How the festive table of the Bulgarians should look like for Saint George's Day, especially when this feast comes only a week after Easter? Traditionally people cook different types of lamb meals for both feasts. The meals for St George's Day are mainly prepared with seasonal products such as green salad, nettle, spinach and dock. Here are some ideas for your festive menu:

The festive meal starts with fresh salads, crunchy radishes, spring onions and garlic. People can find at this time of the year mainly imported cucumbers and tomatoes, if they decide to use them in the salad. Otherwise, the authentic green salad must be enriched with a boiled egg and radishes. If you want to add more flavor to the salad, you can use baby spinach and wild garlic (broad-leaved garlic) 

The festive soups must also consist of green vegetables and leaves-dock, spinach, nettle or sorrel. Some people make lamb soup with dock, carrots, potatoes and sour cream. If you decide to make a meatless soup, you can make creamed spinach or nettle soup with poached eggs. It is made very easy. First you need to wash and peel couple of potatoes and dice them into large cubes. The potatoes must boil together with some chopped leaks. The water must be enough to cover the vegetables. Add a teaspoon of salt and boil the vegetables until soft. Wash the spinach well and add it to the boiled vegetables. Boil the soup for another 2-3 minutes and then blend the soup until you have a homogeneous mixture. Add some more hot water until you reaches the desired thickness and let it simmer for a while, before you take the soup from the heat. Finally, you can add a piece of butter for better flavor. Then you can decorate your soup bowl with a poached egg. To make your poached eggs you need a pot of boiling water. Add a pinch of salt to the water and break the eggs one by one and let them poach for 3 to 4 minutes.

The sour dock and fairy ring mushroom soup is also a very interesting and easy to cook soup. Put a piece of butter in a large pot and sweat some diced leaks and shredded carrots. Add some sweet paprika and cook until soft. Add one liter of water and let it boil. When the water starts simmering chop a bunch of sour dock and add it to the boiling substance together with two handfuls of fairy ring mushrooms. Boil the substance for ten more minutes. Add a soup spoon of salt and another piece of butter to the soup before you remove it from the heat. You can dice some parsley for decoration.

Finally, you must take care of your main course for Saint George's Day - roast lamb with baby potatoes and spinach. If you buy lamb shoulder, you can stuff it with rice, mushrooms, spring onions, parsley, mint and some costmary.

Enjoy you festive meal!

English version: Kostadin Atanasov