Great Neck
Posted on October 19, 2006
Whether grilling, roasting, curing or smoking, Croatians have incredible skills when it comes to preparing meat. I am consistently amazed by what appears to be a near-magical ability to make the flesh of one animal taste like that of another. My friend’s mother makes incredible braised turkey with potato dumplings that tastes like roast pork, for instance. Another prime example of this wizardry is the heavenly buđola, pictured here.
A veritable marvel of Balkan charcuterie, buđola has the appearance and flavor of an exquisitely marbled, dry-cured and smoked beef loin, not unlike Italy’s bresaola. No one would fault you for thinking that’s what you had slowly melting away in your mouth, but the fact remains that buđola is, in fact, hog’s neck that has been tied into loin shape before curing and smoking. Now that I’m in the US again, I’m searching Balkan markets deperately for this delicacy, but I get the feeling that I’ll probably end up making my own. The colder months are indeed here, so it’s time to fire up the smoker again.
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Great photo!
Have you had a chance to try kulen? It’s much spicier than budjola, made with minced pork, garlic, paprika, chillies, black pepper; tied, cured and smoked. It’s to die for!! Usually home made, it’s kind of hard to find it in stores.
You’ve missed a great truffle hunting season in Istria BTW.
Yes, I am a kulen lover, and I was lucky enough to eat a lot of excellent Slavonian kulen early in the summer. I actually got in trouble with my friend Josip for eating too much of his kulen. We’re still friends, but I owe him a kulen…
Tell me more about the truffles! I couldn’t make it back to Istra, but I did get to do some mushroom hunting near Jastrebarsko. Didn’t find any vrganj, but we did have a nice dinner of sunčanica na žaru.
A group of us flew in for the weekend truffle hunting, organized through the famous Zigante establishment.
Started off at crack of dawn, up the hills and into the woods, within an hour I had my first ever truffle snuffed and prized out of the ground. It is an experience not to be missed!
The rest of the weekend was spent in Malvazija induced bliss, being driven from one hilltop village to the next, eating in some outstanding little restaurants, which seemed to have white truffles in every dish.
Fabulous.