Grilling Out, Balkan Style: Ćevapčići

Looking up Ćevapčići, or Ćevapi online, you may learn that they are of Serbian or Slovenian origin. Perhaps you’ll find a Bosnian recipe, or a Croatian one. You may read about Albanian Qebapa, or Romanian Mititei. My Bulgarian friend has told me about their Kebapche. My Macedonian friend makes Ćevapi at home regularly. If Ćevapi have a home, it is the entire Balkan region of southeastern Europe.

Why is that? The Ottoman Empire.

Over the course of centuries, the entire area as well as \some portions of the middle east and northern Africa came under the rule of the Turks. This has led to a certain similarity among the cuisines of the various former Ottoman states, especially in the Balkan peninsula. Thus Turkish raki becomes Serbian rakia and Bosnian rakja as well as arak in the Levant and even Greek Ouzo. Similarly, Turkish kebab, specifically kofta kebab, became Ćevapi all over the Balkans.

As it happens, Mindy and I had serendipitously tried kofta kebab recently. Late in July, as we drove down 95th Street in Oak Lawn, I happened to notice a sign out of the corner of my eye that read “TACO SHAWARMA”

We stopped in to ask if they did in fact sell shawarma tacos–they do, and they’re fine, the shawarma itself is delicious as is the garlicky Toum it’s served with, but I’d just as soon eat it in a wrap. The taco is fun but seems like a bit of a gimmick. I guess it did its job if it got us in the door though!

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As we were eating though, the proprietor offered us some additional samples–a small plate of exceptionally light and crisp falafel, and a sample portion of their kofta kebab, a hand-formed cylinder of ground lamb, bursting with juices, served on flatbread with tomato, onion, and herbs. It needed no other augmentation. It was outstanding, perfect, and the reason we’ll be back to Kazy Grill.

And this perfect, juicy, seasoned, grilled piece of ground meat is the archetype of the Ćevap. Ćevapi are hand-shaped little logs of garlicky ground meat–beef, pork, lamb, some combination of the three–that are grilled and served with bread, onions, kajmak and/or ajvar. They are similar in fact to Pljeskavica, previously covered by the Tribunal, except that those so-called “Balkan Burgers” are large and disc-shaped and these are the size and shape of a person’s thumb.

A Traveling Pillsbury (Doughboy)

As mentioned in our last few articles, my family spent the early part of the month of August traveling to and from the Pacific Northwest. Eastern Washington, where Mindy’s parents live, is wheat country. Whereas my family’s farm in Missouri can be reliably counted on to be surrounded by either corn or soybeans, theirs has either rapeseed (for canola oil) or wheat as far around as the eye can see. 

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It’s a peaceful, relaxing place, and all that wheat can’t help but make you think bready, sandwichy thoughts.

I’d been asked by the in-laws to come up with some kind of sandwich treat to share with guests at the miniature family reunion we were attending. To be honest, I’d already planned on making something for the group. I didn’t want to waste an entire week-and-a-half of vacation without working on my August sandwiches—my publication deadlines may be self-imposed, but that doesn’t mean I want to shirk them. When I was shopping at the Ukrainian stores for my caviar sandwiches, I noticed something interesting. Every one of them carried Ajvar. 

Ukraine is, after all, directly across the Black Sea from Turkey, and borders several of those former vassal states where the Ottoman Empire spread Turkish-inspired cuisine—Slovakia, Hungary, Romania. I bought a jar of Ajvar, a roasted-eggplant-and-red-pepper spread that is one of the more common condiments for Cevapi. I could not find any kajmak, the salted clotted cream that almost always appears beside Cevapi on Serbian and Bosnian menus, but I bought sour cream, cream cheese, and feta to make a “close-enough” substitute. 

Astonishingly, I even found frozen packages of Bosnian “Lepina” bread, a similar or identical type of flattish bread to Serbian “Lepinja” that would be perfect for making Cevapi.

After our visits to the Ukrainian stores (and our stop at Burger Royal for Mike’s Original Stromboli), we ran to Huckleberry’s Natural Market in Spokane, a sort of organic locavore grocery store, where we bought enough ground beef, lamb, and pork to make a double batch of this Cevapi recipe.

