Young Goat Prepared Under The Bell - Kozletina ispod peke

Last two years I had privilege to stay for my holidays at excellent small restaurant "Ogigija" located at village Polače on Island of Mljet, close to Dubrovnik in Croatia.
One of the specialties we had was also young goat prepared under the bell.

See photo album how to prepare it

Fish Prepared Under The Bell" - Škarpena ispod peke

Last two years I had privilege to stay for my holidays at excellent small restaurant "Ogigija" located in village Polače on Island of Mljet, close to Dubrovnik, Croatia

Like in my other post about cooking traditional Dalmatian dishes you can see here how one can prepare a fish under the bell. Here is a short photo album.

FishUnderTheBell

Octopus Prepared Under The Bell - Hobotnica ispod peke

For years I'm traveling for my holidays at the coast of Adriatic Sea in Dalmatia, Croatia. Last two years I had privilege to stay at excellent small restaurant "Ogigija" located in village Polače on Island of Mljet, close to Dubrovnik. I'm traveling with my airplane to Dubrovnik airport and then from Dunbrovnik port with the boat to the Island of Mljet.

The traditional Dalmatian kitchen has many dishes which are prepared under the bell and you can see several of them here on my blog.


One of them we had in Ogigija restaurant is "Octopus Prepared Under The Bell".

Preparing Octopus Under The Bell

Wonderful Autumn

The nature in autumn is so beautiful that I would like to share these photos of our house and garden taken at the end of October 2009 and also some pictures taken on January 3rd 2010.

Here is the photo album.

Baking Bread in Slovenia in Old Farm Brick Oven

In September 2006 I had the opportunity to attend a "short baking course" how to bake in old Slovenian farm brick oven. In now days it is not very common that people bake bread at home, especially in the old fashion way what was normal for 50 years and more ago. I was invited to visit an older lady Ana Zdešar at Horjul who bakes bread every Saturday for her hole family. On Saturday, September 16th, 2006, at 7:00AM I was already there and I tried to capture the whole process. From all photos I made a video in Google Picasa which you can watch below. The background song was recorded in 1983 when I was singing in octet "Oktet Hoja".

Pompeii Style Brick Oven in Mala Slevica, Slovenia

Two months ago I started to build a Pompeii style brick oven at my daughter house. Here are the pictures of the first pizzas which we tasted with great pleasure.

First picture shows the very first pizza baked in the new oven. I used just the dough, olive oil, tomato sauce, salt and garlic. At that time the oven temperature was about 450 degrees Celsius. The first pizza was baked in about 90 seconds.

Next pizzas had more toppings on and were excellent. The temperature of the oven hearth was lower, about 350 degrees Celsius. We finished our family pizza party with baking the first loaf of bread which was really great.

The last picture shows this first loaf of bread..My grandchildren told me that the bread was excellent so now I'm "allowed and welcome to produce more".

Soon we'll add the insulation to the oven dome and then I will have a small practical course for my older daughter Katarina how to bake bread and other stuff in brick oven.

Here is the full photo gallery about building the oven. As I am not a professional the Pompeii style oven was quite an issue for me but fortunately everything ended successfully.

2 Hour Brick Oven

See all photos on Flickr.

Two years ago I built an experimental oven for the children of our parish Želimlje who had "oratorium" for 2 weeks immediately after the end of the school year.

The building material were regular red bricks and instead of refractory mortar I used a mixture of sand and clay (3:1). I finished the oven in about 2 hours and fired it immediately.

The oven was a great success and children really loved it - they baked over 200 pizzas in one week. Now they build the oven by themselves each year from the scratch what is a big project for them. Of course, they are quite dirty from the clay at the end, but who cares. It is important that they are busy with educational work and have no time to stick around and do stupid things which they would regret later. And what is also very important, they all have a great time as they all love eating pizzas, especially when they have to prepare them by themselves and can choose the toppings.

This kind of a approach can be used by anybody - building such a temporary oven in his back yard and keeping  the children busy and happy.And it is easy to remove it and build it again.

My home made pizza oven at home

Several years ago I built in the cellar of my house a wood fired pizza oven from prefabricated parts which I bought in Austria from "Spirit of Fire".

Here you can find the photo gallery of building it.

I plan to post some more pictures about the food I have prepared in the oven.

Here you can watch my video advertisement for presentation in Denmark which was shot while I was baking pizzas for my grandchildren.