gives the resulting dish a really special and unique taste.
We had the most impossibly tender, tastiest, slow-cooked lamb with cabbage, potato, onion, garlic and carrot flavoured with rosemary and sage, and similarly soft tentacles of giant octopus with tomato risotto. Nothing fussy, not even very pretty, but unbelievably satisfying. And there is something about sharing food from a single dish that brings people together and creates a really relaxed atmosphere - and it is a proven fact that food is tastier when you are happy and relaxed.
While you're there it would be an absolute sin not to try the Plavac Mali and Bugava wine from Roki's winery. The family who own Roki's have been making wine for 100 years and are much celebrated in Croatia (and, now, Australia). Leave room for some of their delicious sticky made from Prošek grapes - its actually very light and more like a sherry. I could sleep through a tempest after a glass of this.
Konoba Menego, Groda, Hvar Town
The vibe of the place is pretty well summed up by the owner, Dinko, who gently explained that we were in his ancestral home, they do things traditionally here and so:- "No rice, no pizza, no pasta, no coke. Now, do you want red or white or both?"
My kinda man. Platters of Croatian tapas, as they call it, soon follow. Fresh anchovies in olive oil. Local cheeses, including a feta-like goat cheese and hard cheeses from sheep's milk. Preserved meats (smoked pork neck to die for! smoked ham, bacon 'dried by wind and smoke', proscuitto) and vegetarian antipasti joined by baskets and baskets of fresh corn bread, a speciality in Dalmatia. Cooked green bean salad. We're also treated to 'the chef's special', a casserole of barley, zucchini, tomato and smoked bacon which is making me salivate just thinking about it (and notwithstanding it is 9am).
Totally uncomplicated and unpretentious, yet you couldn't possibly replicate this meal at home, unless you are in the habit of smoking the flesh of the pig in your backyard that has been reared on organic feed, because everything around you is what we think of as organic, or baking corn bread daily, as your family has done for hundreds of years.
Dinko will also convince you to try the drunk figs which are allegedly an ancient aphrodisiac. All I'll say is, I can see how someone might say that.
Quite apart from the drunk figs, the interiors will charm the pants off you. The restaurant is really a series of bunker-like rooms which used to be Dinko's grandpa's wine cellar, and everything from the chairs to the tables is made from a local white stone (limestone?) or wood, candles provide most of the light, supplemented by lightbulbs covered in wicker baskets. There's antique fishing paraphernalia like wooden oars, nets, anchors and crab pots everywhere and grape vines covering the walls. Charming, much?
Restaurant Bilo Idro, Sveta Nedjelja, Hvar Island
They probably could have served me gruel and I'd have been pleased because this restaurant is so stunningly beautiful. The location is quite impossible, basically partially submerged in the sea, with a wine cellar located underground (or is that underwater?), with a submarine window view, in a quiet marina. The circular dining room has a soaring ceiling and enormous windows out to the sea with light that radiates off the white stone and gives you the feeling you're floating in a really big stone castle. Sea-legs don't help. Quite surreal. And the bamboo furniture and rattan ceiling fans. Well, thats just genius.
Anyway the food's not half-bad either as you can see. A bit slow coming, but as it turns out, thats because they have a live sea pool where they collect the seafood from. Of course, why else?
And the wines. Vina Plenković is arguably the best winery in Croatia. The Zlatan Otok white is quite special and perfect for anything-de-mare on the menu. They describe it as abundant with the aromas of dried flowers, herbs and spices. Well, if you say so, but I found it to be dry, light, clean and fresh on the palate. It leaves you with the feeling that you were very, very parched and you've just gulped down a glass of refreshing rainwater. So, quite dangerous then.
Misc. ors.
Its not all fancy-shmancy in Cro. In fact, its possible to eat very well for very little.
I made this pantry-cleaning tuna risotto for our last lunch on Tryphosa. Over the week, I foraged for (ie saw growing around the place and nicked) red chillis, bay leaves, rosemary and sage which I tossed through arborio rice, white onion, garlic, fresh tomatoes and tomato paste with canned tuna, lemon rind and some leftover chopped spicy sausage similar to chorizo. I just warmed through all of the above except the tuna (which was added just a bit before serving) in a large pot with olive oil, added a few cups of chicken stock and threw it in the oven to bake while we sailed on a port tack to a swimming spot on šolta. And it was probably the best risotto I've ever cooked. This is a good thing and a bad thing because now I'm convinced that urban foraging is the key. And really, its sort of theft. My vegie patch is your vegie patch, no?
Croatian pastries are another reliable cheap eat. My favourite is the burek, flaky pastries filled with stewed fruit (sour cherry or apple), soft, sweet ricotta-like cheese, minced meat or a green leaf similar to spinach. Extremely moreish, see above re swooning and ballooning.
And you've just not been to Croatia until you've had Ćevapčići, also called Ćevapi. This is basically a very sophistimicated sausage sizzle. Flavoured skinless sausages, raw onion, pita bread, and you're wasting your time unless you give it a good dose of ajvar, a spicy capsicum sauce similar to harissa. Sorry I don't know why this picture is so large but...is it making you excited? Good!
