Bulgaria

Banitsa is a Bulgarian breakfast and dessert pastry which appears in both sweet and savory forms: one sweet type is particularly popular at Christmas. (Other spellings of the pastry include Bonitza, Bonitsa, or Banica.)

A homemade banitsa can look rather like a large souffle. There, though, the resemblance stops, since banitsas are built up using layers of buttered phyllo dough. The filling of the savory type can involve eggs, feta or other white cheese, and sometimes yogurt. The soft filling ingredients are layered alternately with the phyllo dough, and the whole business is then baked (although sometimes, in its fast-food form, it's fried: and you'll sometimes hear people in Bulgaria complaining about the presence of too much oil in the finished product). Banitsa bears some slight resemblance to strudel, and this is probably the cause of the pastry being referred to rather bizarrely as "sheep's cheese strudel" in the English-speaking media during the celebrations of the EU's 50th birthday, where this pastry was one of the 27 national desserts served. Both the sweet and savory versions are likely to appear as a dessert.

Savory forms of banitsa can include spinach, herbs, milk, or pumpkin. When the pastry becomes part of the holiday celebration, the banitsa may contain small charms, coins or sayings written on paper meant to bring luck to the one who finds the token in the piece they're served.

The recipes...

Local name: Hajver ot gris

• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon tomato paste diluted with a little water
• 2 tablespoons semolina
• 50 ml sunflower or olive oil
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon finely grated onion

Heat 125 ml water with the salt in a small nonstick saucepan. Add tomato paste: bring to boil. Sprinkle in semolina gradually. Stir constantly! Cook over medium heat until thick solid mass forms -- about 4 minutes. Move to mixing bowl: cool. Beat in the oil very slowly, drop by drop: then the lemon juice and the grated onion. Season to taste.

• An excellent Bulgarian recipe collection at Recipes4Us.co.uk
  
• A small collection of Bulgarian recipes at Minnie's Kitchen
  
• Bulgarian National Cuisine
  
• Recipes from the newsgroup soc.culture.bulgaria
  
• Recipes from Ralitsa's Kitchen