Priganice

If you – like me – enjoy hiking, then you will sooner or later arrive at the question of the perfect sort of food to eat in the morning, or to carry with you in your pack.

Ideally it should have a good calorie to weight ratio, it should be easy to prepare, it should be filling and it should be both tasty and universally adaptable to complement both sweet or savory food.

I am not a great fan of freeze dried astronaut meals, which are served in their own foilbag, which are usually sold for restaurant prices and which never fails to disappoint……

My preferred option is to shop locally and if it is not adding too much weight, fresh bread and local cheese and ideally a truffle salami can’t be beaten (even better if accompanied by some red wine…..), but to do it in style this choice is somewhat limited to the Pyrenees and to the French or the Italian Alps.

The traditional mountain superfood is pemmican, a mixture of dried meat, berries and lard, seasoned with some salt and pepper. Great if you are an arctic explorer, but with its limitations when it comes to variety.

Another great choice with a large fan base is porridge, but I personally find it too filling, I don’t like the texture and in its prepared form it is difficult to transport and always an accident waiting to happen in your backpack …….

Somewhat better in all its different varieties is müsli, but again you need something to mix it with and so far I have not come accross a savory variety.

Having agonised (to a limited degree) over this conundrum for decades, my search for the ultimate solution was finally rewarded over breakfast one morning together with Predrag in Podgorica.

A staple of the local cuisine here are little pancakes or doughballs, called “Priganice” .

Like many great things in life, it is very simple and inexpensive to make them.

Predrag’s wife Jjiljana very kindly gave me her recipe:

For 1-2 persons you need:

150g of flour

1 egg

150 ml of milk

a pinch of salt

a frying pan and some sunflower or olive oil

You just mix the first four ingredients to give it a viscous texture and then deep fry tablespoonfuls of dough in the oil – that’s it !

Best served warm, Priganice work with jam, with cheese, with sour cream or even with cold meats. They are easy to store, easily re-heated and can be eaten even cold together with pretty much anything.

Traditionally Montenegrins add a small quantity of rakiya or fruit brandy to the dough so that the final product soaks up less oil, but apparently yoghurt is supposed to do the same trick.

The Priganice will get more fluffy, if yeast has been added to the dough and it is left to stand for a little while.

There is a good chance that my future hiking companions will be treated to some Priganice and that not only on my next trip to Montenegro.