photos by Kristine Moss

By Jenn Sichel
University of Chicago PhD student and Smart curatorial intern

Ana Prvacki's Recipe for Slatko:
Required: Strawberry 1 kg, 1.5 kg of sugar

Preparation: Strawberries are carefully cleaned of leaves and handles, washed and squeezed, arranged in a dish and drizzled with lemon juice. Leave strawberries in the juice for at least two hours so they tighten and not fall apart during cooking. After they sit in the lemon juice arrange the strawberries in the cooking pot*, layer a layer of strawberries then a layer of sugar, then a layer of strawberries until no ingredients are left. Cover with cloth and leave over night. The next day add to the pot half a cup of water, put it on a high flame and cook watching to make sure it does not burn. The slatko will cook for 10 minutes and all the smell will stay in the strawberries. Take off the flame, remove the foam, cover with a wet cloth and leave to cool for a few hours.

*IMPORTANT: the slatko should be cooked in a cast iron pot, and nothing else should have been cooked in it before so the sugar does not burn. When we made it for the Hammer I ended up buying a new Le Creuset pot that I now use for regular cooking.

This recipe yields about three jars of mouth-vibratingly sweet slatko. Make your own batch and let us know how it turns out!