📷 CC BY-SA 4.0 · Sumit Surai · via Wikimedia CommonsMain Course · Bosnia and Herzegovina · Sarajevo
Ćevapi (Grilled Mini Kebabs of the Balkans) 🍢
Ten fingers, twice the work: in Sarajevo's best ćevabdžinica, the mince is hand-kneaded for a full ten minutes with nothing but salt, a little sparkling water and garlic worked into it overnight, then rested in the cold so the proteins set like dough. Fingers of meat are squeezed — never pressed flat — onto a screaming hot plate until they blister outside and stay blush-juicy within, buried under a landslide of raw onion in a warm somun bread with kajmak melting into the seams. No eggs, no bread in the mix. Any shop that needs them, the grandmothers say, doesn't have ćevapi — it has rationing.
Method
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1
Dissolve the salt and bicarb into the sparkling water with the garlic paste; chill it.
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2
Work the water into the mince with your hands, kneading and slapping the mass for a solid ten minutes until it turns sticky and pale, like pastry dough — this, not spices, is the whole recipe.
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3
Cover flat and rest in the coldest shelf overnight (or 4 hours minimum); the mix firms up and you can almost lift it in one piece.
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4
Wet your hands, squeeze egg-shaped fingers about 7 cm long — hollow the tube slightly with your thumb, never flatten them. Chill the formed ćevapi 20 minutes.
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5
Grill or pan-fry on the hottest surface you own, 1–2 minutes a side, turning once: blistered mahogany out, faintly pink and juicy in.
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6
Pierce the somun open, pack it with ćevapi, pile the twisted onions in, slide a spoon of kajmak on top and let it melt. Serve immediately, with raw pepper and an ice-cold anything.
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