Main course Fasting
Kachamak
Cornmeal porridge stirred until it leaves the sides of the pot — mountain food, and fasting food when made with oil.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 5 min
- Cook
- 40 min
- Total
- 45 min
- Fasting
- Suitable
Ingredients 6 ingredients
Method
- Bring the water and salt to a hard boil in a deep, heavy-bottomed pot.
- Pour in the cornmeal in a thin stream with one hand while stirring without stopping with a wooden spoon in the other. Tip it in all at once and you get lumps that never come out again.
- Lower the heat and keep stirring. The first ten minutes are the hard ones; the porridge thickens and begins to push back against the spoon.
- Carry on cooking and stirring for about 35 minutes in all. Kachamak is done when it comes away from the sides of the pot and a spoon will stand up in it.
- Stir in half the oil and leave it covered for five minutes to settle.
- Heat the rest of the oil with the finely chopped garlic and, off the heat, the paprika, and pour this over the kachamak. Serve at once — cold, it sets into a solid block.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- Coarse cornmeal
- Ordinary polenta; the fine grind cooks faster, in about 20 minutes.
- Oil (for the fasting version)
- If you are not fasting, butter and crumbled white cheese stirred in at the end — that is how it is most often eaten.
- Garlic dressing
- Good olive oil and coarse salt, on their own.
