Slavonska Krv (Slavonian Blood) is followed by Slavonsko Zlo (Slavonian Evil). Slavonska Krv was the first series of hot chilli sauces from Slavonia, followed by Ljutoteka from Vinkovci, and now Slavonsko Zlo. The idea has been conceived by Matko Maltar from Belišće. An old Latin saying states that “laziness is the beginning of every evil,” but this Evil is an exception since it is not a fruit of laziness but of extra work filled with enthusiasm.

Although he works for a family printing company, Matko apparently needed new business challenges, so he threw himself into this project. He shares his story with great optimism: “We use Bhut Jolokia, Naga Viper, Carolina Reaper and certain milder varieties. The sauces are free of preservatives and other additives, completely natural. The peppers are not fermented, and everything is fresh. They are produced locally and organically; just the sun and water in a forest near Petrijevac. For smoked sauces, we use the natural condensate of smoke, while family farms supply garlic and onions.”

So far, there are three versions of the sauces; classic, smoked and reaper, each having a different hotness gradation level, so the classic is rated as 3/5, the smoked as 4/5, and the hottest one (as the name suggests) is reaper with a rating of 5/5.

After tasting, I can just say that the sauces are really hot but edible. It is refined hotness that fortunately does not leave any negative consequences on the digestive tract. And I am not just saying this because Matko used to be my neighbour. After all, try it yourself. You can order it by e-mail at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or come to Ljudevita Posavskog St. in Belišće. It is perhaps better to go there personally since it is also a chance to visit Belišće.

Belišće is an industrial town built in 1884, like a town in the American Wild West. A real greenfield startup; wealthy industrialist S.H. Gutmann came with money, bought the forests and land, built a sawmill and a narrow railroad, and was then followed by immigrants from the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Belišće used to be the home for people of over twenty different nationalities.

Within a few years, once empty fields were filled with modern industrial plants and residential buildings; a town was born. The spirit of that times can be felt in the town museum located in one of the oldest residential buildings in the town. The surrounding area is ideal for cyclo-tourism (for example, Drava Bike Tour), hiking (for instance, Belišće-Podravina Hiking Trail), canoeing on numerous Drava branches, or birdwatching at the Jugovača pond, where bird watching huts have been set up. After returning to the town, you can refresh yourselves at the Kanu pub which offers over 120 kinds of beer.

As everyone knows, Slavonia and Baranja is the hottest Croatian region in the gastronomic sense. In October last year, Goran Vrabec saw that for himself when he visited the Paprika Fest in Lug. He was the first who started making hot food additives in Croatia and thus became an inspiration to others who tried to follow in his footsteps.

After Medulin, Čakovec and Zagreb, Lug hosted a meeting of spicy food fans. In Medulin and Čakovec, the contestants came up to Caroline Reaper, but no one was able to eat it, while Zagreb was a complete disappointment, since among the 800,000 inhabitants there was nobody who could eat Bhut Jolokiu, let alone Carolina.

A sensation took place in Lug; as many as three contestants managed to eat three Carolinas, so the competition had three winners – Igor Horvat, Zoran Majstorović and Branko Dvorski, which points to Slavonsko Zlo having a strong local market.

With the appearance of the Slavonsko Zlo series of hot sauces, following Slavonska Krv and Ljutoteka, we can say that there is now a hot sauces industry developing in Slavonia and Baranja, the industry of producers of hot dietary supplements, which is excellent news since only healthy competition can stimulate better (and ever hotter) new products.

More news about Slavonia and Baranja can be found in the Lifestyle section.

The Central Bureau of Statistics has released data on food prices showing the real effects of the reduced VAT rate on food. According to CBS data, only meat and fruit were cheaper in January. Fruit prices fell by 2.3 per cent, and meat prices by 1.7 per cent. All the other food groups were more expensive in January than the month earlier, reports Prvi Plan on February 24, 2019.

Significant discounts, announced and advertised by retailers, and expected by the government, did not happen. On the contrary, food and non-alcoholic beverages prices in January were 0.4 per cent higher than in December 2018.

The largest retail chains announced that the prices of products (fresh meat, fish, fruits and vegetables, eggs and diapers) to which the lower VAT rate began to apply starting from 1 January 2019, were lowered as early as in December 2018.

