Istria. This is the piece of earth where Croatia, Slovenia, Italy and Austria shake hands, where summer tastes as salty as the Mediterranean Sea and where an arctic wind blows in winter. Istria is also a bit of Australia. At least for Paola Bacchia. She is the daughter of an Italian who, like many others, emigrated down under when his Istria became largely Yugoslav. That was in 1950. There, at the other end of the world, they created a second home based on the first. Her fuel: Istrian cuisine – sweet pinza, grilled calamari, homemade pasta and garlic galore.
Paola Bacchia grew up with a father who was only in his undershirt at weekends, pottering in the garden. And with dishes made from the vegetables of this very garden, self-caught fish and meat from the local Italian butcher. Bacchia has many of these dishes from her childhood for her cookbook “Istria. The heart of the Adriatic – recipes and stories” compiled, supplemented with modern recipes from today’s Istria.
Istria – a place of many cultures
In the Istrian cuisine there is, in addition to Venetian seafood stews, hearty Hungarian-style goulash; Ricotta ravioli was followed by naturally grilled Balkan-style meat skewers. According to Bacchia, there is always a green salad and vegetables, which grow in abundance on the peninsula, and then a dessert, as you would find it in a Viennese coffee house or in the cafés of Trieste. “Food knows no borders,” she writes. “It tells of the country and its people, of shared meals and cultures, of the past and the present, of family and community.”
What does it taste like when Australia meets Istria, tradition meets modernity? We present five recipes to try at home in the photo gallery above.
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