Recipes of peace

By Anna Házas

Today (Monday 1 July) marks exactly 10 days since we arrived back in Amsterdam from our memorable trip in Kosovo. In the past ten days we have finished our projects, visited the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, caught up on much-needed sleep, did massive amounts of laundry, said some hard goodbyes and seen each other almost every day. While some members of the group have already travelled home for the summer, most of us third-years stayed in the City of Bikes to enjoy the calm before the storm, aka the last week before graduation.

(Us after the last class –and our last day of uni!!– with Austin)

I spent the past ten days in a whirlwind of emotions: nostalgia, excitement, anxiety, happiness and sadness, equating to a constant ambivalent feeling of bittersweet longing for both the future and the past. My longing was for the warm and happy days we spent together in Kosovo--longing for more sunshine to enjoy my last days in the city. Longing for the first time I arrived in Amsterdam. Remembering the refreshingly cold turquoise-blue water of Lake Gazivoda. Hoping for a successful internship application. But I guess this is just how change works, it is often not easy, but all the more necessary. 

Change is important for individuals and societies alike. During this past month we learned that while conflict is terrible and often has serious consequences, it is also a point that brings about a fertile ground for change. Especially post-conflict, societies are presented with an array of opportunities to reconcile and do better, not by returning to old structures, but by imagining and working towards a shared future. Another important thing we learned was the importance of acknowledging and recognizing the similarities among different groups and traditions, and not only the differences. 

That is exactly what we aimed to do with our project (together with Chynna, Demir and Ousman), which was the creation of a cookbook with 12+1 recipes that we gathered from interviews with locals. Our goal was to showcase our findings about how nuanced some differences were between the culinary traditions of the two majority groups in Kosovo. The recipes in the booklet are paired up based on the similarity of their end products. Essentially, each dish features two recipes, one from Serbian (left) and one from Albanian (right) traditions. You can find the book here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N569N5gQB85XtvAbYt0jXLREAx4u55ZO/view?usp=sharing 

A positive surprise from our project was that rather than claiming certain dishes as their own, people tended to be quite aware of each other’s traditions, leading to several instances of “Oh this is practically Dish XY, but we call it Dish YZ” during our interviews. 
Working on a project about food and culinary traditions was especially interesting for Demir and me, since we both grew up in Eastern Europe (him in Bosnia, me in Hungary). After arriving in Kosovo, we soon realized that many local dishes had Bosnian and/or Hungarian variations as well. One of the clearest examples of this is stuffed peppers, for which the Serbian and Albanian recipes can be found on pages 9&10 in our cookbook.

While I really enjoyed learning about the different takes on the same dish, I must say that I like Hungarian stuffed peppers the most. For this reason, I'm sharing with you my mom’s recipe below, please enjoy!

Töltött paprika (Hungarian take on stuffed peppers)

Ingredients: 

/For the filling

• 150g rice (cooked halfway)
• 500g minced pork
• 1 onion
• 1 tablespoon paprika powder
• Salt & pepper to taste
• 1 egg
• 6-8 sweet Hungarian peppers

/For the sauce

• Oil
• 1 liter tomato passata
• 3-5dl water
• 2 tablespoons of tomato paste
• 2-3 pieces of celery
• 2-4 tablespoons of sugar
• 1 tablespoon flour
• Salt & pepper to taste

(Boil before putting in paprika)

Recipe:

1. Cook the rice halfway. In the meantime, chop and sauté one onion. Once done, combine them in a bowl with the minced pork, the paprika powder, the egg and the spices.
2. Remove the stem and seeds from the paprikas. Stuff the peppers loosely, because the filling will expand a little as it cooks. If you have remaining stuffing, make ~5cm diameter meatballs. Set them aside.
3. In a big pot, heat up some oil and add the flour, creating a white roux. Add in the tomato paste and keep whisking. Slowly start adding the tomato passata and the water. Add in celery, sugar, salt and pepper and bring it to a boil. Make sure the bottom does not burn.
4. Once the sauce starts boiling, reduce the stove to medium heat and add in the stuffed peppers (but not the meatballs yet). Cook for 30-45 minutes, or until the paprikas start to wrinkle. Once they do, add in the meatballs and cook for another 15 minutes.
5. Serve in itself, or with bread or boiled potatoes. Enjoy!

While we undoubtedly had lots of fun while in Kosovo, interviewing people about culinary traditions taught me a valuable lesson. During my time there, I learned to recognize and appreciate a more nuanced approach to conflict and peace alike. I learned that things are not black and white, and that there are no right or wrong sides when it comes to the people themselves. It is often the leadership and societal structures that echo the harmful narratives of high politics to the people. 

Meanwhile it could be that all people want is to make stuffed peppers based on their own mothers’ recipes and then, to enjoy them in peace. Thus acceptance, cooperation and change are all core ingredients for the recipes of peace.