According to some experts, the effects of halving the VAT rate (from 25% to 13%), can only be expected in two to three months, mainly since prices of some types of products depend on seasonality in supply. However, the initial data on price movements after the lower VAT rate has been introduced are not encouraging.

In January, the most substantial increase (3.7 per cent) was seen with oils and fats, as well as coffee, tea and cocoa (2.6 per cent). VAT cuts did not cover these products. However, despite the lower VAT rate, vegetables were 1.4 per cent more expensive than in December. There has been an increase year-on-year as well – in January this year, vegetables were 4.6 per cent more expensive than in January 2018.

When all is taken together, food prices in January were 0.4 per cent higher than in December. Compared to January 2018, food was cheaper by 0.8 per cent.

Expenditures for food and non-alcoholic beverages are the largest item in the household budget of an average Croatian family – they account for 27.81 per cent of the consumer basket. Therefore, the government calculated that the decreased VAT rate should save an average Croatian family 872 kuna a year. The calculation was obviously wrong since what actually happened is what many, including Finance Minister Zdravko Marić, warned about – there is no mechanism which could force retailers to turn lower VAT rates into lower consumer prices.

Consumer prices did drop in January by 0.9 per cent, but not due to lower food prices, but mostly due to falling clothing and footwear prices (13 per cent) during January's seasonal sales.

Translated from Prvi Plan.

More news about taxes in Croatia can be found in the Business section.

ZAGREB, February 19, 2019 - Tourism Minister Gari Cappelli on Tuesday underlined the importance of gastronomy and excellence in gastronomy professions in enhancing the quality of Croatian tourism.

Speaking at Open Day of Aspira college in Zagreb, Cappelli said that today it was perhaps even more honourable to be a chef because gastronomy increasingly motivated people to travel. He said Aspira and its gastronomy study programme in Zagreb and Split as well as the 100 students who enrol in it every year confirmed the validity of such studies.

Cappelli recalled that the Tourism Ministry had awarded 370 scholarships this year in cooperation with more than 20 tourism companies and chambers, saying jobs in tourism were increasingly in demand in Croatia and abroad.

The minister said he hoped more schools, both private and public, would offer gastronomy programmes in the future, especially in about two years when competency centres, teaching tourism and gastronomy, among other things, with more practical work, became operational.

The Aspira college operates in Split and in Zagreb, where a gastronomy study programme was introduced two years ago. The college also teaches tourism and other programmes. About 450 students enrol at the two schools every year, including 100 to study gastronomy.

The annual tuition fee at Aspira is 30,000 kuna for the tourism study programme and 40,000 kuna for the three-year gastronomy programme.

More news on the Croatian tourism can be found in the Travel section.

Recent news from the Papuk Nature Park has pleasantly surprised us. In late February, visitors will be able to experience Papuk with a flying balloon; one week ago, works on the construction of the Geo-Info Centre in Voćin started, where geologic, biological and cultural-historical landmarks of the nature park will be presented to the visitors. Papuk is drawing ever more interest from tourists at specialised international fairs such as Natour Alpe-Adria in Ljubljana and Caravan in the Dutch town of Leeuwarden.

At the fair in the Netherlands, I found myself entirely by chance in the role of an information officer at the stand of the Slavonia Cluster, which brings together five Slavonian county tourist boards, and I saw for myself that Papuk is at the top of the visitors' wish-lists. People are thrilled to be able to camp at the Duboka camp and then use the network of cycling trails to visit cultural monuments such as medieval fortresses, geological monuments like Rupnica, protected natural landscapes such as the Sekulinačke Mountains, enjoy the top gastronomy in restaurants bearing the Taste of Slavonia mark, or engage in wine tasting in one of the many boutique wineries located at the outskirts of the park.

After a tour that included Zagreb, Hungary and Slovakia, I decided to use the first available Sunday in February to visit Papuk. A five-kilometre long spiral road that runs from Slatinski Drenovac to Jankovac is almost entirely paved, with just a short section missing at the very end, but construction machines are parked along the road, so I believe this will be solved very soon.

