Image courtesy of Allen Lau on Pixabay
Broccoli lasagna isn’t part of the Bulgarian national cuisine. There’s no Italian influence on the cooking of my native country. The original recipe came from a British cookbook for easy-to-prepare meals. The British might have had colonial interests in “the sick man of Europe,” to whom Bulgaria once belonged, but they don’t have much to do with the foods Bulgarians eat on a regular basis either. The territories of what is now modern Bulgaria used to be provinces of the Ottoman Empire. At the end of the nineteenth century, the populations of cities like Plovdiv, where I grew up, were diverse and culturally rich.
In Plovdivska khronika (The Chronicles of Plovdiv), a treasured book in my parents’ library, Nikola Alvadjiev describes the colorful ethnic neighborhoods in my hometown a century ago: Bulgarian, Greek, Armenian, Jewish, Romani, and Turkish. In their work and leisure activities, Plovdiv’s inhabitants commingled peacefully and influenced each other’s practices: coffee drinking, smoking, and cooking. This is probably the reason why I have a tender spot for Yotam Ottolenghi‘s cooking when I’m at home. When I travel, I also seek out restaurants serving Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food. Even though not exactly Bulgarian, this is the type of cooking that speaks to me.
