čorba

(Translation, Yugoslavia)

Any soup which is colored (with tomatoes or red peppers) and involves a zaprška. Though there's also a white čorba, made with sour cream or yogurt or other milk derivative, possibly further soured by adding vinegar or lemon juice.

The most famous here are the young beef ragou čorba and fish čorba. The latter is of hungarian origins (therefore, only river fish may apply), and is popular mostly in northern half of Serbia. The Hungarians, though, didn't perfect it properly; they made it famous, though, but in Hungary I heard (from Ileš) that the good riblja čorba begins at the Baja - Szeged line (parallel with our border) and then gets much better as you go south. North of that line it's bullshit. I tried and I can confirm - actually, what we ate in Szeged wasn't too good.

Then there's the category of čorbasto (which I wrote as „čorba-like“), which is any dish that is not exactly soup or čorba per se, but you eat it with a spoon, and is just liquid enough. For instance, there are two basic ways to make beans - gust (thick, dense) and čorbast. Okay, there's also the fried, like prebranac or gravče na tavče, but that's on the side from main categories.

In slang, čorba is also juice, i.e. any kind of non-solid fuel („why did you stop“ „ran out of čorba“) or developer („the čorba was stale and the negative came out thin“).

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