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Tarator goes very well with mastika ... I will not start on this topic since the spirits will rise very high with Greek "Ouzo", French "Pernod", "Ricard", "Pastis", Spanish "Anisado", Italian "Sambuca", Turkish "Yeni Raki" (corresponding more to Bulgarian rakia).

Balkan kyopolou

Although we are not inclined to admit it, the fact is that some of the dishes that we take for national pride have come to us from Greece. This has its historical reasons and explanations. To the dishes previously mentioned, we should add Easter bread and drob-sarma (a dish of diced liver, rice and herbs). As for white brined cheese, we will not utter a word because lumps of feta will start flying along before we know it.

It is another issue that many of these dishes have Turkish influence, but this will surely provoke a dispute. Here we can include hotchpotch, kyopolou, kapama, kavarma, baklava and many more. We will only mention shopska salad as it will also provoke a dispute, this time with our Serb neighbours all the way to the Turkish chuban salad. White, green, red, the three colours and all that they symbolize, combined in a dish, best accompanied by a small, fiery appetizer, which will also provoke us to argue as to who has invented it. Yes, but the neighbours say that Shopi were actually Serbs assimilated by Bulgarians and therefore, shopska salad actually is Serbian salad. No matter that it is not prepared in the same way – the pepper is raw and often spicy, the tomatoes and cucumbers are chopped, there is no cheese at all.

Kebapche is also a dividing territory and if we flatten it out, the matter will take the form of meat patties. No matter how strange it may seem to us, they also grill kebapche in Romania, but there they add a strong flavouring of garlic and prefer minced beef. However, Serbian kebapche, again a "national" creation, will really give you a shock. They call them "chepavi", they are not bigger than the little finger of a man's hand and are served 10-15 in number, usually spiced.

The Slavic origin of the Bulgarians is represented by a wide variety of bakery products that definitely out-rival our neighbours as they include banitsa (cheese pastry), tutmanik (cheese cake), pancakes, tiganitsi, katmi (patties), donuts, mekitsi (batter fried in deep oil), flat breads and round loaves. Well, some of them we can find with the neighbours ... Gyuzlemi and Arabic bread which is used for gyros and souvlaki. We will let the neighbours brawl about them, without intervening.

What about lyutenitsa?

Honestly, I could not find Greek lyutenitsa with cheese. Maybe there is. Maybe my grandfather was impressed by what he saw at the time. We will not fight about lyutenitsa. It is a new dish and the ingredients for it, namely tomatoes and peppers, appeared in the region only in the 18th - 19th century. Although most Balkan peoples know some variation of this cooked mixture of ground pepper and tomato, lyutenitsa remains true typical Bulgarian culinary knowledge. In terms of lyutenitsa Bulgarians have shown remarkable cultural flexibility by being able to turn something strange into their own. Well, it turns out that we have created "the Bulgarian version of" each of these dishes, in the good sense.

In conclusion, I would say that the dishes we put on the table should bring us together and unite us rather than divide us. We are so much alike and the same in so many ways that our differences should only be the cause for the exchange of experience and knowledge rather than for strife, as well as for celebration, as we all know how to do it. Cheers!