6 traditional dishes to try in Dubrovnik and Neretva County

Combine the fruits of the Adriatic Sea with the landscapes of Dubrovnik and Neretva County and you have the ingredients for a rich and varied cuisine. Add to the mix some culinary traditions that ingeniously make the most of this bounty and the gastronomic result will make your mouth water.

The landscapes of the Pelješac peninsula – a combination of mountain ridges, steep slopes and fertile valleys – work in harmony to make it one of Croatia’s most prestigious wine regions. Vineyards are found all over the peninsula from the village of Ston and beyond the port town of Orebić. This is where lovers of red wine come to taste some of Dalmatia’s finest wines. The main red grape, plavac mali, produces a full-bodied, robust red wine as well as a crisp rosé.

Two villages on the southern coast, where the terrain is drier and the wines are stronger, have their own appellations, Postup and Dingač. Get to know these wines – plus the white rukatac wine – by visiting the many wineries found along the peninsula. They’ll offer tastings in idyllic surroundings, usually accompanied by platters of Dalmatian prosciutto-like ham called pršut and sheep’s milk cheese from the island of Pag.

There’s something special about the waters around the small village of Mali Ston on the Pelješac peninsula that produces some of Europe’s most delicious oysters. The salt pans in neighbouring Ston have something to do with it, as do the mineral-rich waters flowing from the Neretva River into Mali Ston Bay. Whatever the reason, the result is a delicately sweet and briny flavour that is instantly addictive. You’ll see why they were declared the best on the planet at the 1936 World Exposition in London. Nothing’s changed since then.

Known as European flat oysters, ostrea edulis, these Mali Ston oysters are farmed by a select number of families, some of whom offer boat tours around the oyster beds. These moreish fruits of the sea are one of the most definitive tastes of Dalmatia, best enjoyed by the water’s edge with a chilled glass of white Dalmatian wine.

The people of Dubrovnik and Neretva County love their desserts as much as anyone else, and there’s one particular dish that’s been delighting residents of the region since the Middle Ages, particularly in Dubrovnik itself. Rozata is one of the loveliest ways of finishing a meal, combining a gorgeously creamy texture with flavours that hit the sweet spot without overwhelming your taste buds.

Resembling a crème caramel in appearance, rozata is a silky custard-type dish made with eggs, sugar, milk, vanilla and lemon peel. Like a crème caramel, or a Spanish crema catalana, this dish of scented custard is flipped to reveal a topping of caramelised sugar. But what gives rozata its distinctive flavour is the addition of rozulin, or rosalin, a liqueur made from rose petals, sugar and a grappa-like grape brandy. It’s a fabulous treat all year round, but its lightness is especially appreciated during the summer.

You might not immediately think that pasta and cake go together in the same dish. But in the Pelješac peninsula, the pasta-filled Ston cake has been brought at out at special occasions such as weddings and religious holidays for longer than anyone can remember. Known as stonska torta, this carb-heavy cake was initially a way of using pasta to stretch ingredients further, and the tradition continues to this day.

You start off by making a simple pastry dough of flour, eggs, salt and olive oil. This lines a cake dish, which is then filled with alternating layers of cooked pasta – usually something tubular like penne – with a mixture of ground walnuts, almonds, chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, lemon, eggs, sugar and dark rum, plus a generous amount of butter dotted throughout. The pastry is then folded over the top and, after the cake is baked, it’s dusted with icing sugar.

Croatians are masters at slow cooking, and there’s one method that produces the most succulent meat imaginable. They use a cast-iron pot with a bell-shaped lid called a peka to cook lamb, pork, veal and octopus. To go with whatever meat is chosen, the cook adds chunks of potatoes, carrots, peppers, garlic and onions. Then the pot goes on to the glowing embers of a fire, with more embers piled on top of the lid – effectively creating its own oven.

After several hours of cooking, the meat comes out incredibly tender and just falls off the fork, and all of the vegetables have absorbed the flavours. If you see a restaurant offering meat or octopus cooked “ispod peke”, you won’t want to miss out on this. Just make certain you book it well in advance, usually the day before. The wait will be worth it.

North of the mountains of Dalmatia are the serene landscapes of the Neretva river, valley and delta, a lush region of waterways, marshland and countless orchards producing mandarin oranges, watermelons and figs. But this fertile area is also rich in two specialities that will please the more adventurous palate – frogs and eels. Often you’ll find these two together in a fish stew called brodetto (also known as brodet and brudet), in which frogs and eels are slowly simmered together with garlic, onions, tomatoes, herbs and wine.

You’ll also see fried frogs’ legs on the menu, in which the meat is marinated in olive oil and lemon juice before being fried. Or they might be wrapped in bacon. It’s rather like eating a more exotic version of chicken wings. Look out, too, for spit-roasted eel, which, like frogs’ legs, is usually served simply with polenta and salad.