Cicvara

Ingredients (for 4 meals):

• 60 kg of potatoes
• 10 kg of butter
• 10 kg of cream
• 10 dkg of young or semi-fat cheese
• a spoonful of wheat flour

Dressing:

• 2 dag of butter and grated cheese

Preparation:

Potatoes are boiled, peeled and mashed as for puree. Put butter in a pan, add a teaspoon of flour, stir, add cheese and cream, melt everything, and then let it boil. Potatoes are added to this and mixed. Flour (wheat or corn or a mixture of both flours) can be used instead of potatoes.

Serving:

Cicvara is placed on plates, spread evenly and make puddles with a spoon. Season the boiling tin with olive oil. It’s a very filling meal and it doesn’t go well with bread. Sour milk is most often served with it. Somewhere, cicvara is served with Herzegovinan honey.

Occasions when food is prepared and eaten:

Cicvara is a traditional dish that our ancestors prepared almost every day or at least very often. You couldn’t imagine a house without a good kitchen. Unfortunately, the last decade has been very neglected, for no reason, because old-fashioned cicvara is a tasty and high-calorie dish, even healthy if you put good dairy products and wholemeal flour in it. Cicvara is considered a breakfast dish, but it can be prepared and eaten at any time of the day.

Interesting facts about the dish:

In the Herzegovina region, potatoes were used instead of cornmeal for cicvara.

Narodna pripovijest o cicvari:

Pošla dvojica u mlin, pa “kako je bila silna žega, ai posustali, svrnu oni s konjima u hlad u jednu dolinu. Tu izvade brašenice, da malo založe, pa da opet nastave put. While slathering hard rye bread with sharp cheese, someone suddenly thought:
‘Eh! da mi je ovu dolinu napuniti cicvarom.’ ‘Pa je dobro začiniti’, dočeka drugi. ‘Pa onda za kašike, odmah sa sriede’, prvi će. ‘Kakve sriede! Nego s kraja, pa redom!’ ‘Da šta, nego sa sriede! Na sriedi se slijeva sva mast!’ ‘Šta se slije na sriedu? Ta bismo li cicvaru naboli kašikom? A kako bi došao na sriedu, e? Zar gaziti Božiji nimet.’ (…) Tu rieč po rieč, pa dođe do šaka; mlate jedan po drugome, kao da su na ustjen pogodili; nijedan ne gleda kud udara. Od ove se tučnjave poplaše i pootkidaju konji im, pa kao striele natrag kući. Tako se i njih dvojica mašući rukama vrate kući, držeći svaki šta je uhvatio. Kad ih u selu upitaše, tko ih pobi, odgovoriše: ‘Cicvara’.”

Cicvara is included in the World Food Atlas. HP Mostar issued a postage stamp on which Cicvara was depicted.