The road itself is attractive enough for the visitors to be able to see (at least some) of the beauties of the Papuk landscapes. On the left, there is a steep ravine, and on the right side, there is the mountain massif. The road is continually twirling and driving on it is never monotonous. Drenovac is located at 172 metres above sea level and Jankovac at 475 metres. Before Jankovac, visitors pass by the majestic waterfall called Skakavac. Given that the summit of Papuk is located 953 metres above sea level, it is easy to see that Jankovac is located "on the halfway of Papuk" and is, therefore, an ideal starting point for exploring the Slavonian mountain.

At Jankovac, there are a lot of cars and visitors. From the entrance, we turn right and look for a parking spot. Hmmm ..., parking problems at Jankovac!? Part of the team complains that this was not as it used to be and all of this has been over-commercialised. But, why should we be jealous? Why not allow other people to enjoy something we have been enjoying for years, not to say for decades? Of course, provided it does not disturb the natural balance.

The natural heritage belongs to all of us, and everyone should enjoy it under the same conditions. We saw a parking spot and just when we wanted to park there, we saw an unusual traffic sign next to the parking spot: below the letter P, a woman and a baby carriage were drawn; this parking is reserved for women with small children! Since we do not fall into that category, we went a bit further and finally found a free parking place. After that, at the reception centre, we bought tickets which cost just ten kuna. I took a photo at the selfie spot and sent a digital postcard from Papuk to my friends and acquaintances.

The temperature was, of course, lower than in the Slavonian lowlands from which we came. We went to a hiking lodge with a cafe, a restaurant and a pension, and had a short drink just enough to get warm inside and prepare for a hike in nature.

Because of the high snow banks that were still present on Papuk (unlike in the Slavonian lowlands where the snow had almost completely melted), and because I led a team that did not have the proper equipment for hiking in winter, we did not do the routine rituals like a visit to Ivačka Glava, the second highest peak of Papuk at 913 metres above sea level and the highest peak of the mountain accessible to ordinary visitors (there is a military facility at the very top; therefore it is closed and inaccessible), or to Nevoljaš, located at 740 metres above sea level, where there is a viewing point offering great views.

We had to settle for hiking on the educational trail. The Count Education Trail is named after Count Josip Janković, who also gave his name to Jankovac. One of the stations of the path is the count's final resting place located in a cave. There is also a cave with bats, viewing points, refreshment points, wooded stairs that make climbing easier...

After a leisurely tour of the educational trail that lasted for an unusually long time, we again found ourselves in front of the hiking lodge and saw a car with Požega registration plates all muddy. It was immediately clear that it came from the southern side of Papuk, from the direction of Velika, which still does not have a paved road. But that was a sign that this road was passable. We got into the car and headed for Velika towards which there is a macadam road three times longer than the one leading from Jankovac to Drenovac.

Along the way, we stopped near the Papuk summit. A soldier in the uniform behind the fence greeted us and asked, "To the bench, right?" And we answered vaguely: "Of course!" He only smiled and waved us in with his hand, used to the many visitors coming there. When passing along the fence of the military facility, you come to a forest opening on whose right side there is a bench with fantastic views of Papuk. The hike on the educational trail was too little for us, so we had to stop there to get to know Papuk better.

We arrived in Velika (the location of the first of the two camps in Požega-Slavonia County), at the Čiča Mata cafe where we drank a homemade herb brandy and continued towards the Zlatni Lug tavern, located in Donji Emovci, a small suburb of Požega. Zlatni Lug is just one part of a larger tourist complex that has the tavern/restaurant, an excursion site, a lodging house, a souvenir shop and a camp – the second camp in Požega County.

The Zlatni Log restaurant is decorated in a rustic style and has the "Tastes of Golden Slavonia" mark, which means it offers local dishes 365 days a year. We ordered homemade brandy and bread with lard made of a black Slavonian pig as an appetiser. The pig lard is a traditional Slavonian ingredient which has long been neglected, but is now becoming more prominent and appreciated, and it has its well-deserved place in the local restaurant offer. This is supported by the latest research which shows that pig fat is healthier than oil. The fats are transformed into energy and stimulate absorption of vitamins and do not contain synthetic substances, unlike margarine and industrial oils.

