Stevo Karapandža brought me back to my culinary beginnings

Combining food in the kitchen is very interesting and challenging, and it is a great experience to learn something new, to expand and combine knowledge, especially if received from esteemed chefs who have started their journey a long time ago, and who have filled not only many cookbooks but also whole encyclopedias which are being used by generations of chefs, and which surely will continue to be used by young chefs who are yet to come.

I had the opportunity to attend a Mediterranean cuisine workshop in Split, organized by the Association of Chefs from Mediterranean and European Regions. The lecturer at this event was Neven Bremec, and the guest speakers were Chef Stevo Karapandža and Chef Hrvoje Zirojević.

Many of you will surely remember Stevo Karapandža, an accomplished chef who had a five-minute-long TV show, accompanied by the unsurpassed host Oliver Mlakar, who would try his dish and say ecstatically: “Mmmmm Stevo, this is great.”

Moreover, it really was great because he is still being recognized by gourmets all over the world for these luxuriant tastes, especially those whom he used to pamper the guests’ palate at the Esplanade Hotel in Zagreb, at the Hilton in Paris, as well as at his Swiss restaurant. Even now, while this chef is in his well-deserved retirement, he still selflessly shares his knowledge, teaching his colleagues the secrets of the trade.

As I watched and listened to him, he brought me back to ancient times. He reminded me of my mother Franka, who taught me the job in exactly the same way as he did during this workshop. I immediately thought: “Yes, this is the same old school, the same way!”

Chef Stevo is an inexhaustible source of knowledge. His theoretical knowledge is driven by experience, i.e. that kind of experience one can never pick up easily, buy or acquire until one full working life has passed. In the culinary world, experience is what matters most, and these workshops are precisely built to help the great masters of the kitchen teach us their life skills and professional knowledge, shortening and accelerating the learning processes. It is a wonderful experience for me, and when I connect it with my previous knowledge and the people who brought it to me, it becomes invaluable.

As soon as the workshop started, I noticed Stevo’s ease of movement in the kitchen, his agile, and organized easy flutter full of liveliness. His method of preparation and cooking was immediately close to me.

My memories came back another time! 

This is how my late uncle Jozo “fluttered” in the kitchen in Pašike, whereby he began his cooking career at the age of 16 on a ship, after which his restless spirit took him to America, France…, where he cooked in various restaurants. When he had already learned a lot, he returned to his town Trogir and started working at our restaurant Pašike, where he wholeheartedly transferred his knowledge to my mother. I was still a child, but I absorbed every movement that is still alive and real in my eyes today.

Hard-working, patient, everyone engulfed in his own thoughts, fully focused on the preparation, on the flavors and smells that were released during cooking. There were no such aids as there are today, they had only the simplest and most primitive tools, and most important of all were their hands and their imagination, which helped them to make extraordinary dishes. As a child, I looked at them, they were my role models, my icons, and now all of a sudden, after many years, these icons are again here in front of me, in the character of Stevo Karapandža. Such an invaluable experience!

Unlike Chef Stevo, we prepare a different type of meal at the restaurant Pašike. We are more focused on home-made, traditional dishes that have rules by which they are prepared and which shall be adhered to during cooking. Nevertheless, I also realized during this workshop that the way I work is useful for me as well as for all those to whom I pass my knowledge because this is a valuable culinary heritage that is passed down from generation to generation.

Time, fashion, decoration and the way of serving may change, but the roots of which the dishes originate will never change and will always be a platform for further personal and professional development for me, as well as for all my fellow chefs.