Serbia.

The grill (roštilj) is the public face of the cuisine. Ćevapi — skinless minced-meat sausages of beef, or beef and pork, seasoned with little more than salt, garlic and paprika — are judged on texture and char, served in somun flatbread with raw onion. Pljeskavica is the same idea flattened into a patty; punjena pljeskavica arrives stuffed with kajmak or cheese. The seasoning philosophy is restraint: good meat, salt, fire, and the confidence not to hide any of it.

The braising pot is the private face. Sarma — sour cabbage leaves wrapped around minced meat and rice, buried with smoked pork and simmered for hours — is the ceremonial dish of winter, obligatory at Christmas and slava celebrations, and famously better reheated the next day. Its cousins run through the calendar: punjene paprike (stuffed peppers) in summer, prebranac (slow-baked beans with caramelized onion) as the great meatless standby, podvarak (sauerkraut baked under roast meat) beside holiday roasts.

Paprika is the defining spice, bought in bulk and spooned generously — sweet for color and body, hot for heat — into stews like paprikaš and the fisherman's riblja čorba of the Danube towns. Smoked pork is the defining depth-charge: ribs, hocks and slanina go into beans, cabbage and lentils the way other cuisines use stock cubes.

Dairy runs on its own track. Kajmak — the slowly ripened skin of boiled milk, somewhere between clotted cream and young cheese — is spread on bread, melted over grilled meat, and defended with regional pride (Čačak and Kraljevo claim the best). White brined cheese in the sirene family appears at every meal. Breakfast is the realm of burek — flaky phyllo pie with meat or cheese — bought at dawn from the bakery and eaten with drinkable yogurt, a pairing treated as non-negotiable. Bread accompanies everything, including, without irony, pasta.

Meals begin, on any occasion worth marking, with rakija — fruit brandy, usually plum šljivovica, often homemade and offered as a test of both hospitality and stamina.