Although the Zlatni Lug restaurant is also known for its delicacies made from the autochthonous Pannonian Podolac cattle, since I started with pork, I continued in this vein and ordered a pork chop with bacon and “kajmak,” along with the Šopska salad. It was a perfect combination. Of the other specialities, the restaurant offers a turkey steak in gorgonzola sauce, a green pepper steak, grilled or in mushroom sauce, trout in pumpkin seeds, a perch fillet with cream and garlic, carp grilled on a fork, the winegrower’s kebab, and the fried pork brains in eggs — something for everybody.

During the dinner at the restaurant, we remembered the legendary beer festival called the Požega Beer Mug, which was held until two years ago at the nearby Zlatni Lug excursion site. Wishing to taste the local beers, we went to Požega and visited the Slawoner pub. I tried the Slawoner Kriek – a draught beer with a sour cherry, which impressed me at homebrewing/craft brewing meet in Đakovo last year when I first tasted it. Slawoner is also the name of the first Požega craft brewery founded and managed by Sandi Mance, one of the pioneers of craft brewing in Slavonia. Apart from locally-made beers, the Slawoner pub offers a whole range of other crafts beers, but my rule is always to try local, preferably draught beer.

In addition to the brilliant and long-established winemaking scene, the Golden Valley also has a strong beermaking scene, and all of this completes the flavours of the Golden Slavonia. For tastes to reach their full intensity, it is necessary to be reasonably hungry and thirsty, which Papuk took care of; or, as we said in the headline of this article: after recreation there comes regeneration. All in all, this was a wonderful excursion, and this article is a recommendation and a roadmap for everyone how to spend a weekend combining the enjoyment of untouched nature with the delights of indulging in local delicacies.

More news about the Papuk Nature Park can be found in the Travel section.

On March 5, the Esplanade Hotel in Zagreb will host a major culinary spectacle. The chef of the best hotel in the city, Ana Grgić from the Esplanade Hotel, and Igor Jagodić from the Strelec restaurant in Ljubljana, both award-winning Gault&Millau chefs from Croatia and Slovenia, will prepare a gala dinner for 150 chefs from restaurants who have been selected by the prestigious gastronomic guide. The event will also mark the announcement of the best Croatian chefs for 2019.

Gault&Millau, one of the two most prestigious gastronomic guides in the world and the only one which has a special edition for Croatia, presents annual trophies to chefs who have distinguished themselves with their cooking and culinary philosophy. These are not necessarily chefs of the most elite restaurants but chefs who are creative, who do not follow gastronomic trends, who are innovative but respect the tradition of their regions, who know modern culinary techniques but cook with a great deal of emotion and "have a feel" for ingredients.

This is the vision of the Gault&Millau guide which has always been trying to discover new talents and has been advocating for unconventional cuisine for over fifty years. It was the duo Gault&Millau who in 1972 invented the concept of nouvelle cuisine and launched a revolution in the French gastronomy.

This year's Croatian winners of the Gault&Millau trophy will be declared at a gala event organised on the occasion of the release of the guide’s second edition. The long-awaited night of culinary Oscars, which was the largest gathering of Croatian chefs last year, will be held at the hotel’s Emerald Hall.

"How many did we get?" is the most common question asked by restaurants for which the Gault&Millau chef caps represent a confirmation of their quality and a strong incentive to be even better. The 2019 Croatian edition of Gault&Millau will evaluate 150 restaurants and 70 POP venues, and present 111 wines and 25 leading hotels from all over Croatia. The guide is bilingual (in Croatian and English) and is intended for both the local fans of good food and fine wines and for foreign tourists who are increasingly looking for destinations which offer wine & gourmet experience, and Gault&Millau offers them honest reviews of restaurants of all price categories and for different occasions.

“The luxury is in quality, not in price,” is the motto of Gault&Millau, which has gained credibility and international prestige thanks to its independent, competent and anonymous inspectors, who assess restaurants for quality according to strictly defined international standards. Apart from the printed guide, all restaurants will be presented on G&M's website (2,000,000 global users and 6,000,000 views) and the free G&M app (500,000 global users).

Recently, Gault&Millau has gotten new owners. Jacques Bally, formerly the director of the Ducasse advisory division, has replaced former President Côme de Chérisey at the head of the company. He and his investors, led by Vladislav Skvortsov, took over the respected French company with the intent of strengthening its international network. "I will remain faithful to the original values and principles established by the founders of Gault&Millau, popularising the nouvelle cuisine. We are preparing major projects in France and abroad," said Bally.

