Celtnet Croatian Recipes and Cookery, Home Page

Croatia, officially Republika Hrvatska (the Republic of Coratia) is a Parliamentary Republic on the Adriatic Sea in the Western Mediterranean, Southern Europe. The capital (and largest city) is Zagreb and the official language is Croatian. The origianl occupants of the country were Illyrians, but early settlement also brought Celts and Greeks to the country. Conquered by Rome in 168 BCE, after the fall of Rome the country was ruled by the Huns, the Ostrogoths and then to the Byzantine Empire. The forebearers of Croatia's current Croat Slav population settled there in the early 7th century. The kingdom of Croatia was formed in 925 CE and the kingdom lasted until 1102 when Croatia unified with Hungary. The 1526 Battle of Mohács and the death of King Louis II meant the end of Hungarian authority over Croatia, replaced by the Habsburg Monarchy. From 1592 until the 1700s the area of Croatia became contested territory, effectively a buffer zone betwen the Habsburg empire and the Ottoman empire and it wasn't until 1709 that the Ottomans were finally and successfully driven out. During the 19th century Croat nationalism grew and following the collapse of the Viennese republic and the 1848 revolutions Croatia attained autonomy in 1868. In 1918 the Croatian Parliament severed relations with Austro–Hungary an joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which later became Yougoslavia. In 1941-1945, during World War II, an Axis puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia existed. After the victory of Tito's People's Liberation Movement and the Allies, Croatia became a constitutive federal republic of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1991 Croatia proclaimed independence from Yougoslavia and on January 15th 1992 the state was recognized by the European Union and the United nations.

Croatia is a member of United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Council of Europe. Croatia is expected to formally join NATO in 2009 and is a prospective member of the European Union. And in February 2005, the Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the EU officially came into force.

The culture of cuisine of Croatia is well established and the formalization of Croatian cookery, in terms of written sources, is older and more established even than that of France. However, there is no such thing as a national cuisine and the dishes of Croatia represent a melange of the cuisine of its regions. There is also a distinct difference between the recipes of the coastal regions and islands and the cuisin of the mainland. Indeed, mainland uisine is more characterized by the earlier proto-Slavic and the more recent contacts with the more famous gastronomic orders of today - Hungarian, Viennese and Turkish — while the coastal region bears the influences of the Greek, Roman and Illyrian, as well as of the later Mediterranean cuisine — Italian and French.

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