A traditional Bulgarian dessert

[tilia_tomentosa]

osodecanela was gathering pumpkin recipes, so I searched a few recipes in English for the traditional Bulgarian dessert tikvenik (pumpkin banitsa) for him, and I thought it may be a good idea to share them in my own journal too in case anybody else is interested. Alas, we don't have a definite family recipe, and my mother just follows her baking intuition

Comments

[dan4behr]

oh Lord... I can't imagine making your own phyllo (sheet) pastry. I'm sure Brian's sitto (Lebanese for grandmother) did it that way.
I hope you can buy it in the supermarket as we do. Just keep it under a moist towel as you use it and brush liberally with butter.

I'd insist on the walnuts. If I made this with sweet potato (as we mentioned on FB, I'd use chopped pecans). It still sounds very tasty in either variation.

[tilia_tomentosa]

LOL they do sell machine-made phyllo sheets here,but there was no such thing in my grandmother's younger years, and the only kind they sold here in my childhood and adolescence was too dry to roll around the filling.

The older women in my family did teach me to roll pastry sheets, but I never learned to do it very well and wouldn't try it unsupervised. My mother no longer does it either to make a banitsa of any kind. We still roll the Easter cookie dough into the thicker sheets out of which we cut the cookies, but that's easier.

We don't have sweet potatoes or pecans here. :( Maybe it's possible to find imported pecans at some place that sells nuts, but I expect them to be too expensive. I don't think I've even seen sweet potatoes "in person".

[leafshimmer]

Fascinating. I made a savory treat with a filling of spinach, peppers, and a little chopped green squash (zucchini) which I fried with herbs and a little salt before rolling it in sheets of phyllo dough which came from a supermarket and which I prepared as dan4behr described. I made it this year and it was my second year trying it. It's not at all traditional in our family, just something I enjoying sharing with my Mom and sister.

I wonder if this dish pre-dated the introduction of pumpkin which is a New World vegetable... and if so, what was used in those centuries-ago days. Kind of like trying to imagine Italian cuisine before the introduction of tomatoes, also a New World vegetable...

Thanks for sharing!

[tilia_tomentosa]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banitsa

I don't know how old the banitsa generally is and where it was originally invented, but the most popular Bulgarian version in the whole of Bulgaria has a cheese filling and is often made by spreading each sheet on top of the previous one with a layer of filling between them instead of rolling the sheets around the filling.I think the version with cheese and eggs is more modern. The versions with cabbage (Sauerkraut?),leek or spinach filling are made in other regions of the country. There is also another sweet version with apples instead of pumpkin that is eaten as a dessert. I've once eaten a sweet banitsa with eggs, milk and sugar that a friend's mother had made, but I have a very vague memory of it. I'll ask her for the recipe the next time I see her.

What you made sound very interesting, but it's not the zucchini season here. Do you have a particular recipe, or did you just improvise?

[leafshimmer]

It was improvised, based on traditional Greek spanakopita. I forgot to mention that crumbled feta cheese (made from goat's milk) and chopped walnuts were also ingredients.

It sounds as if the dish you describe was originally made with eggs or cabbage and could be sweet or savory and when pumpkin came in, a version involving that was devised. I love thinking about the evolution of food and cookery...

[tilia_tomentosa]

Spanakopita is one of the Greek equivalents of banitsa, and so is this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyropita
Then there is the Turkish börek, which is a little more different:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6rek
As I said, most Balkan cuisine is shared - not exactly the same everywhere, but rather different national and regional variations of the same dishes and drinks. Bulgaria and Greece were both under the Ottoman empire, which influenced their national cuisines a lot. That's why I'm afraid to claim that even the pumpkin banitsa was invented in Bulgaria.

[hettie_lz]

I didn't like pumpkin for a longest time; and only recently I started to eat a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving... So I can't promise I will ever reproduce this one :)

[tilia_tomentosa]

I'm not forcing anybody to make it and/or eat it. ;)

I absolutely love it myself. But I generally like pumpkin, and I also like other versions of banitsa.

[hettie_lz]

:))

[rachelpage]

This is a good recipe to bring at parties and gatherings. It is not a typical dessert.

[tilia_tomentosa]

Oh, it's not "untypical" here, but it takes a lot of work, especially if you don't have one of those little machines and have to grate the pumpkin, so it's not an everyday dessert either.

Which reminds me that I took some step-by-step photos of my mother making it and never got around to posting them.

[rachelpage]

I hope you will post the photos soon :)