More culinary news can be found in the Lifestyle section.

In the world of chocolate there used to be white, milk and dark chocolate, but in 2017 a new kind of chocolate first appeared. That is the ruby chocolate, which is currently available in just a few countries, and one of them will soon be Croatia, reports Poslovni.hr on February 6, 2019.

“We are among the countries which always follow trends in chocolates, which also confirms our credibility as a Mediterranean country that is quite diverse in flavours,” says Fran Reizl, the creative director and production manager at Vrsna from Sesvete. He has been involved in the food production business for the last 15 years, and since 2017 he has owned the Vrsna Chocolates brand.

His company is about to bring to Croatia something entirely new – ruby chocolate. “We use a special process of separating cocoa seeds and a special fermentation to preserve the natural colour of cocoa, which is a tropical fruit of a rose-ruby colour. The name ruby comes from the association between the precious stone ruby and the colour of the chocolate. The taste is specific due to the presence of citric aromas. Cocoa is a fruit with elements of grape and lemon flavours,” explains Reizl.

The new kind of chocolate will be presented at the 2019 Gast international fair in Split in two weeks, after which you will be able to find the chocolate in delicacy stores around the country, but also in Vienna and Stuttgart and at the company’s web shop.

“We will have two product categories; one will be Ruby Chocolate while the other will be Ruby Raspberry and Pistachio. As a company that wants to export the Croatian products beyond the borders of our country, we will try to establish a marketing contact in the most widely-used language of the world, while on the back of our Ruby Chocolate there will be information that it is a Croatian product, along with Croatian red and white chequered squares,” said the entrepreneur.

More news about Croatian food can be found in the Lifestyle section.

Translated from Poslovni.hr (reported by Lucija Špiljak).

The Croatian Food Agency has released a report by the Food Safety Centre on the results of self-control measures implemented by food producers during the last three years. A total of 15,281 food samples were analysed. More than 5,000 samples are processed every year. The results show that Croatian consumers are occasionally sold food infected with bacteria and mould, reports Poslovni.hr on February 1, 2019.

The food samples were analysed against the microbiological parameters in accordance with the Microbiological Food Criteria Decree and Guide, and the results have been processed together and summarised, according to the Croatian Agricultural and Food Agency's report. It should be noted that the report by the Food Safety Centre does not state during which three years the inspections were carried out.

The results of the report indicate the presence of an increased number of aerobic mesophilic bacteria in most food categories. They are followed by enterobacteria, then moulds and yeasts, and in a small number of food categories, the contamination with bacteria was also established.

It should be noted that the increased number of aerobic mesophilic bacteria in food usually indicates old food and food with poorer microbiological quality.

Food safety is an imperative in placing the products on the market, which is why in the food industry, at the industrial and crafts level, the production is regulated by a number of regulations (laws, decisions, regulations, guides) whose criteria the food must meet at the time of manufacture and when being placed on the market, until the end of its stated shelf life.

EU rules on food hygiene throughout the food chain are the same in all member states. Food business entities bear the primary responsibility for food safety. This means that, according to the legal provisions, the entities are obliged to establish a self-control system for their production so that the food they produce satisfies the food safety criteria.

Translated from Poslovni.hr.

More news on the Croatian agriculture and food sector can be found in the Business section.

ZAGREB, January 29, 2019 - Following media reports that a Polish slaughter house was processing meat from sick cows, Croatia's chief veterinary inspector, Gordan Jerbić, said on Tuesday that Croatia did not import meat of sick cows from Poland and that there was no need for local consumers to fear.

"An inspection of the documents attached to each animal shipment imported into Croatia established that Croatia did not import meat from that abattoir," Jerbić told reporters after media outlets released secretly taken footage of exceptionally sick cows that were being smuggled into the Polish abattoir and processed without hardly any veterinary inspection at all.

Jerbić added that more than 14,000 official inspections were conducted last year of live animals and of animal products, with more than 4,500 samples of imported fresh meat being taken.

About 700 objections were lodged regarding breaches related to the hygiene of products of animal origin and equipment in meat processing plants and 17 criminal charges were filed at relevant courts.

Jerbić underscored that inspections are conducted "from farm to the table," each stage being checked from slaughter, packaging and transport to the end user.

