Sarmis - The Taste Of Winter And Christmas

2024 Author: Jasmine Walkman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 08:29

Sarmi is one of the favorite dishes of Bulgarians. There is hardly a family in which they do not prepare, if winter arrives and Christmas approaches. The taste of sauerkraut and fried minced meat can set everyone's mood in the long gloomy and cold days of December.

Of course, for everything in the Balkans, as well as for food and sarmite, there is no understanding who the author is and whose national pride we are talking about. Appetizing cabbage and sometimes vine leaves stuffed with minced meat and rice are a traditional dish not only in our country, but also in Serbia, Romania, Turkey, Greece, as well as in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Iran, Iraq and others.

And yet who invented them?

Historians reduce their disputes to the borders of Greece and Turkey. According to some culinary researchers, the Byzantines were the first to invent the successful combination and enjoyed delicious sarma in antiquity. Researchers from the Middle Ages have discovered that dishes similar to today's moussaka and meatballs lead to Greek antiquity.

However, there are many who attribute the sarmas to the Ottoman conquerors. In any case, the name of sarmite comes from the Turkish word sarmak, which means "turn". In Turkey, sarma has another name dolma, from dolmak, which in Turkish means "stuffing".

It is not possible to list all types of sarma recipes. In Turkey, for example, sarma is made not only from vine and cabbage leaves, but also from zucchini, eggplant and pumpkin leaves.

If the sarma (or dolma) is minced, it is served with yogurt, dried mint, red pepper and oil. It is a tradition to eat sarmis in the cold as an appetizer. In addition to rice, they can be stuffed with bulgur and meat, cedar nuts, raisins and even dried cherries.

In Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania and other Balkan countries, lean sarmis with vine leaves are also served cold before the main course. However, cabbage sauerkraut gets bigger and they are usually served warm and as a main dish. In our country, the recipe has also undergone various changes and often the sarma is stuffed with meat and rice, and beans, even fish, and onions, instead of onions, are sometimes leeks.

Sarmite present in more than one interesting story - from millennial legends to today's historical and political clashes. In Serbia, for example, sarmas have become part of the 2017 presidential campaign of Ljubisa Preletacevic. His party was called SPN, short for Sarmu Probo nisi, which means "Haven't you tried sarma?" With it, Preletacevic finished third in the race.

Authorship on sarmite it also torments the peoples of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Because of the unresolved disputes on the issue, the Azeris tell the legend of the Armenian Tangik, who did not know how to make sarmi and therefore stole the recipe from her Azeri neighbor Tello.

Of course, whoever the author is and in whatever combinations the products are combined, the sarma does not lose its charm of one of the most delicious foods in the Balkans.