Imaginary Recipes

“Imaginary Recipes” is a story of food that sustains people in times of war. Applicable to any extreme situation of poverty and hunger, it is an ode to food, however simple or undesirable it might seem to us under ‘normal circumstances’. I want to memorialize the resilience, ingenuity and creativity, to celebrate the ability to invent something from nothing and present it in such a way that it looks appealing to everybody who sits at the dining table, to believe that they are eating the most delicious foods possible, superbly styled like in the food photos in magazines. 

The photos are executed as still life and I want them to be beautiful, like in those magazine pictures I clipped and taped on my fridge door during the war, so much so that the ingredient in the photo is elevated into something important and worthy of respect.

All of this is hard to imagine for a person who has never gone through a similar situation of having the wolf at the door. This wolf is a howling one who doesn’t let anything or anyone pass by him so those behind the door have to find a way to stave him off by using everything imaginable that’s available to make food.

Each food item is presented with a story, a recipe (or recipes) and several photos - as a raw ingredient and as a prepared dish. 

Once upon many a war, there was a war in a small country called Bosnia & Herzegovina. I wasn’t privy to all its ugly faces (and there were many), but I witnessed the part that was happening in Sarajevo, the only one I can talk about. Each war is different and the victims, who unlike in the wars of previous centuries are mostly civilians, suffer through different circumstances. For me, once you set aside the fear and the daily killing sprees, hunger was the silent killer of the elderly and all those who weren’t street (war) savvy to find food. I come from a middle class family but the blood of past merchants runs through my veins and it gave me the advantage that many didn‘t have.

Beans

The siege of Sarajevo started thirty years ago and lasted one thousand four hundred and twenty-five days. The scars run deep. Memories are triggered by other wars, different in many aspects, the same in monstrosity and barbaric acts.

We (my friends and family) celebrated New Year’s Eve 1993 with an all-bean dinner: bean pie, bean salad, bean pâté, baked beans and bean cake. It wasn’t because we loved beans, but because they were the main part of the humanitarian aid brought to the city by the UNHCR. These were war beans, possibly left over from some other war - small round white ones, known as navy beans, often broken and so old that tiny flies would soon emerge and we would have to face a difficult question: to cook them and eat the flies or to throw them out. (We never did throw them out).

Bean Stew

I’ve read somewhere that beans have such impressive benefits that you could get all nutrients you need for six months. But eating them almost daily, cooked in water, with nothing else to add, only every now and then an onion or a carrot (very rare), or a pinch of paprika or Tabasco, can cause some serious psychological resistance. I remember talking to the beans one day (before eating them dutifully): You are so gray and I can’t stand you any longer. But I did continue eating them, at least as long as I was living in Sarajevo and I am grateful for their existence to this day. They kept us alive.

Recipe

If you are so lucky to have beans (say 500g), soak them overnight in as much water as you can spare (1l, enough to cover); they’ll drink all of it because they are old and thirsty, so you’ll have to add more when you cook them, a little at a time, just make sure they don’t stick to the pot because you don’t want them to burn (of course, you’ll eat them even if they are completely blackened, but no need for that). Now, how do you replace onions, garlic, carrots, smoked meat? Well, if you are so lucky that all your neighbours have left the city at the beginning of the war and gifted you with their spices, you can create magic (salt, pepper, sweet paprika, a bay leaf, oh the luxury!. Maybe you’ve got a bit of oil, so add a drop or two to improve the taste (you’ll thank me for this tip) and then at the end, once the steamy, delicious beans are poured into everybody’s  plates (count on having many hungry mouths at your table), the taste can be elevated to unbelievable heights with a drop of tabasco sauce you saved from the American lunch package you traded on the black market for whatever valuable you could find at home. You cook your stew on the wood stove, which only sometimes you get to feed with wood; instead you burn whatever you can get your hands on - old shoes, books or even briquettes you made yourself from old newspapers. It’s important you use the opportunity to bake your bread at the same time, either in the oven or on the stove top. And when both are ready, dip the warm bread into that delicious bean stew. Bon appétit!

How to Feed a Village with a Meat Can

Here is how. You get a meat can in humanitarian aid, or in a parcel, and you keep it for a special occasion. You had never eaten canned meat, but you’ll find a way to make it palatable and you will surprise your children and share it with as many friends as you can gather. It’s war, so you don’t turn the can to look at the label (if the can is labelled at all), check sodium levels, whether there’s lead in the can, or whatever one comes up with in times of abundance. You are happy for the sodium because you don’t have to use your salt. You just think of the best way to prepare it, and the greasy coating that envelopes the meat adds to your overall happiness because you won’t need to use any oil that costs like gold.

Look for them in the early spring. Avoid those growing in parks turned cemeteries. Think of all the things you will make with that bunch of dandelions that your neighbour, a 19-year-old medical student turned soldier, brought you from the front lines. Ask him to bring you the buds and the flowers as soon as they are out. (You will not regret it.)

Cut the leaves into small pieces and make a risotto. Use as much rice as you can spare because there will be people coming to your door attracted by the prospect of a warm meal. Savour it in the company of friends and strangers. Your children won’t complain about the bitterness and won’t refuse to eat it because they know better; these will be your first greens since autumn. Reward them with stories from your childhood and how eating wild asparagus and dandelions reminds you of nonna’s laughter.