When winter starts storming and the weather gets freezing cold, it is time for heated wine and bacon. Hot and spicy meals also become popular, because they make the blood flow faster and chase away all viruses. Beans and bacon casserole is among the most favorite winter dishes of this type. Butter beans, just like all legumes, needs to soak in cold water in advance. Then it is ready for boiling. If you want to make it melt in your mouth, you need to show cooking skills and make sure the beans remain whole and are cooked through at the same time. Otherwise, you do not need too much knowledge to make the dish itself. First you need to pan-fry some diced bacon. Add some paprika to it and make sure you do not use of any other fat, as bacon is greasy enough. When the bacon becomes golden-brown in color, add a chopped carrot and one diced onion or leek and pour some warm water over it. If you want to make the dish more aromatic, add some chopped celery and parsnips to the carrots and some chopped mint. Later add the boiled beans and one or two dry chillies. Make sure there is enough water in your dish and let it simmer on low heat. You can also pour the meal in a clay pot and stick it in the oven for one to two hours. Those who love black pudding (blood sausage) and tender and juicy meat can add to the beans a piece of it to make the dish smell even tastier.

Tripe soup is also very popular in Bulgaria during the winter period. All pubs in this country offer this specialty to their clients. Of course, according to the local traditions, it is made differently in certain Bulgarian districts. Some people make it with fresh milk, others use butter and flour only to add to the water and the tripe cut is small cubes. It depends on the taste and the preferences of the people as well as on the traditions in a certain region. This is why, in places where many cows are bred, people use mainly beef tripe and intestines. If sheep are popular in a certain district, then people usually make this soup with lamb tripe and intestines. Some prefer to wash the piece of tripe thoroughly. Others do not like to wash the intestines too much, so the flavour of the grass and the herbs grazed by the animals is preserved.

Let us go back to the making of tripe soup. Once you clean and prepare the intestines you need to boil them in a pot for around three hours in salted water. Then you have to remove them from the stock and chop them well into small pieces. Once you do this, place them back into the pot and add some fried onions and paprika and pour some 200 milliliters of fresh milk into the soup. Let it simmer for a while until the flavors mix well. This soup is usually served with crushed garlic cloves and roasted hot chillies. No other soup can warm you up as much as the tripe one. If you happen to see someone order this soup early in the morning in a pub, he has most likely abused alcohol the previous evening. Tripe soup does not only make you body feel warm, but is also the perfect remedy for hangover. After all, do not forget that this kind of soup has a specific smell and if you do not like the smell of garlic, tripe meat and vinegar, you will probably not find it quite delicious, even if all people around you fill with pleasure when sipping this soup very hot.

In that case you would better order meatball soup, or beef soup. If you are not the biggest fan of meat, then a mushroom or a nettle soup is the perfect one for you. If you sprinkle them with crushed roasted chillies, these soups would have the same warming effect as the stomach one. We are to tell you how to make these vegetarian soups in one of our next editions.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov

Photos: Lyudmila Savova