Feature: Mayors compete in cooking at mussel, fish fest in Bulgaria

Mayors of three towns showed on Friday their culinary skills during the opening show of the 12th Mussel and Fish Fest in Kavarna, one of the northernmost Bulgarian Black Sea resorts.

The host, Kavarna's mayor Tsonko Tsonev, attracted the audience with a special aromatic dish. "This is a bluefish with white sauce, wine, mayonnaise, garlic, lovage, and a little boiled mussels on the white sauce," he told Xinhua.

The bluefish should be baked with white sauce and then eaten with white wine, he said.

"The mussels give a special flavor to the white sauce and the fish," he said, adding that the dish was his invention.

As a bonus, he also baked mussels sausages.

The second competitor, the mayor of the Danube town Tutrakan Dimitar Stefanov, cooked fish soup with Danube fish -- carp, whitefish, barbel, catfish and bighead carp. He added lovage and immature grapes to give a slightly sour taste, he told Xinhua.

However, the jury headed by the famous Bulgarian pop singer Mariana Popova ranked first Dilian Mlazev, mayor of the Stara Planina Mountain town of Elena, who breaded six kilograms of white fish with 40 egg yolks, lemon juice, beer, mustard and salt.

"All the three showed extremely impressive culinary skills," Popova told Xinhua.

Tsonev said the aim of the three-day event, which also includes rock and pop concerts in addition to the seafood, was to extend the tourist season in his town that lasts from June to end of August.

Indeed, spectators from various regions of Bulgaria attended the opening show. Marietta from Shumen, some 140 km west of Kavarna, who came together with a dozen friends for the first time, said they liked the festival. Endit