In the popular culinary show 'Three, two, one – cook!' In 2021, the winner was Jozefina Birindžić, who is now known to the people of Brod for her imaginative workshops. Therefore, we visited her in her gastronomic corner located in the old part of Slavonski Brod. We talk about the workshops, but also the town's gastronomic history, especially the mysterious tiritl.
„Brod historian Zvonimir Toldi, who writes sketches from town's history, came across the old recipes of Brod's ladies. One of them, the tiritl, seemed very interesting to me. Apart from the name, which seems to have come out of the fairy tales of Ivana Brlić Mažuranić, tiritl is a real Brod citizen's cake, which is rare considering that the local cuisine is based almost exclusively on village recipes," explains Jozefina.
The cake was presented to the public at the Days of Ivana Brlić Mažuranić, where Jozefina was dressed in an imitation of old town clothes and baked tiritles. This nice initiative could one day become an edible Brod's souvenir. It is a square shaped dry cookie made of shortcrust pastry filled with walnuts or poppy seeds, which was created in Brod na Sava two centuries ago. Jozefina decided to promote it as Brod Cake, because it is not available anywhere else.
Ten years ago, Jozefina started the Moj Gastro association, and on the web portal of the same name, she published many recipes, some related to Brodsko Posavlje. We are interested in whether there are still traces of Brod's bourgeois cuisine, and Jozefina answers: "In Slavonski Brod cookbooks were written, and I inherited one from my husband's family. It is a cookbook from the 1890s, written in German and in old script. The use of lemon zest and rosemary, wild game with pine nuts and sweet toppings is noticeable in them. This indicates that there was Brod's bourgeois kitchen and that in the past cooking was very good - of course, by those gentlemen who could afford it.“
The association itself was created with the aim of promoting and researching Slavonian culinary heritage: "I founded the Moj Gastro association precisely with the aim of preserving the traditions of Slavonian and Brod cuisine, but due to lack of time and after winning the 3,2,1... Cook! and interest in cooking in general, I had to leave the challenging job of running the association. I started with creating and recording recipes, then with workshops. Today the workshops are going great.“
The workshops really came to life only after the victory on the television show, when the people of Brod began to come in larger numbers: "Mostly women come, but there are also men. We do thematic workshops, sometimes by country, with the distant and exotic cuisines of Asia being particularly popular. However, Italian and Turkish cuisines predominate among foreign cuisines.
We also do other thematic workshops such as yeast dough, Christmas cookies, barbecue in summer and the like. One successful project is Paint & Wine, where we prepare meals, socialize and paint. The autochthonous Brod wine story is also slowly growing. We have several winemakers who are slowly rising in terms of quality and quantity, but this is a new trend. In Brod, many people had at least some vines from which wine was made, but there was no serious practice of winemaking and viticulture. Slavonski Brod has been organizing the Vinovita wine fair for more than ten years, which turned into a more serious story," Jozefina tells us while we admire the paintings on the walls.
A short stay in Jozefina's kitchen reminded us of the indescribable joy of cooking and socialising, which is the irresistible ingredient of every Slavonian home.
Photos: Jozefina Birindžić
Follow Jozefina on her youtube channel: https://youtube.com/@jozefinamojgastro2253?si=0doTleaOp9JlGeDJ
Apply for the workshops through Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MojGastro.net
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