"A sea fish takes as much salt as it needs", is an old culinary saying. In translation, sea fish is difficult to over-salt regardless of whether you boil, fry or bake it. The best confirmation for that is salted fish, which is not on the menu in all fish restaurants. Šazi Nimanbegović says that fish in salt is one of the specialties of the house that is increasingly in demand.
"It's always more than a meal with us," says Nimanbegović.
Fish is part of the traditional cuisine of the Ulcinj area. Site visit-montenegro.com reports that there is neither a more beautiful area nor more delicious food than Ulcinj. Even gourmets who have visited Ulcinj and its famous and widely known restaurants, such as the fish restaurants on Ada Bojana, would say so. You can't even imagine how many smells and tastes, various dishes prepared in an oriental style or in the way the old Montenegrins used to prepare them, or prepared according to the latest recipes of world cuisines, you can try in Ulcinj hotels, restaurants or on open gardens or terraces.
Well versed in the "little secrets of the great kitchen masters", they will advise you that it is best to taste something typically Montenegrin during the first few days of your vacation in Ulcinj: as an aperitif - local wine, made from the highest quality grape variety. With such an aperitif, those who are frequent guests of the Montenegrin coast know that a slice of well-dried cheese or oil cheese, which is an indispensable part of the menu, goes best. When thinly sliced dry prosciutto is added to that, then you can consider that you have been treated to three basic products by which Montenegro is recognized in the world. If we add to that, that with lunch, which can be a piece of nicely roasted meat, everything can be well washed down with red wine, and you will get a series of several products that are trademarks or trade marks of "Montenegro".
"Although, in the menus of various restaurants in Ulcinj you can try almost all fish and meat dishes, tourists who come to Ulcinj from different parts of Europe and the world prefer to eat Mediterranean specialties, such as dishes that are rich in seafood. Friendly hoteliers from Ulcinj usually offer guests excellent specialties such as: risotto with seafood, garnished lobster, shrimp, mussels, fingerlings, oyster soup, octopus salad... The proposed menu is not far behind the offer of meat dishes and specialties: mixed, boiled, baked, steaks...", it says on the website.
Most of the tourist places in the world, apart from the cultural-historical or other sights that make that tourist destination interesting for tourists, also have a good reputation for their culinary specialties, that is, the dishes of the traditional cuisine of that area. Believe me, the same is the case with Ulcinj. When you try famous dishes such as Ulcinj japraci or okra, you will understand why old Ulcinj women, especially their mothers or grandmothers, were skilled housewives, and why they knew how to make Ulcinj cuisine as delicious as possible, and traditional dishes as tasty as possible.
For a dish like japraci, you need local raštan, that is, a type of cabbage, which is grown in Montenegrin households. Beef, oil, onion, rice, pepper, parsley and some dry meat are also used to prepare this dish. Japraki are a traditional dish from Ulcinj, and they are prepared similar to the famous sarma, except that instead of sauerkraut leaves, the mixture required for japraki is wrapped in leaves of young shaved raštan.
By and large, okra is a famous specialty. It is a type of vegetable-like plant. It has a woody shrub, like a hibiscus, and it arrived in Ulcinj from the Orient, more precisely from Abyssinia and the East Indies. It has a pod similar to hot peppers. Most often in Ulcinj, okra is used, along with veal, onion, salt, pepper, allspice, fresh tomatoes and parsley, with the addition of water. After stewing the onions and meat, it was eaten with other ingredients needed for preparation, simmering on low heat for about half an hour. During this time, okra and onions are lightly fried in another pan. When the okra softens, they are added to the already prepared mixture with meat, and everything is put together in a clay pot and baked in the oven for about 5 minutes. So, you can try one of the two most commonly prepared Ulcinj specialties if you wait patiently in an Ulcinj restaurant for the 40 minutes it takes for a skilled cook to make a very tasty and, most importantly, traditional Ulcinj dish.
"As famous dishes from the grill, Ulcinj restaurateurs will often recommend kebabs in a flatbread, while the famous bureks - with cheese or greens, you can try in numerous pastry shops or burekdzijnikas".
When you try the famous Ulcinj desserts, which, in addition to baklava, tulumb or alva in different ways, also include pizza with dried figs, you will understand why young Ulcinj women, especially newly married women, try to copy from old culinary notebooks and learn to prepare as many typical Ulcinj or long-forgotten dishes as possible according to the old recipe. A new taste of sea bass
It is necessary:
- sea bass of 1 kg
- two cloves of garlic
- 3 kg of coarse sea salt
- 2 egg whites
- some water.
<strong>Preparation: </strong>
Egg whites and a little water are poured into the salt and everything is mixed. Put finely chopped garlic in the cleaned fish. Cover the bottom of a deep pan with salt, put the fish and the rest of the salt on top so that the fish is covered for the entire hour.
Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. After that, shake off the baked salt from the fish, and serve the fish with boiled potatoes and a sauce made of homemade olive oil, garlic and parsley. The baked salt, which has been removed from the fish, is no longer usable.
Bonus video:
