People are divided into those who eat only to live and those who live to eat. The former will buy meat wherever they can, but without excessive searching for special flavors. The latter will first think about the taste and will know their butcher’s mobile number by heart.
Written by Ivo Kozarčanin
Do not ask the butcher for advice on how to prepare meat. If he knew, he would be a chef, not a butcher, said legendary American television journalist Andy Rooney (91). He may have been right in the case of New York butchers, but if he stopped by Samobor, he would be convinced that butcher Davor Koprivnjak, who runs the most popular butcher shop in Samobor with his father Ivan, knows exactly what to do with the best cuts of meat. This is confirmed by the hundreds of people who wait in line every Saturday morning in front of the butcher shop in the central city square, Trg kralja Tomislava. – To reach the highest quality, meat needs to be cooled for 48 hours at four degrees Celsius after slaughter. If it is prepared immediately after slaughter, it has no flavor and seems to fall apart – says the cheerful 40-year-old who loves to roast meat under a bell. His favorite combination is veal, lamb, and pork knuckle, which he cuts into three pieces. He adds potatoes and vegetables and roasts everything together for two and a half to three hours.
Lamb from Žumberak
– Long and slow, that is the secret of good roasting. Until the very end, it must not be hotter than 180 degrees. In the last 15 minutes, it should be heated to 250 degrees. Meat roasted this way separates from the bones but does not fall apart – says Davor, whose father Ivan opened the first butcher shop at the Samobor market 28 years ago. Davor joined his father in the business 20 years ago, and now they are celebrating the tenth anniversary of their move to a ’boutique’ on Trg kralja Tomislava.
The recession is felt in the butcher shop
It is evident, says butcher Davor Koprivnjak, that people have less money. Once, he says, they would buy five to six kilograms at once. Today, even in Samobor, where wealthier people live than in other parts of Croatia, customers are increasingly counting how many pieces of meat they need and are careful not to take too much.
– The good thing for us is that most still do not give up on quality. Even those who started buying meat on sale in shopping centers quickly returned. I don’t know how they can sell prime meat for 16 kuna there, but I know that a kilogram of my ‘kajzerflajš’ is worth much more than their two kilograms – says Koprivnjak.
The Koprivnjaks came to Samobor from Hrašće Turopoljsko. In their Turopolje, they still source most of their meat. They know well from whom they buy and how the animals are fed, and they also slaughter themselves because, as Davor says, that is the only guarantee of quality. However, the lamb is not from Turopolje. It comes from the neighboring Žumberak.
– Žumberak lambs are slightly larger than those from the islands. They also have a somewhat milder smell, so I often describe them as lambs for those who do not particularly like lamb. But the meat of domestic lambs from Žumberak is just as sweet as that from all other regions of Croatia – says the butcher whom we barely pulled out of the butcher shop for 15 minutes on Wednesday at noon, after several days of tough negotiations and arrangements. And not because it is hard for him to sit and talk to someone.
To eat with your eyes
– There is always work in the butcher shop. Saturdays are, of course, crazy, especially now that the weather is nice, so everyone wants to grill. They come for veal, pork, ćevapi, and burgers. Meat arrives every two days and needs to be prepared for sale. In addition, we make cracklings all year round, for example. And if we don’t have much work with fresh meat, we need to make sausages, garlic sausages, and debreceners – explains Davor. They prepare garlic sausages from 90 percent pork and 10 percent beef. They do not grind the meat but cut it, as this intertwines the flavors differently, and the sausage, which is not unimportant, looks much nicer. At Koprivnjaks, after all, the meat always looks nice. The display case before Easter is full of rolled hams that could be eaten with the eyes. I am regularly attracted to liver at this butcher shop. Even when I don’t plan to buy anything, I can’t resist them while passing through the square. Fresh, shiny, reddish-brown, they immediately remind me of a pan full of hot fat into which they should be thrown, then turned after a short frying, salted with coarse salt, and enjoyed. A little in the livers, but even more in fresh bread dipped in that fat.
