Kavarma

Pork or chicken cut small, browned in lard and then stewed slowly in its own juices with onion, peppers, tomato and mushrooms until the sauce has cooked down to a thick, glossy coating: kavarma is the Bulgarian stew that arrives in an individual clay pot, often with an egg cracked on top and set in the oven in the last minutes. The name comes from the Turkish kavurma, meaning something fried or seared, a legacy of five centuries of Ottoman rule, but the dish as Bulgaria eats it is its own, built around pork, paprika and the gyuveche, the small earthenware pot that gives the dish its second name. Every region and most households have a version; the mountain towns add more mushrooms, the south more peppers, and some cooks finish with a spoon of white wine or a pinch of savory, the herb Bulgarians call chubritsa.