6 Kosovan recipes by Elizabeth Gowing

Llokuma are relatively easy to prepare, with ingredients you’re likely to have to hand in your kitchen, but served to make a day feel special; for example a perfect Sunday breakfast.

Served with the yoghurt and garlic dip they are also the perfect hangover cure.

In traditional Kosovan weddings when the bridegroom’s party of male friends (minus the groom) has set off to collect the bride from her home, superstition says that they must return a different way from the route they took to her house. On their journey, they stop off at a friends who will serve them llokuma.

Llokuma are also made when a baby is born.

Last time I counted, the recipe made 32 pieces.

Beat two eggs in a bowl.

Add a cup of yoghurt.

Add half a cup of sparkling water.

Add 1.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda.

In a larger bowl, mix 450g of plain flour with a tablespoon of baking powder and a palmful of salt.

Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and fold together.

Add more flour if the mixture is too wet – it shouldn’t stick to your fingers – and then decant from the bowl and lightly roll in flour on a surface.

Press out to 0.5 cm thick.

Cut into rectangles 3cm x 5cm.

Put into smoking vegetable oil (at a depth of a little more than 0.5 cm).

The llokuma should puff up to four times their thickness in the oil. Turn them as soon as they start to brown. Eat immediately.