local historical dishes

,

Local historical

dishes Karst and Reka River Basin

Biosphere Reserve Menu

3Škocjan by DivačaPhoto: Antonio Naglos

Where and what will we eat today?

Karst and Reka River Basin Biosphere Reserve as UNESCO

Location of Programme Man and Biosphere (MAB)

The Karst and Reka River Basin Biosphere Reserve, which became a member of the world network of biosphere reserves in 2004, includes the areas of Divaški prag, Vremščica, Brkini, Prestranek-Slavina Plains, Sajevče Field, Košana Valley and the Snežnik Plateau with the remaining area of Ilirska Bistrica and Kočanija, sur-rounding and creating a route to the river Reka, which forms a magnificent under-ground world in the Škocjan Caves.

Biosphere reserves are locations which were recognized by the UNESCO MAB programme – Man and Biosphere – as places with an extreme biological diversity, a rich cultural heritage and creative people who aim at sustainable de-velopment with their work, and together recognize this specific heritage as a value by implementing scientific knowledge and preserving natural and cultural sights.

5Brce by Ilirska BistricaPhoto: Emil Maraž, Fotoatelje Maraž Ilirska Bistrica

Karst and Reka River Basin Biosphere Reserve Menu

With the desire to present the diversity of the culinary heritage of our region, promote local dishes, sustainable de-velopment and networking by the pro-viders of catering services in this area, and also (as far as possible) contribute to the conservation of agriculture and the landscape, we set ourselves a goal in 2015 to start a campaign »Noble tastes of old Slovenian local dishes« within the Com-mittee for sustainable tourism of this biosphere reserve, including hospitality providers. Our tradition is our identity, comparative advantage and recogniza-bility, whereas integration is our mate-rial, spiritual and social power.

We invited all hospitality providers from Divača to Mt. Snežnik to the cam-paign. We received a response from Ri-hard Baša from Jasen, Vrbin Homestead from Pared and the Restaurant Mahnič in Škocjan Caves Park. They selected as many as thirty distinctive dishes and drinks for you to try from the list of distinctive dishes of the Karst and Reka River Basin Biosphere Reserve, which was prepared on the basis of a workshop

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by Janez Bogataj, PhD., and with the professional assistance of Katja Hrobat Virloget, PhD., Darja Kranjc and Ire-na Iskra Miklavčič. It exclusively in-cludes dishes which were eaten in the area every day or on annual holidays up to the second half of the 20th cen-tury. Some are still eaten, while others are slowly disappearing from everyday menus. As the most recognizable, dish-es are set out which are included in two out of twenty-four gastronomic regions of Slovenia within the context of the Gastronomy Development Strategy of Slovenia. These are: Karst, and Brkini and Karst Edge. Each dish on the menu is carefully described and positioned in space and time. We wish you a lot of pleasure reading and tasting. Welcome in our distinctive time and space.

Aggregated list of offered dishes, desserts and drinks on the menu

Spring dishes, desserts and drinks: barley, cooked shoulder, aspic, cod with tomato and polenta, chicory with vin-egar, pancetta, beans and hot potatoes, fried elderberry flowers

Summer dishes, desserts and drinks: bean minestrone, bean soup with green beans, sour beans with egg

Autumn dishes, desserts and drinks: potatoes mashed with kale and/or fresh cabbage (ždroc), kožarica sausage with ždroc and sauerkraut, mushroom gou-lash with potatoes or polenta, mush-rooms with egg, baked potatoes with pancetta, rabbit goulash with polenta, baked apples, plum gnocchi

Winter dishes, desserts and drinks: jota hot pot, cooked potatoes and sauer-kraut (krompir v zevnici) with pancet-ta, pork with krompir v zevnici, black pudding with sauerkraut or turnip, liv-er sausage ( jtrnca)

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Where can we find these dishes?

