Main course
Kjoftinja (meatballs)
Fried minced-meat patties, the ordinary weeknight supper in most Macedonian households, eaten with bread and salad.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 1 hr 20 min
- Cook
- 20 min
- Total
- 1 hr 40 min
- Fasting
- Not suitable
Ingredients 15 ingredients
Method
- Soak the bread in the milk for a few minutes, then squeeze it out hard and crumble it into a large bowl. Wet bread makes heavy kjoftinja.
- Squeeze the grated onion and potato in your fist to drive off their water, then add them to the bowl with the meat, garlic, egg, salt, pepper, mint and paprika.
- Work the mixture with your hand for a good two minutes, until it turns tacky and gathers into a single mass. Cover it and leave it in the fridge for an hour.
- With wet hands, roll walnut-sized balls and flatten each one slightly. Dust them with flour and shake off whatever does not stick.
- Heat about a centimetre of oil in a heavy pan until a crumb of bread sizzles at once. Fry the kjoftinja in batches for four to five minutes a side, turning once only, since moving them early tears the crust.
- Lift them onto kitchen paper. Serve hot with bread, a spoonful of ajvar, the sirenje and a tomato and onion salad.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- The butcher's mixed mince
- Half beef mince and half pork mince, neither leaner than 80/20. Very lean mince fries dry and falls apart.
- Sirenje
- Crumbled feta, soaked briefly in cold water if it is strongly salted.
- Ajvar
- Roasted red peppers and aubergine blended with a little oil, or a good jar of Balkan ajvar.
