Series: Slavka’s filo pastries
In Bulgarian cuisine, “Tsiganska (or Ciganska) banitsa”, translated as “Gypsy banitsa”, is a slice of fresh, preferably hot bread seasoned with sweet paprika, salt and oil.
As mentioned in the previous post of this thread, Slavka, a friend of mine, makes the best banitsa in our area. Or at least the best I have ever tried. She focuses on the filling, not the filo crust. Being from a younger generation and into the North American fashion of eating little or no bread, she uses the filo sheets sparingly. Often, she’ll use half a filo sheet for a roll full of tasty content. So, the filo sheet for her is just to hold together the ingredients rather than the other way around. This is my opinion.
I, being from the older generation that grew up with food rationing, bread was and still is a staple. Often almost all we’d have on the table was bread.
My mom used to make us the so-called gypsy banitsa, which is actually a slice of bread drizzled with sunflower oil (olives don’t grow in Bulgaria and olive oil was unavailable) and a pinch of salt and paprika. We ate everything with bread. Even rice and potato dishes. I wasn’t allowed to leave the table before I finished my thick slice of bread. The bread, made in small bakeries, was delicious. There was little variety. It was either a white or a black bread and, in many places, just white. We’d get the white bread. My parents would send me daily to buy a loaf of bread. It was always hot, just taken from the oven. By the time I was back home it would be half gone (To this, I can attest: it still happens, especially when our local store has fresh-from-the-oven breads as Diana walks through the store. To her credit, she always brings at least half the loaf home – A). It smelled and tasted so good.
Bread is still a staple in the Balkans, and in all Southern Europe for that matter. Have you been to Spain or France or Italy? Bread – really good bread – is what people will eat together with their dishes, no matter what. As a matter of fact, I used to live and work in Belgium. Bread there was a staple too.
And they are healthy and happy. Dieting is not in their frame of mind. It all boils down to the natural way of life. Walk or bike to work, stores and markets where one buys their fresh produce daily! I still cook almost every day and for the longest time here in Canada I used to shop daily. Until it dawned on me that this was a futile exercise, since the produce here is driven in trucks for days, then stored in warehouses for days or weeks before it reaches the grocery chains and then me, by which time all the fresh goodness is long gone.
So, when it comes to banitsa, I’d say my Serbian neighbour makes the best banitsa for my generation with the thick home-made filo I talked about in the first banitsa post. She uses more or less my mom’s approach.
Banitsa was made from scratch back then, dough first, then make small balls of it, then roll it to thin sheets (they’d never be as thin as the factory-made ones). And because of that it was made for special occasions. My mom would make not only dough for banitsa. She’d roll thin sheets, dry then out and cut them in pieces for macaroni. (Or thinking now, probably cut them and then let them dry). For dessert she’d make milk banitsa. She’d just use an egg and butter spread instead of egg and cheese. Then she’d boil milk with sugar and pour it over the layered sheets. Bake it in the oven and serve either warm or cold. For the New Years Eve, she’d make baklava. Thinly rolled sheets, from freshly made dough, with fantastic chopped walnuts from my granny’s walnut tree. It had to sit in sugar syrup for at least 2 to 3 weeks before it was ready.
I learned from my mom. Nowadays (as described in the first post), I am more generous with the eggs and feta cheese filling. Back then I’d use only 2 eggs (or 3 for the festivities) and a small (less than 100g) piece of cheese. I used to make my dough, of course (how else would I make banitsa) and roll the dough balls to filo sheets. For New Year’s Eve, I’d make the traditional baklava. With fresh walnuts from my granny’s tree.
The time of freezers and frozen filo pasties was yet to come. As a matter of fact, the first time I discovered frozen filo was here in Canada. Someone I visited had made the welcome banitsa and I was curious how she made the filo so thin. She didn’t, she said. She bought it from Highland Farms, a grocery store near by. That’s how banitsa came to my Canadian life.
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