Rihard Baša s. p., Jasen

Offer of historical dishes throughout the year

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Spring:• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• Aspic – home-made Easter gelatinous dish from pig legs and cow bones

• Cod with tomato and polenta – air-dried unsalted Norwegian cod with tomato sauce and locally har-vested polenta made from the old va-riety of corn (trdinka)

• Fried elderberry flowers – elder-berry flowers picked on a sunny day at 12pm, placed in mixture of home-made flour, eggs and milk and fried in oil

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Summer:• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• Sour beans with egg – home-pro-duced cooked beans, egg and onion, topped with lard and apple or wine vinegar

Dishes, desserts and drinks con-sumed throughout the year: pan-cetta, dried sausage, home-made pro-sciutto, Karst sheep and Brkini cheese, barley with dried meat*, apple juice, fruit spirit (sadjevec), plum spirit (br-kinski slivovec), Karst gin (kraški brin-jevec), Brkini dumplings (brkinski štruklji), plum gnocchi*

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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Autumn:• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• Rabbit goulash with polenta – stew made from domestic rabbit with locally produced polenta from an old corn variety (trdinka)

• Baked apples – peeled and cored home-grown apples stuffed with wal-nuts and honey and baked in the oven with butter

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Winter:• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• Liver sausage (jtrnca) – well-dried liver sausage with intestine as a topping with lard

• Cooked potatoes and sauer-kraut (krompir v zevnici) – indig-enous potatoes cooked together with home-made sauerkraut from cabbage of a later variety

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Throughout the year:• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• Barley with dried meat – home-made soup with barley, beans, pota-toes, parsley, porcine dry meat, to-mato sauce and lard

• Plum gnocchi – home-made po-tato gnocchi stuffed with sweetened stoned Brkini plums or plum jam, topped with butter and bread crumbs

Stories about offered dishes

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Spring: Easter menu• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Aspic is a traditional dish for Easter also in Jasen.

Housewives used to prepare cod with to-mato on Easter Friday, whereas on Christ-mas Eve they usually prepared a cod spread. Cod was the cheapest fish that could be purchased by the people of Ilirska Bistrica and surroundings in the local shops before the Second World War. Due to excessive fishing, today the price of this fish is at least ten times higher than it used to be.

Fried elderberry flowers were usually served as dessert after a meal.

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Summer: Worker’s snack• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Sour beans with egg were a frequent nu-tritious and – due to vinegar – consistent

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worker’s meal (marenda), which used to be carried by the people of Ilirska Bistri-ca and surroundings, who mostly lived on agriculture, with them to a field or a remote forest where they worked. It is interesting that wine vinegar in addi-tion to apple vinegar was also common here. It was sold in surrounding villages and also in Jasen at the time of the Aus-tro-Hungarian Monarchy by the resi-dents from a nearby Istrian village of Mune, who are said to be descendants of Balkan aborigines who came to this area 400–500 years ago.

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Autumn: Better autumn lunch• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

The biggest storage of food was availa-ble in autumn, therefore there were also a lot of rabbits in the barn. For a better Sunday lunch ( južna) or at the end of mostly important farm chores (likof ), the locals treated themselves with rab-bit with potato polenta (white).

Deliciously baked apples were usually prepared in this time of year in Jasen for an afternoon snack (mala južna). This was a highly calorific dish, which was eaten for strength.

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Winter: Everyday winter dish• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

It is a tradition in Jasen to smoke a liv-er sausage slightly, but only for the aroma. The local way of drying meat products has always been something be-tween that of the Karst and Notranjska regions. The meat was dried in drying rooms, which were located in every in-digenous residence, for not more than twenty minutes with juniper branch-es being put on the fire. Sausages were then kept in a pantry (cellar) in a stone filled with lard, as the stone maintained appropriate temperature.

Cooked potatoes and sauerkraut (krompir v zevnici) is considered to be a distinct Slovenian dish of the Brkini gastronomic region. Housewives like to prepare it even today, since due to the acid in the cabbage the surface of the potato hardens and thus does not tend to overcook, not requiring a lot of at-tention and work from the cook. Kro-mpir v zevnici has been a frequent dish for lunch or an afternoon snack in the Ilirska Bistrica region from time imme-morial. With a spoon of lard or mor-ka (cracklings fried in melted butter)

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instead of sausage, krompir v zevnici was often prepared even in the summer.

