World Cuisine
Zeppelin
tastes good in
Lithuania z
You walk into the room and immediately, wham! This unique aroma tackles you in your stomach. Pound of home-cured chopped bacon, two large onions fresh picked from my grandma’s garden and a quart of homemade sour cream, all sautéed tigether and poured over cepelinai. This is not your typical low fat meal, but oh it’s worth every single calorie. Sandwiched between Poland and Latvia, Lithuania, is a well known for its creative approach of cooking potatoes. Lithuanians either stuff everything with potatoes or they stuff potatoes with everything, pour lots of fried sour-cream, bacon and onion mixture over it, and there is a dish to die for.
Cepelinai, Lithuania’s national dish, derives its name from the German airship Zeppelin and combines potatoes, bacon, onions and sour cream with spectacular results.
Since I was born and raised in Lithuania, I can count at least twenty dishes my grandma made with potatoes. Our main, and may be even known to some of you, national dish, called cepelinai is made out of grated potatoes and ground meat, and is formed similar to dumplings. Sounds simple?
18 February s a v e u r.c o m
Must have holiday meal in Lithuania—cepelinai.
Well…that’s what my boyfriend thought last weekend when I told him I would like to make it. He still swears that he found some ground potatoes in our guest bedroom two days later. The recipe involves many steps during the preparation and it is very labor intensive. Peeling, grating, boiling, mashing, squeezing, chopping, frying, grinding, then stuffing and boiling again. It’s a must have during major holidays. I’ve tried this dish in many places, but nothing comes close to my grandma’s cepelinai.
Lithuanian cold beet soup—saltibarschiai.
Saltibarsciai—a cold beet, buttermilk and vegie soup, is a great refreshing starter, or is often served together with cepelinai. You can find recipes for both cepelinai and saltibarschiai at saveur.com.