Mrs Bailey’s Prebanac

Beans and onions and oil: what more do you need?

Serbian recipes came to Mars just the same way as any other, in the minds and hearts — and stomachs! — of emigrant or refugee Serbs. It’s always the comfort foods that travel best, and then nestle most deeply into the repertoires of those who encounter them freshly. Prebenac offers the ultimate in comfort, being easy and unhurried and almost ridiculously cheap; and it proved to be perfect pioneer food, because who doesn’t have a sack of beans and a sack of onions in their wagon when they hit the trail?

Similarly, it came to the Crater School the usual way, passed on to Mrs Bailey by a girl who’d learned it from her Serbian grandmother. Traditionally it’s served at room temperature, but that is one tradition with which Mrs Bailey will have no truck; she believes profoundly that winter dishes should be served warm, to keep her girls aglow.

A note about paprika: there’s no native industry producing this particular spice on Mars yet, so Mrs B almost always uses Spanish, either sweet or smoked. It’s expensive, like any import, but she finds the cost worthwhile. I, on the other hand, have something of a paprika problem. There are never less than half a dozen varieties in this house, and often more. I have embarked on a project, therefore, of making this dish with each variety in…