Bosnian Pirijan
1/3 cup rice8 potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks1 medium chicken, cut into serving pieces (or 1 1/2 lbs. cut-up chicken)3 tablespoons Vegeta(see below)
1/4 cup cooking oil3 cups water, approximatelyIn a large baking pan, layer the uncooked rice, potato chunks, and chicken. Sprinkle with Vegeta, then the oil. Add water (or chicken broth) to nearly cover the potatoes. Bake uncovered at 400 degrees F. for 15 to 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and back about an hour longer. Note: A European market is likely to have Vegeta. It’s also for sale online. This recipe is adapted from a succulent meal I enjoyed in Bosnia in 2001. A few years earlier, my husband and I became volunteer English as a Second Language teachers at our church. One young family, who’d come to Iowa as refugees of their war, eventually invited me to visit their homes in Bosnia with them, so I did. Both rural homes they’d grown up in had incurred damage during the war, one of them destroyed. Homes did have electricity but you couldn’t count on it, so houses still had wood-burning stoves as well. The pirijan I enjoyed in Bosnia, cooked in the oven of a wood-burning stove, was more scrumptious than what I made here at home. It may have been that old-fashioned stove.
My dad would have been surprised to learn I’d been raking hay by hand with Asima’s family, just up the hill from their home. 2001, near Skokovi, BiH
