Bulgaria

Bulgarian cooking is famous for yogurt and white brine cheese, from the cold soup tarator to banitsa pastry and shopska salad. Yogurt itself is far older than Bulgaria, probably Neolithic and from Mesopotamia or Central Asia, but the bacterium that makes it, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, was isolated from Bulgarian yogurt by Stamen Grigorov in 1905 and carries the country's name. Garden vegetables, grilled meats, and a Balkan-Ottoman heritage define the table.

Shopska salad is a modern invention with a good story attached. It was created for the state tourism agency Balkantourist and named in 1956 at a Black Sea resort near Varna, a Bulgarian answer to the Greek salad, and only later became a national symbol. That its colours match the flag was noticed afterwards and used, which is more interesting than a peasant origin would have been.

Banitsa is the everyday pastry: thin sheets of dough layered with sirene and egg, coiled into a tin and baked, eaten warm for breakfast with a glass of ayran or boza. At new year, fortunes written on slips of paper are baked inside it and everyone takes a piece. Tarator, cold cucumber in soured milk with walnut and dill, is the summer counterpart.

A chilled Bulgarian summer soup of thinned yogurt, grated cucumber, garlic, dill and walnuts, finished with a drizzle of oil.