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Throughout the year: A light everyday dish and popular dessert

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Although barley minestrone has been entered as a well-known Slovenian dish of the Karst gastronomic region, house-wives in the Ilirska Bistrica region also prepared it for an everyday lunch. It was eaten throughout the year, howev-er, additions differed depending on the time of year. Thus, more dried meat was included in the barley in winter, and more vegetables in the summer and autumn. Fresh or dried beans are avail-able throughout the year. As barley as a dish is easily digestible and does not give a feeling of satiety, it was not very popular among people and was con-sidered a less favourable dish. There was not much meat in it and when it ran short, housewives usually used bones for cooking. So it happened that a housewife cooked barley twice with the same prosciutto bone, which she gave afterwards to her neighbour for a third cooking.

Plum gnocchi was eaten in the Ilirska Bistrica region as a main dish for an af-ternoon snack (mala južna) throughout the year (dried fruit, jam). Although plum gnocchi is the best and therefore the most popular and well known, the housewives in Jasen, Janeževo Brdo and other surrounding villages prepared them with other seasonal fruits such as cherries.

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The story about the chef

My name is Rihard Baša, I am a pro-fessional chef who has been happily doing his job for thirty years and I am interested in everything related to this profession, also the culinary tradition of places where I come from and live. I prepare the offered dishes or menus in original locations in front of the guests with an explanation. Dishes can be of-fered in the context of trips around the area of the Škocjan Caves Regional Park and the Karst and Reka River Basin Biosphere Reserve.

AddRESS: Jasen 137b, 6250 Ilirska BistricaMoBilE: +386 (0)31 209 629opEning TiME: by agreementdiSTAncE And TiME iT TAkES fRoM ŠkocJAn cAvES: 34km, and half an hour by car

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A proposed site to visit in the surrounding area

old ciTY cEnTRE of iliRSkA BiSTRicA

The old city centre of Ilirska Bistrica is a half an hour walk from Jasen. This is a settlement monument of local im-portance, which dates back to the first quarter of the 14th century. In the town with a central square, the church and ru-ins of the Gradina Castle, the traditional architecture of mills and saws from the 19th century is mixed with buildings with a commercial, financial and admin-istrative character.

AHEC HILL

You can also go on an one-hour hike up Ahec Hill from us along a well-main-tained and marked trail. At the top of the hill, you can visit the ruins of the early Christian church dedicated to St Achatius. Ahec has been populated from the bronze age onwards.

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vrbin Homestead, pared

Offer of historical dishes and beverages throughout the year

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Spring:• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• Vrbin barley – barley minestrone with peas, home-grown carrots, po-tatoes, parsley, garlic and onions, en-riched with smoked pork ribs, pieces of prosciutto or sausage

• Cooked shoulders (Easter time) – traditional salted, smoked and par-tially dried pork shoulder from home reared pigs

• Vrbin aspic (Easter time) – typical Easter aspic from pig feet, ears, tail, calf ’s bones, parsley roots, celery, on-ions, garlic and whole pepper, with the addition of bay leaves and the cooked meat pieces

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Summer:• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• Bean soup (pašta in fžu) – soup made from home produced fresh beans, home-made pasta (bleki) and

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potatoes, peppered and topped with onions roasted in lard

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Autumn:• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• Ždroc – cooked potatoes with kale and/or fresh cabbage, salted, pep-pered and topped with garlic roasted in lard or oil

• Plum gnocchi – our gnocchi filled with Brkini plums

• Kožarica sausages with ždroc and sauerkraut – home-made Vrbin sausages stuffed with meat and mixed pork skin (3:1) with a charac-teristic Brkini side dish

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Winter:• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• Jota hot pot – soup with sauerkraut or turnip with pork

• Kožarica sausages with ždroc and sauerkraut – home-made Vrbin sausages stuffed with meat and mixed pork skin (3:1) with a charac-teristic Brkini side dish

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •


• Vrbin pancetta, dried sausage, home-made prosciutto – dried meat products made from home reared pigs

• Home-made apple juice – mixed home-grown apples pressed into juice, filled in barrels heated to 81°C, slowly cooled and, if necessary, bot-tled.

