'NA OKO'*

А wobbly but energetic granny somewhere far, far away, cooking from scratch in her humble house dishes that you can neither taste nor smell, but somehow understand deep in your gut are utterly delicious. Roosters crow, cows moo, birds chirp and fire crackles, while the granny and her family cook, clean and enjoy their hearty meals… There is a small but very popular subgenre of YouTube videos dedicated to old folks cooking traditional food in faraway corners of the world, from mountainous Azerbaijan to rural China. Their charm is incontestable, and the real stars of the genre draw millions of viewers across the world. Understandably so. These mesmerising rituals of everyday life seem both foreign and instinctively familiar to urban humanity, as we are all subconsciously craving the lost innocence of living simply and closer to nature.

Rory Miller's book Na Oko: Adventures in Village Cooking From Bulgaria's Forgotten Corners is also packed with energetic old women and wizened old men who, nestled in their lush gardens or tiny kitchens, prepare strange and delicious dishes: chicken salamura soup made from a hen they have slaughtered themselves, homemade cheese, popska yahniya, or Priest's Stew, potato lyutika and more… A universe of foods you will hardly find in any  Bulgarian restaurant, but that has defined what real food meant for generations of Bulgarians.

Rory is an American who has lived in Bulgaria for almost 20 years and has engaged in all kinds of culinary adventures here: from building one of this nation's first craft beer brands to being restaurant cook and competing in MasterChef. In Na Oko, he is anything but a dispassionate observer of how his hosts in remote Bulgarian villages cook and behave. Curious and humbled by his hosts' life experiences, Rory is open not just to their food but also to their stories, hardships and moments of sadness and happiness.

The result is a book that is part travelogue, part memoir and part cookbook, created through his genuine efforts to understand, listen and remember – often while sipping on a glass of homemade rakiya or wine – the recipes and stories of families and communities that have spent the 35 years since the collapse of Communism also witnessing the collapse of local economies, the shrinking of villages, the slow ageing of the residents and the disappearance of public services. Gradually, both Rory and the reader immerse themselves in a life that runs in parallel to the one in Bulgaria's big and more prosperous cities: slower, more precarious and sometimes soulfully intimate.

Rory has chosen to present the recipes of everything he has tried in an unorthodox way. Do not expect the sterile lists of ingredients, quantities and preparation steps we are all familiar with. Instead, he explains them as if you are sitting beside the lady of the house, peeking over her shoulder while she cooks. All of these are simple and, minus the hen killing, you can make at home, recreating the tastes of a Bulgaria that seems to be slowly fading away.

This explains the book's name. Na oko means to cook without strict measures, to eyeball how much of everything to use. The book's first edition, in Bulgarian, was published in 2023. Now Rory is ready with the English version – as aromatic, atmospheric and alluring as the original.

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* By eye

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Na Oko. Adventures in Village Cooking from Bulgaria's Forgotten Corners, is published in English by Kibea, ISBN: 978-619-271-103-0