Ivanka
Hana Grgić
Photos: Hana Grgić’s family archive
Lasagne was the last meal she prepared for us. Two versions: one with meat and one with soya mince, an adaptation for the vegetarian part of the family. When she first started making it, lasagne wasn’t the most popular dish in the continental part of Croatia, so if I had to guess, I’d say she probably encountered it during her regular trips to Germany and Sweden, where two of her children had moved during the 1980s and 1990s.
The star chef is my grandma Ivanka. She was born in Vrbanjci, Bosnia, in 1941 under the name Ivka, the name she never really claimed as her own. She had always been Ivanka, and it wasn’t until she was getting married that she found out her “real” name was Ivka. It seems to me that giving names in the past was looser, and many lived their lives with their names and nicknames confused. Ivanka was the first child of Marija from Grahovo and Mato. Mato’s family came from Montenegro, escaping, as the family story goes, a blood feud and settling down incognito under a new name Šubara (ushanka). He didn’t see the end of the war and died in 1945. The war not only took Ivanka’s father but sister, too, who died in a bomb explosion. One could hear the sadness in her voice as she recounted few memories she had of her father. For as long as she lived, my grandma lit a candle for her father and sister in the area of the cemetery dedicated to “those whose grave is unknown”. As a kid, I sensed that her life would have taken a very different turn had he survived, and I’d ask her if she thought that he was still alive somewhere, maybe with a new family. I don’t remember what she replied.
I know she also had happier memories of her life in Bosnia, while staying with her grandparents. When I think about it now, I suspect that she would have preferred to stay there, but the new post-war life forced her to leave Bosnia and join her newlywed mother in Slavonska Požega (today only Požega) in Croatia, a neighbouring Yugoslav republic. There she got married, gave birth to my mom Melita in 1967, and spent the rest of her life.
She continued to hold Bosnia and the childhood years there close to her heart. While moving around the house, cooking or gardening, she sang Kemal Monteno’s songs or whistled a sevdalinka melody. Her lullaby for us, her twelve grandchildren, was a famous sevdah piece Kad ja pođoh na Bembašu, and I remember my younger brother reciting it before he could even talk. Although she attended only four years of primary school in Bosnia, she stayed in touch with peers she met there until the very end of her life. A few years before she died, a couple of them gathered and celebrated a school reunion.
In Požega she faced new realities. In the post-war baby boom fashion, new siblings arrived. Altogether she had one sister from her mom’s first marriage and additional six siblings, one of whom died as an infant. As the oldest child, she was more than a sister, a mother really, to all of them, and they regarded her as such until she died.
Having a large family meant many mouths to feed. Her stepfather banned her from further education even though she was an excellent student. It was a fateful decision, one that she would forever regret. Her favourite subject was geography; she dreamt of exploring the world beyond the confines of Požega. The urge to learn followed her throughout her life. She never stopped reading, either, and always kept a stack of crosswords on the table. To support her large new family, she started working at the nearby brick factory, while secretly attending sewing class in the evening. She had, people were always pointing out, golden hands. Throughout her life, she sewed and knitted things for others. In 1960, she married my grandpa Ivo, a tall fellow, with the nickname Bava—short from his last name Bauer, or Pemac, Švabo because of his Czech-German origin.
After giving birth to her three kids, she started working at the newly opened Omega—buffet, canteen, and restaurant all in one—in 1977. It was located at the Požega bus station, the so-called ASP—Autosaobraćajno poduzeće. My grandpa worked there too, first as a ticket collector, later as a janitor.
Long before today’s bus stations became indistinguishable from one another, with greenish Flixbus panels and abandoned food joints, Omega was special, almost avant-garde. The bus station in Požega was a vibrant, modernist structure with hundreds of people passing through it daily: travelling, going to work from the surrounding villages, or simply stopping by to eat. It was located at the periphery of the town so the station was large enough to serve multiple purposes. It had twelve platforms, a spacious waiting room and a ticket office, a large buffet, canteen and a restaurant on the first floor. For a small town of 25,000 people and only one hotel restaurant, Omega was, in my mother’s words, wow!
Požega bus station in socialism (source: Požega City Museum) and today
I don’t know what Ivanka’s title was there. She must have been a sous chef but without that fancy-sounding title, spending long working days (and nights) in her blue borosana shoes and wrapping sarmas, cooking succulent meat stew čobanac, preparing fries, soups, schnitzels… She worked closely with the main chef, a man, who seem to have been an important role model for her culinary adventures. That visionary chef organised themed dinners and decorated the dining hall accordingly. Thanks to strict hierarchy with a solid pinch of patriarchy, she never took on a more senior role.
