Kosovo

Kosovo is one of the youngest countries in the world, formally declaring their independence from Serbia in just 2008! However, the culture of Kosovo goes back much further, including the dish I made on Sunday: flija. Various sources [citation needed on wikipedia] recognize March 18th as "Flija Day" so I figured I would make it around that date. Unfortunately it fell on a Monday and I knew I wasn't going to make this dish on a Monday. Here's why: it took me three hours. Three hours of simmering a soup? Easy enough. But three hours of constantly bending down and standing up? Not so easy.

Flija is essentially a crepe "cake" but in the savory sense. It's a stack of crepe-like layers with a dairy filling in between. The recipe itself is very simple. All the ingredients I needed to make it are shown in the above picture.

There are two batters; the first is a mixture of five cups of flour, five eggs, milk (or water), and salt. The second batter is not really a batter but a mixture of sour cream (or yogurt), kefir, and melted butter. I made both a couple hours ahead of time and let them sit so that all the lumps would disperse better.

We got a cat recently. Her name is Rosie, and she likes to watch me cook from a safe distance sometimes. Here she is being very confused by the sound of me furiously whisking five whole cups of flour with eggs and milk.

Once the batter rested, I funneled it into a water bottle with a top I could squirt it out of. A proper squirt bottle with a smaller hole in the top would have been much easier to use, but sometimes I forget that I had plans to buy something and I just have to improvise. The reason for using a bottle will become apparent in the following pictures. It would be impossible to execute this dish with just a ladle.

So, flija is normally cooked in an outdoor fire pit/oven type situation. They use this thing called a sač, which is just a metal lid that they put ashes and coals over, and it cooks things from the top rather than the bottom. In most kitchens, the closest thing you're going to have is a broiler (or grill in case there are any British people reading this). My broiler happens to be a drawer on the bottom of the oven that you assume is a storage drawer because when you moved in there were things already in it so you didn't see the warning that tells you it's not for storage and you end up cooking your potholders. Anyway.

The first step is to establish your base layer. This layer you can just ladle in and spread enough of the crepe mixture to cover the bottom. I used a springform pan for this, which worked out really well, but any large, round, oven-proof cooking vessel would work. This layer goes under the broiler for a couple minutes.

When it comes out, you layer the dairy mixture on top. I could have let the base layer cook a little longer to get kind of brown.

On top of the dairy layer, you pour the crepe batter in like spokes, radiating from the center to the edges. You can do fewer or more spokes depending on how you feel. Apparently I was feeling like making things difficult, so I didn't space them out super far. Once you've got your spokes, you throw that under the broiler for another couple of minutes.

When that first layer comes out, you brush it with more of the dairy mixture, then fill in the gaps from the first layer of spokes with more of the crepe batter. Again, I should have left that layer in longer to get browned. But I couldn't keep in eye on it, with it being a drawer and all, so I was afraid it was going to burn. You put that next layer back under the broiler for another couple minutes, and you just keep repeating that process until you die. Or you run out of batter. Whichever comes first. For me it took three hours of literally squatting down (remember, oven drawer literally 2 inches from the floor) and standing up every 2-4 minutes. Look, I'm still in my (very late) 20s, but I've got the knees of a 70-year-old. It kinda sucked.

Once it's cooked all the way, you can see how the last layer gets nice and brown from being cooked a second time. Really the spokes you see above should all be connected, but I was getting worried about the amount of batter in the center creating a big mound, so I improvised a little.

When you cut into it, you get some really satisfying layers. That's definitely the best part of the dish.

I mean, it's really cool seeing all the work you did actually laid out like that. Although, I count about 20 layers, but I distinctly remember doing closer to 500 layers. The brown stuff in between counts as layers too. Just in case you went back up and counted.

I served my flija with some pickles and arugula. The recipe I used called for drizzling honey over it, which sounds great but that person isn't Kosovan so I can't really trust them. I think it's mainly eaten as a savory dish, and I saw at least one picture of it with peppers and pickles, so that's the direction I went in. I can see this easily playing both sides as a sweeter dish, though.

Final thoughts: I don't think I'll be making this again. I don't know if it's really worth all the effort. I applaud the old Kosovar ladies who sit outside for hours making this over a hot pit, though. I'm sure it's a great cultural experience. It was pretty tasty, especially as leftovers reheated after a day or two, but my knees can't take that again.

Recipes Used: Flija // Also Flija