Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance

FAMILY HEIRLOOM RECIPES

Illinois State Fair

August 12, 2022

Honorable Mention

Croatian Sarma
Stephanie Fitzgerald, Godfrey, Illinois

This family heirloom recipe came from my grandmother Ivka Vuco Perica. She was from the Dalmatian part of Croatia. Due to the Nazis getting close to the area where she lived, she fled to Italy and became a governess for a family. She met my grandfather, Nick Perica, while he was in the Army (101st Airborne, then OSS- Office of Strategic Services-which later became the CIA). They were married in 1945 in Bari, Italy. They moved to the United States where they raised their five sons. My grandmother loved to cook her beloved Croatian food. Her first born son, Marion, my father, grew up eating traditional Croatian food. Just as his mother grew up eating it as well. My father told me that when his mother was a child the entire family would chop the vegetables for this meal while praying the rosary together. When my grandmother was a married woman with children she would have a vegetable garden every year. She canned many of her vegetables (most noteable were her tomatoes) and she baked multiple loaves of bread daily. She would share her bounty with friends, family, and even her doctor. My grandmother spoke three languages. English was her second language, Italian was her third, but Croatian was her first and her favorite. As a child, my parents and 4 sisters spent every Christmas Eve at my grandmother’s house eating sarma. She always served it with mashed potatoes and homemade bread with butter. After my grandmother died a few years ago I was on a quest to recreate the Sarma recipe for my own family. Since my grandmother wrote nothing down I had to rely on my memory and my father’s memory to recreate the sarma recipe. Now I make it every Christmas Eve in order to honor her memory. My hope is to pass it on to my children and make Grandma Ivka proud.

Honorable Mention

Croatian Sarma
Stephanie Fitzgerald, Godfrey, Illinois

Recipe Ingredients:
– 1 large head cabbage
– 1 pound 80/20 ground beef
– 1 pound ground pork
– 2 eggs
– 3 onions, diced
– 10 bulbs garlic, diced
– 1 cup white rice, uncooked
– 1/4 teaspoon pepper
– 1/2 teaspoon salt
– 2 Tablespoons olive oil
– 4 smoked pork hocks
– 13.5 ounces Polish kielbasa, sliced into 2 inch chunks

– 4 (14 oz) cans sauerkraut
– 60 oz tomato juice
– 3 (15 oz) cans crushed tomatoes

Directions:
1. Boil head of cabbage. Let cool. After cooling, carefully pull the cabbage leaves off one at a time.
2. In a large bowl, combine ground beef, ground pork, eggs, onions, garlic, rice, salt and pepper. Using hands mix thoroughly.
3. Put 1/2 cup of meat mixture onto cabbage leaf. Fold sides over meat and roll up starting from the core end. Continue until all of meat mixture is used.
4. Coat bottom of large pot with the olive oil. Chop any remaining cabbage and place it at the bottom of pot.
5. Layer the cabbage rolls on top of chopped cabbage. Top with 2 pork hocks and 1/2 of kielbasa. Then top with 2 cans of sauerkraut.
6. Repeat another layer of the cabbage rolls, pork hocks, kielbasa, and remaining sauerkraut.
7. Pour in tomato juice and crushed tomatoes.
8. Cover and bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for 4 hours.

Note: Be sure to carefully remove the bones of the pork hock before serving.