Reminiscing about her time at Omega, she often mentioned an anecdote of making pork schnitzels for the Albanian owner of a local ice cream shop. At his own request, she soaked the schnitzels in milk overnight to get rid of that tart pork taste. “Don’t tell anyone, but it tastes just like beef,” he told her. Over the years, the restaurant hosted many weddings, including my parents’ and aunt’s as well as family proms. In the spirit of solidarity and comradeship, her colleagues rejected additional fees for both weddings, and only took their regular salaries.
Being part of Omega and the workers’ union allowed my grandma to travel. Together with her comrades, she went on annual trips to neighbouring countries, bringing back jewellery, clothes, tableware and other souvenirs. My first doll ever came from then Czechoslovakia, a gift from, I believe, her final worker trip.
When she wasn’t at Omega, she was feeding the crowd at home. My mom remembers how loud their house was, full of people, relatives, friends. Whether it was just us kids or people coming by for a late-night card game, she made fries and invited everyone for a meal. When my uncle was a teenager, he stopped eating meat and became a vegetarian pioneer in his hometown and probably beyond. Ivanka found herself challenged but rose to the occasion by learning to make seitan before anyone around her even knew what that was. Years later, she introduced seitan to my other, much more traditional grandma Anica, who ended up incorporating it into her religious fasts.
My sister and I were born in the late 1980s, and it was then when Ivanka’s eldest daughter, our aunt, moved to Germany for work. New things loomed on the horizon: rumours of Yugoslavia falling apart and frequent mentions of the free market. In the early 1990s, Omega went bankrupt, entered the infamous privatizacija, and while my grandpa opted for an early retirement, grandma found herself working in the laundry room of the student dorm.
With war at our doorstep, my uncle got a one-way ticket to Sweden, while my mom took my sister and me to Germany to stay briefly with our aunt, just until the “situation calmed down”. My grandparents stayed in Požega. We rarely talked about those years and the gut-wrenching goodbyes she had to say. I have a few flashbacks to taking shelter in her basement, but I don’t remember saying goodbye or hello once we returned. Their world crumbled in front of their eyes, and I’m still trying to understand the trauma it caused.
With grandma in front of their house, late 1980s
She retired a few years later, but she didn’t stop working. She rarely acknowledged tiredness and the need for rest. She never took afternoon naps even when her head was falling forward while seated at the table. She often watched movies until what I thought was three in the morning and was up early. When I asked her how the movie ended, she would say: “Which one? I watched another one after.” She spent another two decades on her feet, wrapping hundreds of sarmas, making litres of soup, or shredding kilos of cabbage. She cooked large quantities of food, feeding the big crowd that usually gathers at a Balkan wedding. She’d come home exhausted, barely able to move her legs, and I remember my mom getting upset with her every single time. With age came the insecurities; she questioned every aspect of a dish—what’s the perfect amount of salt, what’s the right portion size for a person, almost as if she’d never prepared a meal in her life. And she prepared so many.
Sunday lunch at grandma’s, mid-1990s
She was playful in the kitchen, and it always showed on the Sunday lunch menu. Chicken breast roulade was never stuffed the same way; you’d find yourself tasting dried apricots and shredded apples, walnuts or other ingredients she had on her shelf. She made great krumpiruša (potato burek), a dish that she made to reconnect with her Bosnian roots. She transferred this particular art to her son and his children. She never believed that men should be exempt from cooking. Now that same krumpiruša is regularly created in their households in Sweden and Finland. She was always in the mood for pancakes, and long before that popular hazelnut spread became a thing, hers were served with melted dark and bitter chocolate, the version I prefer and regularly make to this day.
My cousin preparing krumpiruša in Sweden
Interested in baking, but rather an impatient baker, she deconstructed regular cakes and came up with completely different final products. My mother remembers one time when the so-called markiza cake burned, but resourceful Ivanka turned the cake into something else, and the next year the family tradition continued with her version. Making “Bosnian pillow” cake—a decadent creation with loads of eggs, fruits and pillowy cream to top it all off—gave her a particular thrill, and I quite literally cannot wait for an opportunity to recreate it. Now there are so many cooking tips and tricks out there; hers was adding a few teaspoons of coffee to her pastry cream to impart a subtle coffee note. There was one food she almost never ate (to my surprise and disapproval): fish. She would politely refuse and tell the story—accompanied by a slightly exaggerated shiver—of that one time when a fishbone got stuck in her throat.
She must have encountered sushi in Sweden, brought back nori and decided to replicate it in the unimaginative and traditional Požega, where only the arrival of Kaufland a few decades later offered a semblance of the “international cuisine” on one of its shelves. I remember seeing it for the first time: it was imperfectly rolled, stuffed with sticky rice and canned tuna, maybe mayo too, but served with soy sauce, an ingredient she embraced early and used regularly. As a kid, I didn’t immediately fall for sushi, especially this substitute type, but it grew on me.
