čorba
(Translation, Yugoslavia)
Any soup which is colored (with tomatoes or red peppers) and involves a zaprška. Though there's also a white čorba, made with sour cream or yogurt or other milk derivative, possibly further soured by adding vinegar or lemon juice.
The most famous here are the young beef ragou čorba and fish čorba. The latter is of hungarian origins (therefore, only river fish may apply), and is popular mostly in northern half of Serbia. The Hungarians, though, didn't perfect it properly; they made it famous, though, but in Hungary I heard (from Ileš) that the good riblja čorba begins at the Baja - Szeged line (parallel with our border) and then gets much better as you go south. North of that line it's bullshit. I tried and I can confirm - actually, what we ate in Szeged wasn't too good.
Then there's the category of čorbasto (which I wrote as „čorba-like“), which is any dish that is not exactly soup or čorba per se, but you eat it with a spoon, and is just liquid enough. For instance, there are two basic ways to make beans - gust (thick, dense) and čorbast. Okay, there's also the baked, like prebranac or gravče na tavče, but that's on the side from main categories.
In slang, čorba is also juice, i.e. any kind of non-solid fuel („why did you stop“ - „ran out of čorba“) or developer („the čorba was stale and the negative came out thin“).
The band „Riblja čorba“ (fish čorba) is closely related. The riba (fish) being slang for a girl, the band's name is a slang expression for the menstruation („fish has a čorba“ is equivalent to „she got“).
The fish čorba is traditionally made out of river fish, it's the alas* recipe anyway, and there's a lot of anglers around, I remember my folks at times cooked what Šuca Sejin caught. Once around 2006, when we felt like eating it, we realized we live in an area with lots of water everywhere, it's a three rivers' mouth (literally, not like in that song, „at the mouth of two rivers under Avala“, where they shortened Danube, bringing Black sea to Belgrade), so there's fish to choose from, but we didn't know which is which, sea or river. To solve the dilemma, we got the idea to avoid fish altogether and replace it with pork, while keeping the rest of the recipe. This is how pork fish čorba, the house special, was born.
The other specialty, the one which I thought everyone knew about but then didn't, is the eggy [čorba]. Simply insert a couple of eggs, stirred by fork, not whisked, while it boils, and it congeals into frilly strings. That may have started as Oma's recipe, the kids still love it, and so do I.
----
* river fisher, from hungarian halász, fisher (hal = fish)
Mentions: january 1960., september 1966., 25-VI-1969., 01-I-1971., 23-IV-1972., 09-XI-1972., 23-III-1973., 26-XII-1974., 20-II-1975., 12-V-1975., 11-IV-1976., 24-V-1976., The long trip to Budapest and back, 26-VIII-1976., 04-I-1977., 09-VI-1979., august 1988., june 1989., 17-VIII-1990., 14-IV-1991., 29-VI-1991., 03-I-1995., 04-IX-1999., 29-III-2001., 30-VI-2001., 06-X-2001., 08-VII-2002., 15-VII-2002., 24-VII-2002., 22-X-2002., 15-X-2004., 20-X-2007., 25-VI-2010., 11-IX-2010., 16-IX-2010., 05-VII-2014., 14-XII-2014., 17-IV-2015., Second day, 13-VI-2015., 04-VII-2015., 14-IX-2015., 28-VIII-2016., 25-II-2017., 31-VIII-2018., Bajaga i Čorba, 21-IX-2018., 10-V-2019., 29-VII-2019., 13-VIII-2019., 20-X-2019., 20-VI-2020., 20-X-2020., 14-XII-2020., 24-XII-2020., 26-VII-2021., 27-IX-2021., Sokobanja, 12-XII-2021., 29-V-2022., 24-IX-2022., 25-IX-2022., 17-X-2022., 28-XI-2022., 22-III-2023., 27-IV-2023., 13-V-2023., 08-VIII-2023., 21-VIII-2023., 14-IX-2023., 30-IX-2023., 02-X-2023., 05-X-2023., 12-X-2023., 01-XI-2023., 18-XII-2023., 17-III-2024., 14-V-2024., 23-V-2024., 31-V-2024., 08-VI-2024., 09-VIII-2024., 19-VIII-2024., 02-IX-2024., 07-IX-2024., 20-IX-2024., 28-IX-2024., 07-X-2024., 21-X-2024., 12-XII-2024., 13-I-2025., 09-II-2025., 15-III-2025., 25-III-2025., 12-IV-2025., 14-V-2025., 26-V-2025., 08-VI-2025., 18-VI-2025., 27-VI-2025., 11-IX-2025., 20-IX-2025., 14-X-2025., 24-X-2025., 17-XI-2025., 29-XI-2025., 19-XII-2025., 12-I-2026., 20-I-2026., 15-II-2026., 03-III-2026., 10-III-2026., 21-III-2026., 08-IV-2026., 21-IV-2026., 03-V-2026., 10-V-2026., 24-V-2026., 01-VI-2026., 14-VI-2026., 27-VI-2026., AnaViz, decomp, house dictionary, Ileš Notaroš, Oma, Riblja čorba, Sejini, yogurt, zaprška, in serbian
20-XI-2019 - 17-VII-2026