We, at Bread Houses Network, love to gather and unite people from different backgrounds to experience the variety and beauty of life through making bread or other exciting art or culinary events. That’s why we’re very happy when opportunities like the following take place in Bulgaria. We are proud to organize series of culinary events between the months of April and August 2019 as part of the project Diverse together- sharing of bread and stories, Plovdiv 2019- European capital of culture. More about the idea of the project you can read in our Projects section. The events are 9 spread around the cities of Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna as we just closed the project in the first two.
Our culinary journey started in Lebanon with a non-traditional recipe for an Easter cake and some special Lebanese sweets. Dates, honey, spices- all that subtle exotica of the Middle-eastern country brought to us thanks to the chef Hani Tauk who also specializes in french pastry and owns one of the best bakeries in Sofia. Next, to balance and broaden our taste receptors we opted for American raspberry pies which made us feel the joy of life more! Thanks to Casey Angelova, who is a culinary blogger and a farmer of pure organic products among the picturesque gardens of Kyustendil, we enveloped the juicy raspberries in a gentle crispy butter dough to have this magic melt in our mouths. Bulgaria being on the crossroad between the west and east, has a bit of oriental influence in its cuisine. But it’s nothing like the original so we decided to end our Sofia events with another Middle eastern fair of flavors and invited our guests to Lebanese (yes, we love that country and cuisine!) appetizers and a special tea. Salha and Rim were so kind and smiling all the way through the process of showing us how to prepare the most famous Arabic salads- humus, baba ganush and tabule. And the pistachio baklava for desert…A fantastic end of a colorful Diverse together culinary sessions!
Plovdiv wasn’t a less of experience: we flew in our imaginations and through our taste buds to India, England and Italy. Culinary workshops were never that exciting, especially when you start around the Inian oven tandoor and bake amazingly fresh and tasty naans filled with equally mouth-watering Indian dishes. The chef Pramod Singh kindly guided us through his exotic culinary world and we expressed our gratitude and excitement through the Theater of crumbs. Our exploration continued in Anglia school whose director Keith Kelly from England demonstrated a fast but exciting recipe for a Sunday morning breakfast (or any other part of the day)- Yorkshire pie. With only lemon juice and sugar or strawberries and cream, even with a salmon and cream cheese- we couldn’t get enough! The grand finale of the Plovdiv culinary series happened in the chocolate factory Gaillot where the French pasta expert Florian Dulliard taught us how to prepare a fresh pasta ourselves. Quite easy, it turned out! And delicious with freshly made marinara and pesto sauces! You can guess the desert- bits of bio chocolate but you’ll become too jealous so I’ll stop here.
More to come as we leave for Varna next month!