It was at this time that I realized—my in-laws do not appear to own a grill.

It had never even occurred to me to check if there was a grill available. I had just assumed. Who doesn’t at least have a propane grill in their backyard? I mentioned this to my brother-in-law Tim, who leapt into action and saved the day. First, he built a fire in a hole in the ground.

Then, he got out some grilling cages that he keeps in his family’s camper for this exact situation. They turned out to be perfect for the Cevapi.

Day saved, Tim ran off to heroically manage some other crisis, while I ceased to melt down and finished cooking the Cevapi.

The Lepina we’d bought was a good bread, nicely charred, excellent hole structure, but being previously frozen was a little more brittle-textured than we’d hoped. We did find though that a few minutes over the fire revived it beautifully.

So how were these Cevapi, grilled over a hole in the ground, stuffed into thawed Lepina and served with onions, Ajvar, and fake Kajmak?

They were excellent, soul-restoring even. I may have overcooked them a touch—they were less juicy than I’d like, though that could have been since the local ground beef I’d used was fairly lean—but the wood fire flavor more than made up for that. I think Mindy’s family agreed—at least, everybody seemed pretty happy with them.

It’s in moments like that where I feel happiest—seeing something I’ve made being enjoyed by the people whom I love, seeing someone take a bite of a sandwich I’ve made for them and smile. And the most important ingredient in that sandwich wasn’t the pork, or beef, or lamb. It wasn’t the bread, or the onions, or the kajmak or ajvar. It wasn’t even the care and effort that I put into making the sandwiches. It was that fire in the hole in the ground that Tim built. Thanks again, Tim!

South Side Serbian

There are, it turns out, a great number of places in the Chicago area where one can get a decent Cevap. There are some usual suspects—Skadarliya in Brookfield, where I had my first Pljeskavica, or Beograd Cafe, where I’d rather order their amazing burek. In a normal month, I might be able to get to several of them. In the shortened time I had remaining this August, I focused on two that were closer to my home base.

If you live in this area of the country and you pay attention to UPS tracking, you’ve probably seen the name Hodgkins, IL. Big Brown’s Chicago-area sorting hub is located in the extensive industrial district to the town’s southwest, near the interchange between Interstates 55 and 294. There’s a notable change in atmosphere when driving along this stretch of 294. You’ll see town watertowers, highway noise barriers, greenery, and then boom, nothing, openness, just a highway flyover bypassing a sea of loading docks, semi trucks, buildings of corrugated aluminum.

And a restaurant. Stefan Grill is located in the midst of this commercial dystopia, an oasis of hardwood and exposed brick with a COVID-era-friendly pickup window on the southwest side of the building. It’s a bit of an anomaly. According to my friend Vasil, the aforementioned Macedonian, the restaurant is exactly where its owner wanted it to be. Apparently, one of the main careers people from that area of Europe take up when they immigrate to the US is driving trucks. Also, according to Vasil, Stefan Grill serves the best Cevapi in town.

I took advantage of that takeout window at lunchtime one day this month, to try Stefan’s cevapi and a few other menu items that had intrigued me. Stefan Grill’s Cevapi plate comes with fries, diced onions, kajmak, and a piece of their very good Lepinja bread. For a small upcharge, you can request ajvar and extra bread as well. The fries are fairly standard, but the Cevapi are quite good, suffering slightly during the 25 minute drive home but still excellent. 

I also ordered their Veal Ragout, which rather than a thick stew turned out to be a soup, very good, but with an oddly elusive sweet or fruity flavor that tasted like pear to me, burnt marshmallow to my son Damian. The broth was excellent, dotted with beads of fat but not smothered by it, and there were carrots and potatoes and onions… and that maddening flavor. It was delicious though, and I’ll have to go back and try it again to see if it’s still there. 