Like many other Balkan women, she made large quantities of seasonal preserves, and despite what this reader might expect, her ajvar was never particularly good. Made with cooked instead of fire-roasted peppers, it had a watery texture and was never my favourite. Her ketchup, on the other hand, was amazingly thick and sweet, and her cornelian cherry jam divinely tangy. Yearly batches would end up crossing many borders and customs controls, safely sealed in vacuum packages, reaching her grandchildren in Germany and Sweden.
My grandparents built a house surrounded by forest, a charming garden, a little stream, and at least ten outdoor spots to fit a table. They grew potatoes, onions, peas, beans, tomatoes, lettuce. There were large mint patches and red currant bushes that we kids dove into and refused to leave before devouring them all. She carefully froze fruits to provide her grandchildren that seasonal taste that they might have otherwise missed. A large walnut tree stood in front of the house; they spent hours in front of the tv, cracking them open and, together with dried mint, vacuum sealing and shipping them off to Sweden. There were cherry trees, too. Two different kinds: one fruiting earlier and the other later in the summer.
Mid-1990s in my grandma’s garden, now taken care of by my mother
I’m writing this with envy and sadness from a small flat in Berlin, without a balcony or anything green around me. My grandparents built everything with their own hands, gradually, even spontaneously, when the resources were available, in a way that even decades later the place still radiates with warmth and laughter. Countless tables were set there, numerous people fed, grandchildren running around. It was a place for gathering. “I am so rich”, she used to say. And when we asked “how come,” her answer was always the same: “I have twelve grandchildren” (the number did change over the years).
I feel the ever-present echo of happier times most keenly in the summer. Although we technically lived in the same town, there was a great difference between my house in the centre and this wild, unrestrained grandparents' house. It was a danger-free zone, where you could see fireflies at nights and wake up with the rooster. My mind returns to that house more often than I’m willing to admit; it haunts my dreams and daydreaming, urging me to set the table in the garden.
Tired from the hide-and-seek, after ignoring grandma’s calls for what seemed like forever, we kids rushed inside where she made fries with potatoes from her garden, served with that sweet homemade ketchup. After dinner, she let us watch movies until late (she rarely set boundaries), bringing out her greasy orange pan that had one purpose only: to make popcorn. I like them salty and greasy, just like she made them. Popcorn is now a staple in my household to the point that I get agitated if I don’t have a package on the shelf.
That one 500g package she bought for us in October 2015—“for our next visit”—remains unopened. We never had the chance to eat them again.
We know that our grandparents will leave us. After all, it’s only natural, but I’m still angry. She was seventy-five, and I wanted her with us for much longer, we all did. Grandpa had died five years before her, and her Sunday lunches became rare. She cared for others while neglecting herself. She never acknowledged how fragile her health was.
I now buy cherries with a knot in my stomach. I look at them in German supermarkets, and they look so terribly sad. I don’t know when and how they were picked, how long they stayed in the dark and cold place to appear fresh, and I miss that selfish feeling of knowing that old, shaky hands picked them just for me.
The produce I find in Germany is so far away from grandma's abundant garden. I’ve been here for more than seven years and I still don’t know how a child from “the breadbasket of Croatia” can ever come to terms with infamously tasteless German produce, more often imported than not. So whenever I spot paler yellow bell peppers, I invite them to my plate. There is one dish that I first learned how to make from my grandma. It’s simple, stemming from her Bosnian roots, and best made on the first warm days. Stuffed bell peppers with grated potatoes, finished with sour cream and eggs. The smell of it always brings that magnificent summer feel, and then I think of grandma, her house, how she smelled like peppers and potatoes when making it, a tired look on her face but never letting go of the urge to gather people at her table. I might be forty years younger, but I find myself wishing for nothing more than that.
Stuffed bell peppers
5-6 yellow bell peppers, medium sized, even sizes
4-5 large potatoes
2 eggs
1 large onion
100 ml sour cream
Vegetable oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Smoked paprika (optional)
For non-vegetarian version, add minced meat, some good ham or bacon
Cut the top of bell peppers and clean the seeds. Prepare the potatoes: peel the skin, grate them, and get rid of excess water by using a colander. Finely chop onions; if you are using minced meat, ham or bacon, now is the time to add it. Add onions and egg to the mixture, season with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika and mix well. Add a few tablespoons of oil to the baking dish, stuff the peppers with potato mixture, and arrange peppers in the dish. Ideally, your peppers should sit upright, but you can also arrange them vertically if your baking dish or a tray is too big. You should be left with some potato mixture; arrange it between peppers once baked, it will be very crunchy and very tasty. Bake at 185 degrees Celsius for 40-50 minutes. 10 minutes before taking it out, mix the cream and the second egg with a bit of salt and whisk vigorously. Pour the mixture over the peppers and then return to the oven for a final 10 minutes. Take the dish out, let it sit for 10 minutes, and serve.
