PoparaPopara

Description

My kids are the fourth generation that eats popara and the second generation that likes to eat popara. Popara hasn’t changed a bit. A cheap meal that is made using bread and water. My parents and their parents used to call this – “beggars meal”. They would eat popara during the rough days of war in the past, when the food was scarce, and there was literally nothing else to eat for days. As much as my parents disliked popara because it reminded them of their distressful childhood, I remember we would make this meal on Sundays for breakfast, sometimes adding crisply fried bacon, and sometimes just sugar… All the memories of the smell of the meals eaten with your family, together and full of love – are colored with happiness in your mind. That’s why the recipe for popara could easily start with subtitle: Recipe for a happy family.

Intention

In Serbia, they say that popara is a dish whose recipe is as old as bread and water. Depending on whether the popara is eaten because there is nothing else or because this dish is loved – that is how it is prepared. The basic recipe that justifies the nickname of popara “poor man’s’ wound” means that pieces of broken dry, old bread are inserted into a liter pot. To a certain amount (grams) of bread, add double the amount of water (in milliliters) and be sure to a tablespoon of fat (today sunflower or olive oil), and then the sherpa goes on the stove turned on at medium temperature. When the bread partially absorbs water and when it softens, and after lightly mixing with a wooden spoon, add a little salt and cheese or, if you are lucky, cream and crispy bacon.