• Vrbin fruit or plum spirit (sadje-vec, slivovec)

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Stories about offered dishes and beverages

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Spring: Everyday local lunch and Easter delicacies

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Barley minestrone ( ječmen) is a recog-nizable dish from the Slovenian Karst gastronomic region. It was eaten at Vrbin Homestead in all seasons with a piece of black home-made bread as an everyday lunch. If it is prepared cor-rectly, with a sufficient amount of in-gredients and with pork meat, it is still appreciated in the house, thus the lefto-vers are eaten for dinner. It is interest-ing that instead of beans, barley at the Vrbin Homestead was always cooked with peas, which were always produced in abundance here, so that they could be dried as well.

Cooked shoulders were taken for the blessing of the Easter basket in this area on Holy Saturday to church, togeth-er with other obligatory dishes, which were eaten by the family on Easter Sun-day for breakfast. This is still a tradition in religious families of today. Meat in the Christian tradition is the symbol of Jesus’s body.

As long as they can remember, aspic was prepared for Easter Sunday at the Vrbin Homestead, and eaten on East-er Monday if there was any left. Guest were typically served with potica wal-nut cake, cooked shoulders and aspic as a symbol of Easter Sunday. Today, this dish is rarely cooked as it requires ap-proximately three days of preparation (soaking, scraping, washing the meat) and 10 hours cooking, where the fat needs to be regularly scooped off the top of the pot where it accumulates.

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Summer: Stew• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Bean minestrone (pašta in fžu) as a main daily meal at the Vrbin Home-stead was eaten with a piece of bread throughout the year, but in the summer it was prepared only with fresh beans. Unlike other minestrones, no meat was cooked in the bean soup, as it was topped with lard, garlic, onion and flour (roux), which today is no longer a habit. Instead of flour, chefs like to thicken to-day’s minestrones with potatoes, which is a welcome for guests with special die-tary requirements (coeliac disease).

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• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Autumn: popular mashed dish and seasonal dessert

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Potatoes mashed with kale and/or fresh cabbage (ždroc), used to be served at the Vrbin Homestead on Sun-days beside soup and meat cooked in soup in summer or autumn instead of roast potatoes. The latter was also eat-en as a main dish for dinner. It was pre-pared from fresh kale or cabbage, and sometimes from both. Potatoes, kale and/or cabbage cooked together. When the water is poured off, the dish is well mashed and topped with lard. It is a dis-tinctive dish of the Slovenian Brkini gastronomic region.

Plum gnocchi were on the menu for only a short time of the year at the Vrbin Homestead, i.e. in September when the plums ripened. They were al-ways prepared exclusively with freshly stoned fruit. They were eaten as a main dish, topped with bread crumbs and butter and sprinkled with sugar. Today, Vrbin gnocchi are smaller than before. Mrs Marija says that they can only be evenly cooked from the inside and the outside as such.

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Winter: The taste of old Slovenian local dishes is not the same without pork

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Jota hot pot is a recognizable dish from the Slovenian Karst gastronomic region. At the Vrbin Homestead its was eaten as a main dish for everyday lunch. It is in-teresting that in the first half of the 20th century, turnips were also kept on grape skins at the Vrbin Homestead, which was the general practice in the Karst re-gion. At that time, in the area they still had their own vineyards and the cellars. Unlike the conventional method of preparation and storage of sour turnips, which were grated, turnips on grape skins were stored as a whole and grated when necessary. Today, Pared and the surrounding villages have no vineyards anymore.

Vrbin’s hour or two smoked kožarica sausages are sausages stuffed with meat and cooked ground pig skins. The ra-tio of ingredients used to be fifty-fifty; today, the amount of skin is reducing. These sausages were never kept in lard as they quickly go bad and need to be con-sumed within two months. They were eaten in minestrone or cabbage. Today’s

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ratio of conventional and kožarica sau-sages at the Vrbin Homestead is 6:1. There are even less liver sausages from bloody meat, i.e. 2kg per pig.

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Throughout the year: Typical dried meat and drinks

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Typical slightly smoked dry-cured meat products from the Vrbin Home-stead made from home-reared pigs are prepared according to the recipes of our grandparents. In the past, pancetta, dried pork neck (ošokolo) and sausag-es were eaten at the Vrbin Homestead mostly on holidays or for an afternoon snack ( južna), while prosciutto was sold and new pigs bought from the money they received. Only one was saved for the village feast, which was served to the relatives who came to visit. It is in-teresting that the Vrbin family opened the first pancetta on Saint Joseph’s Day (19 March) when Marija’s father name day was celebrated. Thinly sliced and slightly peppered it was eaten with freshly baked bread and dumplings (št-ruklji).

