Ričet

The story

Ričet is a thick pot of pearl barley, beans and smoked pork from continental Croatia, somewhere between a soup and a porridge depending on how much water goes in. The same dish is cooked in Slovenia under the same name and in Austria and Bavaria as Ritschert, and the word comes from the Styrian German ritschet. A spiced barley and pea broth called Rutschhart is recorded in a manuscript from the Tegernsee monastery in Bavaria written around 1500, and the 17th-century Slovenian scholar Janez Vajkard Valvasor used the word ričet itself. For most of its history it was cheap food for villages, large families and workers, and it carried a reputation as prison fare. Index.hr notes that it was cooked in big pots, sometimes on Monday from the leftovers of the Sunday roast, and that it became standard fare in mountain lodges and country taverns. The stew is made most often in winter, and the smoked meat can be neck, ribs or sausage. It thickens as it stands, so cook it a day ahead, thin it with hot water, and set out bread and a jar of pickled peppers.