Montenegrin food, from the coast to the mountain katuns

In Montenegro you eat according to the landscape, and in a country this small that means you can go from fish and olive oil to mountain lamb and lake carp in the space of a week. I find it one of the most honest cuisines in the Balkans, built on whatever each place produces and without too much fuss.

The mountains, lamb, cheese and prosciutto

The national tourist board starts with the air-dried meats. Njeguši prosciutto, made from pork ham, is the most famous, along with Njeguši sausage, košet, dried leg of mutton, and kastradina, dried mutton. The secret, it says, is the climate, where sea air meets mountain air, and the altitude, between 500 and 1,500 metres. For lamb, it recommends steaks cooked in milk or slow-roasted beneath the sač, a hot iron dome covered in embers. For cheese, there’s smoked Njeguši, aged Pljevlja, masni kučki, fresh krajinski goat’s cheese and lisnati, made in fine layers and still produced in the katuns of Bjelasica around Kolašin. Up there you’ll also find kačamak, made from potato or maize with cheeses and kajmak, a thick clotted cream, and jardum, a specially prepared sheep’s milk.

The lake, carp and bleak

On Lake Skadar the star is carp. The traditional recipe, according to the national tourist board, is to salt it for 24 hours, rinse it and smoke it for another 24 over wild pomegranate or willow wood, which gives the flesh a reddish colour. It’s also baked on a bed of onions with plums, quinces and apples, or dried and dressed with olive oil, garlic, parsley and lemon. Bleak, a small fish found only in the lake, is fried whole or eaten dried and smoked, and eel is baked over rice with onions, carrots and prunes.

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The coast, olive oil, olives and pomegranates

The Bar tourist board says more than 100,000 olive trees grow across the municipality, including the old olive tree of Mirovica, and a cuisine drawn from sea, lake, vineyard and olive grove. Its list runs from priganice with honey, japraci and dolma to štufada, raštan, pies of every kind, olives prepared a dozen ways and halva, all washed down with Crmnica Vranac. In Ulcinj, the market sells olives, oil, cheese, oranges, dried figs and sudžuk, a cured beef.

What to drink

The national tourist board singles out medovina, mead, as the drink Montenegrins are proudest of, along with red wine and home-made rakija. Wine deserves a page of its own, Montenegro wine.

If you are short on time, see the best tours in Virpazar and pick one that fits your day.

Where to try it

Mountain dishes are best in villages and katuns, and lake fish in Virpazar or Rijeka Crnojevića. On the coast there’s no shortage of restaurants; I suggest where to start in where to eat in Montenegro.

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