Croatians take Easter seriously. It’s a sacred time to commune with family over traditional favourites on the dining table. Bread, ham and eggs are brought to the church for a blessing on Holy Saturday before they’re laid out as a massive Easter morning breakfast spread.
Unlike in the UK or US, chocolate eggs in foil are not part of Easter here. Instead, the original hand-boiled variety are hand-painted as pisanice, a must at Easter, their symbolic colours and designs created with leaves, pressed flowers and vegetable dyes. There's even a boiling technique involving onion skin.
Apart from being a colourful addition to the family dining table, Croatian Easter eggs have a powerful totemic value, given as a gesture of love between family members and couples.
The centrepiece dish the family will gather round to devour varies over the days of the Easter weekend. Good Friday is for fish and avoiding meat or fatty foods – cod is the preferred choice for many on the coast, carp inland.
Thereafter, ham takes centre stage, a juicy joint with radishes and spring onions for contrast and presentation, Croatians always careful to stick to seasonal vegetables wherever possible.
The stock water left over from boiling the ham goes into one of several breads associated with Easter in Croatia, savoury vrtanji, decorated with a cross made of white dough or baked with a little surprise egg inside.
Another baked favourite is pinca, a round bread topped with the sign of the cross, slightly sweet but sometimes paired with the ham, or served at breakfast time. This tradition extends across Croatia, although some in Istria and Dalmatia know pinca as sirnica.
There are sweet cakes, too, most notably gibanica, made of flour and eggs, and dotted with walnuts, poppy seed or cheese. Kuglof comes with cacao and raisins, while rožata is a flan-like dessert associated with Dubrovnik.
Roast lamb often usurps ham by Easter Monday, sometimes turkey with mlinci pasta strips, purica s mlincima, while chicken soup is bound to make at least one appearance over an Easter lunchtime.
Happy Easter! Sretan Uskrs!