Vegan MoFo - Stopover 10 - Serbia

If you've been following along with my theme this month you may recall how surprised I was to draw the neighbouring countries of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina last week. Can you imagine my amazement when Serbia (which borders both Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina) was drawn in the next batch of countries? This was the third neighbour out of 10 countries drawn so far from the pool of 196 countries!

I've been a bit cunning at times with these themed dinners by adding in a leftover dish from another country if I thought it would suit as I hate to waste food. There were heaps of black eyed beans with chard remaining from our Cypriot meal so I was happy to pair them with a simple Serbian vegetable based dish of sauteed capsicums/bell peppers with onions and tomatoes along with some home-made bread to round out the meal.

A flatbread called Lepinja stood out most amongst the many types of traditional Serbian breads to choose from. I used this recipe and simply substituted the minimal amount of cow's milk to soy. After conducting some google image searches for Lepinja, I used one of the methods of presenting it by scoring the top of the bread and topping it with sesame and nigella seeds. This bread was really lovely, very fluffy on the inside and perfect for mopping up the juices on our plates.

Sataras which is also known in Bosnian as Satarash can be compared with a stripped down version of ratatouille as it's cooked in a similar style yet it doesn't contain any eggplant or zucchini. This was a simple dish which wasn't the most amazing dish on it's own although paired with the beans and bread it worked really well and we did find the complete meal enjoyable and satisfying.

Hope you all have a great weekend! Around the world in 20 days will continue on Monday and I have some other non-themed posts planned until then.


Sataras

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 small onions, thinly sliced
pinch of raw sugar
1 red capsicum (bell pepper), cut into long 2cm wide strips
1 yellow capsicum (bell pepper), cut into long 2cm wide strips
1 green capsicum (bell pepper), cut into long 2cm wide strips
1 x 400g tin diced tomatoes

1/2 teaspoon vegetable stock powder
salt and pepper, to taste

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a deep sided frying pan and cook the onions with a pinch of sugar for 5 minutes or until softened. Add the capsicums and fry, stirring often for 10 minutes or until the capsicums have softened slightly. Stir through the tinned tomatoes and vegetable stock powder and cook until the capsicum are tender. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Did you know?

Over a third of the raspberries grown in the world come from Serbia. Frozen fruit exports make up a substantial part of Serbia's economy.

Do you want to know where else I've been this month? Click here for the round up.