Cuisine is a special and important segment of Bosnia and Herzegovina's cultural heritage, holding its own against the country's architecture, literature, folklore, weaving tradition and specific way of life. Having noticed that the country's traditional cuisine is often being neglected in favour of unhealthy fast food, professor Lamija Hadžiosmanović from the Sarajevo School of Philosophy set out to write a cookbook of old local recipes. The result, a volume called "The Bosnian Cookbook," published by the Sarajevo Sejtarija, is not merely a collection of recipes but an historical overview of tableside customs and culinary tradition.
In February, professor Hadžiosmanović’s cookbook won the Best Cookbook of 2010 award at the Gourmand World Cookbook Fair Awards in Paris, along with books written by cooks from Australia, Denmark, France and Luxembourg. (www.cookbookfair.com/winners.php)
The judges described "The Bosnian Cookbook" as an "extraordinary presentation of a magical combination of oriental and western culinary traditions. A very high quality book which saves the best recipes of the Bosnian cuisine."
Over 8,000 books in 40 languages from 136 countries around the world vied for the prestigious award. The award is given to authors who "cook with both words and images," and serves as a guide to readers to help them chose out of 26,000 cookbooks published each year.
Hadžiosmanović told Southeast Europe: People and Culture that she had not had any of the recipes listed in the book written on paper, they all came from memory, from remembering how her mother and grandmother had cooked.
"As the only child in the house I used to watch my late mother and grandmother cook, and I too became interested, but I really immersed myself into it when I became involved with Bosnia and Herzegovina’s cultural heritage and realised that the local cuisine was part of it. Most of the recipes are from Sarajevo, but a lot are from Herzegovina, Travnik, Banja Luka. It is hard to distinguish between recipes because they overlap. The main thing is that they are prepared one way in one place, and other ways in other places. I used old phrases, ones long forgotten, in an attempt to bring this age closer to today," says professor Hadžiosmanović.
The book, which has so far been presented in every city in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia as well, is the sum of long hours of painstaking research which in the end yielded a collection of nearly 400 recipes. Hadžiosmanović told Southeast Europe: People and Culture that the hardest part were measurements, because when it comes to that, Bosnian recipes are far from precise: "A lot of skill is necessary for that. It’s between the fingers, in the palms of one's hands, cups. So that whenever I would set out to make something I needed to use a two deciliter glass, cup, etc. for measurements, which were approximate. You need to know how to do things by feel. For instance, if your are baking bread, you need to be able to tell by the softness of the dough whether you need to add more flour or not, let alone cakes."
The Bosnian Association of Cooks is playing a major role in preserving the traditional cuisine. The Association recently joined the World Association of Chefs Societies (WACS) making it the official representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina's culinary tradition at tables worldwide. WACS gathers culinary organizations from as many as 72 countries, or a total of around 10 million chefs.
Membership in the organization opens the doors to Bosnia and Herzegovina's participation in an event called the Cooking Olympics, the world's most prestigious culinary competition and stage for chefs from around the world.
"Our goal is to preserve the traditional menu and elevate gastronomy to the level that it deserves in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although pies and ćevaps (grilled minced meat) are local trademarks, we are out to prove to the world that we know more than that," one of the organization's founders, Nihad Memeledžija, says.
Bosnia and Herzegovina's cuisine, just like its culture, is the result of combined strong western and eastern influences. Traditional cuisine is closely tied to the Greek and Turkish culinary traditions. Under Austrian rule, the country's eating habits also changed.
Even though most gastronomical events in Bosnia and Herzegovina feature meat dishes as the main course, other courses include products made from milk and vegetables, with the mandatory desert and coffee at the end of meals. The culture of appetisers, called meze, deserves special mention. Meze is a social art combining conversation, the consumption of light foods and drink, which frequently lasts all day long.
Anyone in the know will say that there is no such thing as a completely autonomous traditional cuisine. All cuisines are a blend of recipes derived from many places, and the origins of a particular dish can be next to impossible to pinpoint.
