Slathered on bread, nibbled with cheese or served with meat dishes, ‘ajvar’ has been filling the shelves of winter pantries for generations – and the production of this rich spread is a source of pride. “We women all exchange recipes, but everyone thinks theirs is the best,” said Vesna Arifovic, 44, at Belgrade’s Zeleni Venac market, where she sells hundreds of kilos of peppers every day seasonal reds.
Making ajvar (pronounced “eye-var”) begins with this juicy fruit, which is roasted and peeled, chopped or chopped and simmered with sunflower oil, giving the relish its deep rust color. Flavors diverge across the former Yugoslavia: while Macedonians add eggplant to their popular ajvar mix, many Serbian fans stick to salt, sugar and vinegar.
“There are two kinds of people, those who have tasted ajvar and those who have not yet been to Serbia,” the Serbian tourism board said on Twitter in September. The creation of Ajvar is a labor-intensive rite performed enthusiastically in kitchens and courtyards when the leaves begin to turn, although some are now mass-produced throughout the year. Neighbors gather for a drink of homemade rakija (fruit brandy) before beginning the tedious task of peeling peppers. “It seems to me that ajvar and peppers bring people together…this red color seems to make them happier,” said Stevica Markovic in her village near the town of Leskovac, a region in southern Serbia famous for his peppers.
Markovic’s ajvar has become a source of income: he and his family produce up to 3,000 pots a year in their rural kitchen and sell them for between 280 and 550 dinars (2.40 to 4.60 euros) each. He and his wife Suncica sit on low stools near a vat of hot orange mush, filling and briskly stirring dozens of glass jars. “What distinguishes Leskovac ajvar is the raw material, the pepper that grows in the Leskovac basin. We have 280 days of sunshine a year, very good land and enough water,” said the 44-year-old, who heads a local association of ajvar producers. Homemade Leskovac Ajvar and Macedonian Ajvar are now both registered with the World Intellectual Property Organization to protect their brand names.
A Slovenian company’s attempt to patent ajvar in the 1990s sparked outrage in the Balkans, according to media reports. The love of this relish extends southwest to the coast of Montenegro, while the Croatian company Podravka is among the best-known mass manufacturers. “The truth is that all the big noise around ajvar started with the idea of food branding” in the former Yugoslavia, said Tamara Ognjevic, a gastronomic heritage specialist and director of the Artis Cultural Center in Belgrade.
What was once the preserve of households “became interesting to the food industry…and everyone – Macedonians, Bulgarians, Serbs and even Slovenes – immediately started claiming that it belonged to them.” Ognjevic said some form of vegetable condiment most likely arrived in the Balkans with the Ottomans, who ruled much of the region for about 500 years and imported New World crops such as peppers. The first known use of the name ajvar was by 19th-century restaurateurs in Belgrade, most of whom were from northern Macedonia, she explained.
“Ajvar” is believed to derive from the Turkish word “havyar” meaning sturgeon caviar. The name was probably intended to denote a similarly exclusive product, Ognjevic said, given the complex preparation and then-expensive ingredients such as sunflower oil. Today’s Ajvar creators are now trying to expand their loyal fan base. Philip Evans, a British resident of Skopje, in 2011 co-founded Pelagonia, a Macedonian food line exporting ajvar to more than a dozen countries, including Britain and France. “
We had the feeling that it was a product that had never found its place in the global diet,” said the 36-year-old. “Look at products like harissa, pesto or hummus for example “A proponent of Macedonia’s sweet, sun-ripened peppers, Evans is aware of the “very, very passionate” feelings that ajvar evokes in the Balkans. “Everyone’s aunt is the best,” he said.