Join twowildtides on the country challenge. Each week, we’re going to be heading to a new country (in spirit). Primarily, we’ll be cooking a meal from each country; but we’ll also be watching travel documentaries, reading travel blogs, and listening to music. During the global pandemic, travel was largely inaccessible. We want to reignite our wanderlust, satisfy our travel bug as much as we can, and learn some new things along the way. I have a feeling our bucket list will have a number of items added to it through this experience as well. We created a simple alphabetical spreadsheet with all the countries of the world, and each week we will draw a random number that corresponds with a country on the spreadsheet.
This week, we visit another Balkan country: Kosovo. Coincidentally, the country from last week, Serbia, has a very tense relationship with Kosovo and their history is fraught with conflict. According to Wikipedia, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, however, Serbia does not recognize Kosovo as an independent nation and still calls it an autonomous province of Serbia. The relations between the countries had been improving over the years since the separation, however, this year, tensions heightened again over issues regarding identification documents for citizens. If these countries didn’t fall one after another, I might not have learned this important tidbit about global politics. Currently, the Candian Government is advising against non-essential travel to Kosovo, although I thought I’d share this itinerary I found for a trip to Kosovo, just because it looks so remarkable:
Ajvar is a traditional Kosovar comfort food. It is a spread made from red pepper and eggplant, commonly served with fresh bread. Check out this inspiring story about a female Kosovar entrepreneur who started a business to employ war widows by making Ajvar. I followed this recipe by Farm to Jar.
Ajvar was very easy to make. All I had to do was roast the red peppers and eggplant, peel and de-seed them, puree them, and add a few more ingredients, such as garlic, for flavour. I quite enjoyed the process.
I love the flavour of this. It’s hearty, a little spicy, and somewhat smoky. I’ve been enjoying Ajvar with bread and pita chips. I actually made way too much for just the two of us, so I decided to use it as a pasta sauce and served it with pork meatballs and lots of parmesan cheese. Divine. I would absolutely make this again and I would encourage anyone else to try it too!
Let us know what you think!