Asked about meat from the Polish abattoir, Jerbić said that an investigation was still underway. "We sent a query to the relevant Polish authority but haven't received a reply as to where that meat ended up. However, following an inspection of the documentation, there is no need to fear that that meat ended up in Croatia," Jerbić underscored.

He confirmed that Croatia does import a certain quantity of meat from Poland, mostly fresh beef.

More news on the Croatian agriculture can be found in the Business section.

ZAGREB, January 25, 2019 - Croatian agricultural and food exports continued to grow last year, but at a lower rate than in previous years, the Croatian Chamber of Commerce (HGK) said in a statement on Friday.

In the first ten months of 2018, compared with the same period of 2017, agricultural and food exports increased by 5% to 1.64 billion euro, while imports rose by 4% to 2.55 billion euro. Coverage of imports by exports increased from 63% to 64%.

In 2017, agricultural and food exports rose by 7.5% from 2016, when they had increased by nearly 13% from the previous year.

"The fact that in the first nine months of 2018, compared with the same period of 2017, the growth of the agricultural trade deficit was halted is encouraging. However, this year's deficit could still exceed one billion euros, which continues to be a concern," HGK vice-president for agriculture and tourism Dragan Kovačević said.

He added that Croatia still recorded the largest deficit in trade with meat and edible meat offal, milk and dairy products, fruit and vegetables. "This indicates a poor structure of agricultural production and low productivity, but also the fact that EU funding and rural development measures still have no effect," Kovačević said.

"In order to increase the volume of agricultural production and productivity, which is far below the EU average, along with absorbing funding from rural development programmes, Croatian agricultural production needs to be regionalised to ensure a stronger role of grants in increasing competitiveness," he concluded.

Looking at overall trade in the first ten months of 2018, it also increased by 5% from the same period of 2017, reaching 12 billion euro. At the same time, imports increased by 8% to 19.8 billion euro, with coverage of imports by exports falling from 63% to 61%.

Agricultural and food products accounted for 13% of exports and 14% of imports, the HGK said.

More news on Croatia's agriculture can be found in the Business section.

January 24, 2019 - The VBZ publishing house has presented the most recent culinary book by the gourmet chef, writer, poet and historian, Veljko Barbieri.

Barbieri wrote his first articles a long time ago, in the legendary Polet magazine in Zagreb, and has written numerous novels, travel books, short stories since. As an author and gastro-writer, Barbieri has worked with many Croatian, Italian, German and Slovenian weeklies and magazines since the 1980s and his columns have been turned into numerous books and cooks that have seen significant success and received prestigious national and international prizes, with those from Gourmand indeed being some of the most prominent ones. Also notable are the award at the Barcelona Book Fair for the Best Food Literature (2003) and the Best Book on Mediterranean Gastronomy won in Sweden (2005). He is also a prominent TV presenter, a winner of literary awards, a journalist and even an actor. But, most of all, Barbieri is a witty, smart, joyful hedonist who in this book – as in his first cookbook of a similar format published 16 years ago – acts as a photographer as well.

For Barbieri, Veliki Kuharski Kanconijer (The Great Cooking Canzoniere) represents a kind of a crowning achievement in the field of food writing, in which he, in his trademark way, examines and promotes gastronomy through highly enjoyable articles written at a high literary level. Barbieri leads his readers and admirers of authentic dishes on a journey through stories from the culinary world, accompanied by numerous recipes.

In the book, you will meet a Mayan princess and the creator of the world together with a recipe for the Aztecs chicken, Mediterranean sand smelts from small nets, evil wizards and beet with the Russian borscht or Russian beet salad; you will taste Renaissance pastries and a modest but savoury radish, carrot and pumpkin stew. There are also potatoes from the “dark soil”, oxtail totems, the chickpea from the Cicero brothers. Also, a medieval steak and a divine rescuer – radish from old stories, glazed lamb in champagne and an egg – for the end.

The book includes the original author's photographs, as well as examples of artwork and illustrations in which gastronomy takes centre stage because the author experiences gastronomy through art and history.

We can be sure that Veliki Kuharski Kanconijer has all the prerequisites to become another of Barbieri's bestsellers, which will find its way to the shelves of many kitchens and homes, where it will undoubtedly have a special place.