Good afternoon! I apologize that I didn’t get in touch for a while - there were a lot of things to do, and the weather turned bad - the weekend was the coldest and most dank day during our entire stay in Montenegro. The whole day was what is called "in a wet place", a strong wind was blowing. The temperature was high enough, but drizzling rain and wind did their job. Yesterday and today the weather cleared up, but still every morning starts with clouds that disperse in the afternoon, and the sky clears completely.
During this time, I have accumulated some new data on local food.
So, coffee - we managed to find Italian Lavazza, costs about the same as all other local brands of coffee - but does not clog the coffee maker. Locally produced ground coffee is characterized by very fine grinding, as a result of which it clogs holes in any coffee brewing devices. We also tried the Italian "makinettes" - almost exploded. In general, the method of making Turkish coffee is popular here, in Turkish, it feels a little viscous and very thick - because of the small particles of coffee that are evenly distributed throughout the coffee. Now I’m just brewing such coffee for the first time - it smells fragrant, although not for everyone.
Seafood: We tried the "orada" in foil. Not far from us, in a place called Ljuta, there's a specialized fish supermarket (COGI, owned by a fishing farm) where you can buy the freshest fish every day. We arrived there in the evening, and the fish we knew were gone in the quantities we needed. The only fish available was "orada," about the size of a fish per person. My phrasebook didn't recognize this fish, so we decided to try it without even looking. 🙂 It turns out this fish is known in Russia as "dorada" or "golden spar", a member of the sea bream family. It doesn't matter, but the fish turned out excellent, and we've added another item to our seafood menu. 🙂 We noticed at the market that the locals were actively buying something called "proboscis" (proboscis fish). It turns out it's octopus. They recommended this recipe for octopus: boil it for about 40 minutes, cut it into rings, season with salt and spices, and you'll feel like a true Montenegrin! I'll be sure to let you know once we try it.
Earlier I mentioned bread. So, while driving along the road to Budva, they noticed a large advertising poster:
It turns out there's a private bakery there, the owner of which is married to a Russian woman, and we found some amazing bread there: dark, crispy, so heavy, with seeds and other spices! It's finger-licking good! The only thing that puts us off is the price: 1 TP2T, 2 euros per loaf. Generally, bread here is more expensive than in Russia. A regular loaf of bread (which here looks like a huge loaf) costs about 1 euro. We'll treat ourselves to some 2-euro bread every now and then. 🙂