Apple juice has long been known here as these areas have long been known for fruit production. The preparation was the same as today, but it was not boiled, so it was necessary to consume it with-in one or two months after preparation. Then, they said, »it changes to wine«. Juice which began fermenting was poured onto grape skins, or alone into a still to produce fruit spirit (sadjevec). From more fermented juice, vinegar was prepared.

There used to be many high trunk ap-ples of varieties bobovec, štajerska tr-delika and goriška sevka around here in the valley (Potu’ći). Once they were in abundance, apples were ground in the tub at the Vrbin Homestead, cov-ered, and in spring spirit was distilled from them. The latter was drunk by farmers when they were covered with sweat during farm, forestry and mason-ry work.

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The story about the host

The Vrbin Homestead is located on the outskirts of the Škocjan Caves Re-gional Park on the transitional area of the UNESCO Karst and Reka River Basin Biosphere Reserve. Irena, Tomaž, Mrs Marija and our children are work-ing very hard to make the best use of the natural resources coming from Brkini, Karst and Slovenian lstria, and to serve them to our visitors as delicious home-made dishes.

AddRESS: Kačiče Pared 25, 6215 DivačaT: +386 (0)5 763 1065MoBilE: +386 (0)41 473 905W: www.vrbin.siopEning HouRS: Friday from 5pm to 10pm

Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 12pm to 10pm Other days − for groups by prior arrangement

TiME iT TAkES fRoM ŠkocJAn cAvES: 10 min by car

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STRoll ARound THE REnovATEd pondS in lASATkE And pR vRABciH

In the past, the ponds used to serve as a place for providing the livestock with water, and after being renovated they are mainly intended for the conserva-tion of flora and fauna, which grow and live in them and in the surrounding area. You can visit them on foot along a marked path from our homestead and it will take you half an hour.

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Restaurant Mahnič in Škocjan caves park, Matavun

Offer of historical »a la carte« dishes and beverages

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• Karst pancetta (kraška pancet-ta) – geographically protected dried meaty peppered bacon

• Dried sausages• Karst sheep and Brkini cheese –

hard aromatic intensive sheep cheese with a protected designation of origin (kraški ovčji sir) and organic cheese

• Jota hot pot – typical Karst soup with sour turnip or cabbage

• Home-made plum spirit (slivovec) and Karst gin (brinjevec) – pro-tected brandies from domestic Brkini plums and juniper berries with a pro-tected designation of origin (brkinski slivovec, kraški brinjevec)

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Offer of historical menus for groups throughout the year

For groups by prior arrangement.• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Spring:• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• Chicory with vinegar, pancetta, beans and hot potatoes

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Summer:• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• Bean soup with green beans• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Autumn:• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• Barley minestrone with smoked pork meat

• Mushroom stew with potatoes or po-lenta

• Mushrooms with eggs• Baked potatoes with pancetta• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Winter:• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• Cooked potatoes and sauerkraut (krompir v zevnici) with pancetta

• Pork with krompir v zevnici• Black pudding with sauerkraut or turnip• Aspic (žuca)

Offer of selected historical dishes and beverages

for tasting• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •


• Karst pancetta (kraška panceta)• Sausages• Karst and Brkini sheep cheese (kraški

ovčji sir)• Plum gnocchi• Brkini dumplings (brkinski štruklji)• Home-made plum spirit (slivovec)

and Karst gin (brinjevec)

Most dishes are prepared from ingredients delivered by the producers living in the neighbourhood. Some of them in-clude a protected designation of origin. They are prepared according to traditional recipes, but in a modern way.

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Stories about offered dishes and beverages

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Throughout the year: Salty, sour, sweet and disease prevention our way

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Sliced dried sausages, pancetta on a kitchen board and black or so-called mixed bread were usually served to guests when they came to visit in these places. For these opportunities, they sometimes kept a slice of prosciutto, which they nev-er ate themselves. Men also sliced a piece of pancetta for an afternoon snack or dinner. When working on the pasture or field, a combination of cooked pancetta, sauer-kraut and sausage was frequently served.

