I was invited to take part in a panel discussion at University College London as part of a series of events organised by the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), under the theme Eating the Balkans. We talked about these exact issues: What is ours? What’s in a name? Which Empire renamed our dishes? Which words are misleading?
Irina Janakievska, author of ‘The Balkan Kitchen’, posed these questions with precision in her presentation. Alongside Irina were Arbër Qerka-Gashi, founder of the grassroots publication Balkanism; Ana Ilievska Zavrsnik* from UCL; Dr Mirela Xhaferraj** UCL; and UCL Associate Professor Ramona Gonczol***, all with extraordinary depth of knowledge and perspectives shaped by different parts of the region.
At first glance, it may seem that we all eat the same food in the Balkans. Across borders and languages, the dishes look familiar enough. But identity—of a group, or of a nation—lives in the details: a spoonful of sour cream, a handful of nettles, the size of a sarma…
Those details matter. Change them, and the story shifts—it becomes someone else’s. In this part of the world, identities are fragile and easily misunderstood, especially when glimpsed in passing on social media, where a quick scroll can blur the local flavour behind a dish.
I often return to the question I’m frequently asked about Romanian cuisine: “What is truly yours?” If many dishes resemble those of neighbouring countries today, then what defines Romanian cuisine?
The idea that a cuisine in the middle of Europe could have developed entirely independently, untouched by outside influences, still baffles me.
Even when words sound similar, or recipes follow the same steps, meaning is never identical.
What makes a dish truly ours is not just how it is prepared.
It is the collective memory attached to it: the rituals that surround it, the language used to name it, the moments in which it appears. Over time, these layers of meaning become part of our culinary DNA.
Read more here.
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Who’s Who at UCL:
*Ana Ilievska Završnik has been teaching Macedonian language evening classes at SSEES UCL since 2019 and Slovene classes since 2024. She is also a translator and chartered language consultant, with expertise in Macedonian and Slovene languages. Her consultancy services span the public and corporate sectors across the UK, Slovenia and N. Macedonia. Committed to humanitarian causes, Ana generously volunteers her translation and teaching skills to offer integration mentorship for international human rights organisations. Ana is a founder of Language Yoga – School of Macedonian and Slovene language, as well as the organiser of Walk and Talk session for language professionals.
**Dr Mirela Xhaferraj has been teaching Albanian at UCL SSEES since 2017. She obtained her PhD degree in 2012 with a comparative study of the verbal systems of Greek and Albanian from the University of Tirana, Albania, where she worked as a Lecturer of Greek Language in the Faculty of Foreign Languages until 2016. Her research interests are focused on the Albanian and Greek languages, literature, and culture. She has authored several articles in scientific journals and has presented at various scientific conferences on the Greek and Albanian languages. Additionally, she is a published literary translator from Greek to Albanian.
***Ramona Gonczol, Associate Professor (Teaching) Romanian Language at UCL, is the co-founder and convener of the Interdisciplinary Research Group PROLang (Policy, Research and Outreach in language-based area studies).