Finally, there was the “Serbian Sub,” also served in round Lepinja bread rather than a typical elongated sub roll. It’s confusingly also titled “(Zlatiborski)” on the menu. It consists of Cvarci, essentially Serbian chicharrones, with a smoky beef salami and Canadian bacon, a thin swipe of Kajmak, and lots of sweet roasted red peppers. It’s a fascinating sandwich and worthy of another test run one day. 

Soup and a sandwich—or in this case a quarter sandwich—is a classic lunch, and this was even better than it looked. Stefan Grill’s Ajvar, which I’m glad I requested. was head and shoulders above the jar of ajvar we’d bought in, far more of the the roasted eggplant base rounding out the slight sharpness of the red pepper. Kajmak continues to be a favorite condiment, and Stefan’s is excellent, milky and just slightly salty/sour. The Cevapi also were outstanding, subtly seasoned to allow the flavor of grilled meat to dominate.

I believed Vasil, for a time, that this was the best Cevapi I was likely to find in the Chicago area. But there was one more place I wanted to try this month, and as it turns out, I now have news for Vasil. 

There once was a song by the British band Paper Lace called “The Night Chicago Died.” This song stirred up some complaints with its multiple references to the “East side” of Chicago. Looking at a map, people might say, hey, there is no east side to Chicago—there’s a lake there. And this is true, in its way. And its also true that the song is a work of fiction and the people who wrote it had never been to Chicago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryVh9BuwOs4

But there is a Chicago neighborhood, way way down Southeast near the Indiana border, just south of the well known Calumet Fisheries stand, called East Side. This neighborhood, located on the east bank of the Calumet River, was originally populated by steelworkers and their families, and those in supporting industries. Those steelworkers largely immigrated there from southeastern Europe—Slovenians, Croatians, Serbians. 

As a result, you get a working-class bar like Small World Bar & Grill. They serve fried chicken wings, burgers, onion rings, jalapeño poppers. They do Taco Tuesdays, where they serve a regional specialty of deep-fried tacos for $2 each, similar to (but better than) those you find at West Coast fast food chain Jack in the Box. Fish, chicken, steak sandwiches. French fries. Bar food. They also happen to do a steady business serving Serbian food such as Cevapi. 

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Well I couldn’t not go on Taco Tuesday, could I? The tacos are good, fried crispy with the meat inside, pinned shut by toothpicks, then opened back up and stuffed with lettuce, tomato, and cheese before serving. There are a pair of table salsas available, a pretty standard verde and roja, for dressing them. It would be easy to sit here on a Tuesday night after work, have several draft beers, and put away a half-dozen or more of these tacos. It doesn’t sound like a bad way to spend an evening. 

The small cevapi plate at Small World comes with 5 cevapi, a slice of bread, some fresh-cut fries that are seasoned with black pepper and something salty-sour, maybe lemon pepper? diced onions, kajmak, and a vinegary cabbage slaw. Maybe it’s just because these were fresh off the grill when I ate them, but they edged out what I’d had from Stefan Grill a few days earlier.

I thought it was a little strange that these cevapi came with sliced bread instead of lepinja or pita, but Small World also has an appetizer portion of cevapi and a sliders version that likely are served with different bread. Still, I made do with what I was given. 

The cevapi: perfect, or as close to it as I can imagine coming. The kajmak: quite good, the mild but memorable mix of milky/salty/sour that I’d come to expect. The bread: you know, it was unexpected, but it was good bread, a slice from a crusty Italian loaf like I’d expect to see from Damato’s. I don’t know where the bread came from, but I’ve got no complaints there. 

I’ll certainly be back to Stefan Grill, hopefully in a healthier time, when I can sit down and try their Cevapi as they should be eaten, hot off the grill. I’ll absolutely be back to Small World Bar & Grill, as I can’t imagine not spending another Taco Tuesday there. I’ve even found another place not too far away that I need to try, a yellow-painted mobile home in Gary calling itself Balkan Grill Restaurant and selling Cevapi, Pljeskavica, and all those classic Balkan grilled meats. 

But for now I’ll put aside my keyboard and close up my Cevapi investigation, at least for this month. September is just a day away, and brings three more sandwiches. Any Cevapi fans out there? Please comment below and tell us what we missed!