[RECIPE]: Paprenjoki and the Hektorovic family

When we first heard that one of Paprenjck's ingredient is "Papor", we thought maybe it is made of Pepper? Quite different.

The Paprenjck, is a traditional cake made from honey, oliver oil, prosek and different spices. The world Papor, is an all-inclusive term for "cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves",

Each family comes with their own individual recipes, and the taste is something between a gingerbread cookie (without the gingertaste) and an English shortcake.

The dessert has a rustic charm to it, although the key ingredients are not exactly cheap.

The earliest memory of this cake is mentioned in Petar Hektorovic's poem, where the fishermen brought him: good wine muškatil, sweet wine (prošek), turta (cake), honeycomb, kaškaval cheese, fruit and paprenakov.

In his Tvdalj Castle he cultivated his own poultry, silkworms, bees and vegetables. The family also cultivated wheat in the Stari Grad Plain, and made prosek wines in their own tavern inside the Castle. The Hektorovic is pretty much self-sufficient, and althought they don't cultivated exotic herbs like cinnamon and nutmeg, the Stari Grad is is popular transfer point for trading, as it is conveniently located in between ports like Venice and Dubronvik.

Fascinated by its unique taste and aroma, I searched for it's recipe:

The night before, boil a kilogram of honey. When the honey boils and forms froth, remove it with a spoon. Grind the cloves on a board with a wooden hammer and put them into the heated prošek. Fry the saffron, crumble it and put this into the heated prošek as well.
Add a quarter of a litre of olive oil into the honey. Filter the prošek with saffron together with the prošek with cloves. The total amount of prošek added should be a quarter of a litre.
Add a pinch of cinnamon, nutmeg and at the end flour with a bit of baking soda to this paste. The quantity of flour is determined by the softness of the paste. Leave to stand for half an hour. Place part of the paste onto a board and add more flour. Cut it into equal pieces. Knead each piece by hand and form small balls.
Place the paste into a greased baking tray and form the paprenjok by hand. Bake at 200 ̊C until it darkens.
It can be decorated as soon as it is cool. Add 150 g of icing sugar to one egg yolk to create icing and then decorate the paprenjoki.

The proedure looks very much like how you would bake a cookie, except they've used olive oil instead of beating air into butter for that creamy texture. Saffron isn't exactly an inexpensive ingredient, and I wonder how people could afford it back then?

Perhaps the value of saffron is very different from now.

Looking at an age-old recipe is always fascinating to me, and perhaps gives a glimpse to how the maritime trade has larlgely increased the variety in tastes and aroma in daily culinary.