Sunday, November 26, 2006

What do you eat with Ajvar?


I picked up a jar of this incredible Serbian salsa, if you will, and quickly became enamoured of its red-hot color, silky texture and complex flavor. I came up with many ways to use it even though it was pretty good spooned straight from the jar into my mouth.
I began to wonder how it was really intended to be used. That's where Google came in handy. I found this post and learned that it's used as a condiment for a meaty sandwich called cevapcici. In August I tried my hand at making homemade ajvar (pronounced eye-var) but discovered I liked the store bought version better. Instead of canning it, as I had originally intended, I threw it into the freezer in small portions because this stuff is HOT. I knew I needed some cevapcici to go with the stuff but it took me until now to round up all that meat. I generally buy meat at the farmers' market because it's more reasonably priced for local, humanely raised meat. I'd buy the beef but the lamb lady wouldn't have any ground meat that week but then we'd use the beef for burgers and then the pork people would only have pork sausage left, etc.
After market this Saturday, I knew I'd scored the trifecta and had all the meats I needed. The recipe I used is from the Frugal Gourmet and can be found here (it's pretty different from the recipe mentioned in the post above so there are two from which you can choose) I served them with homemade pitas, ajvar, and the yogurt sauce mentioned in by the Frugal Gourmet. These were so good. The hot ajvar was balanced out by the cool yogurt and the meat was very flavorful. I can't wait to try this next summer when we can cook them on the grill and serve them on grilled bread.

7 Comments:

At 5:21 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

delicious!! Ajvar is amazing stuff. After reading that NPR article, we opened our jar and ate it simply with bread and olive oil. We had half a jar left and ate it last night mixed with an equal part of pureed tomatoes and then baked some sausage and gnocchi in it. Tasty, versatile stuff.
Glad you found me so i could find you.
Tata!

 
At 8:54 PM, Blogger leedav said...

Ann- I was happy to find you too. I grew up in NY and we had a summer place in the Adirondacks. We were eating sausage and pepper heros instead of cevapcici and ajvar but your post was still nostalgic for me!

 
At 8:47 AM, Blogger MuGoY said...

I have tried it today and it is very delicious really. It says made in Turkey and tastes very hot! Maybe I will try to mix with chickpeas.

 
At 9:01 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love ajvar. Being Macedonian, my mother has always made jars of this stuff every year. I usually eat it with good crusty bread and feta cheese. Yummm!!

 
At 9:01 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love ajvar. Being Macedonian, my mother has always made jars of this stuff every year. I usually eat it with good crusty bread and feta cheese. Yummm!!

 
At 2:08 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

hot dogs yum hides the cheap wiener taste perfectively

 
At 11:03 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Went to Belgrade, Serbia for work and tried ajvar for the first time. I eat this stuff almost every day with my morning toast!

 

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