Sheep grazing in these places was still significant in the 1830s. Among other things, farmers produced sheep cheese for their own use and for sale. In the be-ginning of the 20th century, the industry shrank, but survived, and on the basis of incentives in the 1980s reached such an extent that breeders achieved a protect-ed designation of origin in 2008 for their Karst sheep cheese. Of course, people also produced cow’s milk cheese if the milk was not sold, but this was rarely.

Jota hot pot is a typical main dish, which in the vicinity of Matavun was prepared more frequently with turnips than with cabbage, and was always eaten with a piece of fresh bread. A 200-litre vat of turnips was usu-ally grated for the winter. In the summer the pigs were fed on leftovers. Unlike tur-nips, cabbages require more work (hoeing, spreading with ash, etc.), therefore it was planted in smaller quantities. Jota hot pot is a recognizable dish from the Slovenian Karst gastronomic region.

Home-made spirit was a common drink in these places. It was mostly drank during cooking, when men gath-ered around the still and started »tast-ing« it. Men had a habit of drinking a shot of spirit several times a day, es-pecially during heavier work to prevent a cold. It was always offered to guests. Unlike other types of spirits, Karst gin was not drank so often. It was said that it was more of a »cure«. Brkini plum spirit (brkinski sadjevec) and Karst gin (kraški brinjevec) include a protected designa-tion of origin of the Slovenian gastro-nomic regions of Brkini and Karst.

In the past, plums were often planted in these places near the fields as it was said

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that »plums need manure«. Fresh fruit was used in autumn to prepare gnocchi with butter or a drop of oil and large quanti-ties of grated bread. Some more advanced housewives also prepared them during the year with plum jam, but these were considered not to be real plum gnocchi. Whether it was a main dish or a dessert at lunch differed from house to house.

At the end of work or at major holi-days, the people of Brkini liked to pre-pare dumplings (štruklji), which dif-fer from the others by being filled with walnuts and bread in butter. They are a distinctive dish of the Slovenian Brki-ni gastronomic region.• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Spring: Awakening of nature which leaves us full

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Chicory with vinegar, pancetta, beans and hot potatoes was a common everyday summer dinner in the past.• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Summer: Meat of the poor with a high nutritional value

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In the summer, housewives sometimes prepared bean soup with green beans

for lunch, which was topped with roux, but did not include meat and potatoes. Green beans with potatoes and vinegar was often prepared for dinner.• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Autumn: from izbirčna Metka (picky child) to Brkini pastures and forests

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In the villages in the area of the park, some kind of derivative of Čebular’s song Izbirčna Metka (picky child) from the year 1923 was preserved in connec-tion with barley, which is one of the most recognizable dishes of the Slove-nian Karst gastronomic region. Chil-dren who did not like to eat barley were usually scolded that they were picky when they complained that barley stung them. As it does not make you feel full, barley at the Strmulin Homestead in Betanja was considered »hospital food«.

Brkini is famous for being a land of mushrooms. However, some locals did not know them, hadn’t picked them or eaten them. Some were even afraid to eat them in case they were poisoned. Those who knew a thing or two about mushrooms, prepared them for lunch in autumn as a mushroom stew with

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yellow polenta. Mushrooms substi-tuted meat in this case. Goulash was cooked by adding parsley, garlic and to-mato sauce to the mushrooms.

In Škocjan, there was a wise folk say-ing which says that a mushroom which was eaten by a cow is certainly edible as »cows know mushrooms«. Fried mush-rooms with egg yolk were prepared by »mushroom« families in the Karst re-gion for dinner, or for lunch with po-tatoes.

Baked potatoes with pancetta were eaten in some houses for dinner. Again in other houses, there was not enough pancetta, therefore salted baked po-tatoes were cut in half and were eaten without meat. It was also often pre-pared by shepherds out on the pasture on charcoal.• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Winter: The Brkini snack with meat and sausages and a holiday dish

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Cooked potatoes and sauerkraut (krompir v zevnici) with pancetta was taken to the haymakers in the meadows in the summer for a morning snack (prvi

fruštk), but it was also eaten at home for lunch or dinner throughout the year. Often, pancetta or sausage (pork) was added more as a decoration, however, cooked potatoes and sauerkraut, which today is one of the most recognizable Slovenian Brkini gastronomic regions, was topped with lard or cracklings.

