Croatia

Christmas Eve, Badnjak, is a day without meat, and in much of the country that means salt cod. Christmas Day brings the roast turkey with mlinci or a pot of sarma made days before, and the table stays covered in walnut roll, poppy seed roll and small cookies until Epiphany.

The Croatian chapter has 13 recipes. Istarska maneštra and ričet, a barley and bean stew, are made in winter with dried beans and smoked pork, and kiselo zelje s rebrima braises sauerkraut with smoked ribs. Krvavice and češnjovke are the blood and garlic sausages of kolinje, the family pig slaughter, and kuhani buncek, smoked ham hock with sauerkraut, fried potatoes and horseradish, is Zagreb's winter plate. Čobanac is a Slavonian paprika stew of several meats, zagorski štrukli are cheese-filled dough boiled or baked with cream, bijeli žganci an old poor people's breakfast, and zlevanka a cornmeal cake. Krafne and kroštule are fried for Carnival, and soparnik, a Swiss chard pie from Poljica, is eaten on fasting days such as Ash Wednesday, February 10.

The Croatian menu starts with Pršut i sir, thin-sliced Dalmatian pršut and Paški sir, the hard sheep's cheese of Pag, with olives, dried figs and nuts. The main course is Škampi na Buzaru, scampi stewed quickly in olive oil, garlic, white wine and a little tomato. To finish there is a Licitarsko srce, the red heart a boy traditionally gave a girl in northern Croatia as a token of love, made as a keepsake.

The Croatian menu follows Easter from Holy Week to Sunday lunch. In Istria the wild asparagus season runs through Holy Week, and the asparagus goes into fritaja. Good Friday, March 26, 2027, suits brudet, the coastal fish stew with polenta. On Holy Saturday families carry pinca, the sweet Easter bread, to church to be blessed, and pisanice, eggs dyed brick red with onion skins, go in the Easter basket. Easter Sunday, March 28, brings ham baked in bread with horseradish, goranski nadjev, a roll of bread, eggs and smoked ham, lamb under the peka, and two cakes, kuglof and Međimurska gibanica.