Not Just Stew · The atlas · A working atlas of the world's cooking

The Slavic east and the Balkans · Volume 30, The Living Culture, the Roman Vein and the Rose Valley

Kavarma

Bulgaria

Kavarma, a Bulgarian slow-cooked pork and pepper stew from a clay pot: a small round unglazed clay pot with its lid resting alongside, dark reddish brown chunks of tender pork and soft collapsed strips of red pepper in a thick reduced sauce.

Illustration

Time
1 hour 40

Bulgaria, the clay-pot slow stew that is the clearest demonstration here of rung two.

As tradition built it

Serves 4 to 5. About 2 hours; 1 hour 40 minutes in a clay pot from a cold oven.

Ingredients

  • 700 to 800 g pork shoulder or leg, in bite-sized pieces
  • optional 100 g smoked bacon
  • 4 tbsp oil
  • 2 large onions, in half-moons
  • 2 peppers, one red and one green, in strips
  • 1 carrot, in rounds
  • 200 g mushrooms, halved
  • 2, or 200 ml purée tomatoes
  • 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • 1 tsp savory
  • to taste salt and black pepper
  • optional 100 ml white wine
  • about 100 ml water
  • 1 bay leaf

To serve

Method

  1. Heat the oil in a frying pan over a high heat and fry the meat 4 to 5 minutes, until sealed. Add the bacon and fry 2 minutes more.
  2. Add the onion and cook 3 to 4 minutes. Add the carrot, peppers and mushrooms and stew 5 minutes.
  3. Move everything into the clay pot (gyuvech). Add the tomatoes, garlic and spices, the wine and about 100 ml water, stir gently, and add the bay leaf.
  4. Put the lid on, set it in a cold oven, and turn the oven to 170°C. Bake about 1 hour 40 minutes.
  5. Uncover for the last 10 minutes to brown lightly, or if the sauce is thin.
  6. Rest 15 minutes so the sauce thickens, and scatter with parsley.

Notes

The recipe is Dani's, of Domashna kuhnya s Dani. Ivanka Kavrakova's butcher's kavarma, on Ivan Zvezdev's site, fries neck in strongly heated fat with leeks, braises it 20 minutes in red wine and sauerkraut brine until only fat remains, then bakes it an hour at 160°C from a cold oven. Neither uses chicken or thyme.

What a modern chef changes

A sous vide confit and a charred pepper base, keeping the clay pot's own logic intact

Rung 2

Method

  1. Sear the meat hard first for real Maillard colour.
  2. Confit it at a controlled low sous vide temperature before its final turn in the clay pot, concentrating flavour without the risk of overcooking a leaner cut.
  3. Char the peppers directly on the Big Green Egg before pureeing them into the sauce base.
  4. Dehydrate a portion of onion first to intensify its sweetness before it goes into the pot.
  5. Blend the pot's own reduced juices smooth and pass through a chinois.
  6. Finish with a bright herb oil rather than chopped herbs stirred through.
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