Salty black pudding stuffed with rice and blood (slane mulce) was eat-en in Škocjan when a pig was slaugh-tered (koline); without other additives, or with sour turnip. Thus for lunch, they prepared gruel (prmjtno) with lard, garlic and flour, which they used for topping on fried black pudding and sour turnip. Unlike this habit, in Brkini, sweet black pudding was more common in the Karst part of the Karst and Reka River Basin Biosphere Area, which was eaten as a treat e.g. with barley.

Aspic (žuca) has long been a typical Easter dish, which was served for Easter Sunday stuffed with pieces of pork and sometimes with hard boiled egg.

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The story about the host

Restaurant Mahnič in the Škocjan Caves Park is located within the Park In-formation Centre at the meeting point to visit the Škocjan Caves. The facilities were fully renovated in 2010. They were equipped with a presentation of the pulse of the local life and heritage. We are proud of our homemade recipes, the preparation and service of the old dishes based on local ingredients and prepared in a modern way. We cater for visitors to the park, and weddings, parties, busi-ness meetings, and we also offer quick lunches, brunches and snacks.

AddRESS: Matavun 12, 6215 DivačaT: +386 (0)5 763 2960MoBilE: +386 (0)41 391 075W: www.mahnic.siopEning HouRS: Summer − from 9am to 8pm

In the spring, autumn − from 9am to 6pm Winter − from 9am to 3pm Group reservation − until 3am

TiME iT TAkES fRoM ŠkocJAn cAvES: 0 min by car

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ŠKOCJAN CAVES

The Škocjan Caves are still the only natural heritage in Slovenia entered on UNESCO’s list of world heritage sites. This places them on a special – honour-able – place among the world’s natural monuments. Our restaurant is located at the information centre of the Škocjan Caves Park, only a step away.

Map with the locations of providers and sites

in the vicinity

CROATIA

Ajdovščina Logatec

CerknicaPostojna

Pivka

Ilirska Bistrica

Hrpelje−Kozina

Komen

Sežana

Divača

KOPERIzola

NOVA GORICA

SLOVENIA

BL

OK

E

K R AS

NA

NO

SJ A V O R N

I K I

SN

EŽ

NI K

BR

KI N

I

Škocjanske jame

Stržen

Unica

Obrh

Raša

Rižana

Vipava

Dragonja

TRSTTRIESTE

Piran

GORICAGORIZIA

Pivka

Reka

ITALIJA

ITALy

12

3

67

65

4

1

2

3

5

6

7

4

core area

highway

LEGEND

buffer area

transition area

Rihard Baša s. p. Jasen 137b 6250 Ilirska Bistrica

Ahec Hill

Old City Centra of Ilirska Bistrica

Vrbin Homestead Pared 25 6215 Divača

Lasatke Pond

Pr Vrabcih Pond

Restaurant Mahnič in Škocjan Caves Park Matavun 12 6215 Divača

Text: Rihard Baša, mag. Vanja Debevec, Irena Iskra Miklavčič, Darja Kranjc, Drago Kreš

Informants: Albina Bak – Škocjan by Divača, Rihard Baša – Jasen, Irena Iskra Miklavčič – Pared, Marija Miklavčič – Pared, Tomaž Miklavčič – Pared, Vilma Žnidarčič – Betanja

Photo: Autphoto (Restaurant Mahnič), Tine Bač, Rihard Baša, Martin Babič, Borut Lozej ( JZ PŠJ), Emil Maraž (Fotoatelje Maraž Ilirska Bistrica), Antonio Naglos (Pierpaolo Sonnoli)

Edited by: Darja KranjcTranslated by: Leemeta TranslationsDesigned by: Jerneja RodicaPrinted by: Abakos d. o. o.Number of copies: 1000Published by: Park Škocjanske jame, Slovenija Škocjan by Divača, 2016

The KarstBiosphere Reserve since 2004Man and the Biosphere Programme

United NationsEducational, Scientific and

Cultural Organization

local historical dishes

Documents