Salata de rosii - Tomato salad

Ridiculously simple, and yet this is one of my favourite dishes in the whole wide world. It is as good with breakfast (to accompany an omelette, for example) as it is with dinner. For some reason, I'm used to arranging it on a plate when I make it for breakfast, and more typically jumble it up in a medium-sized salad bowl when having it for other meals.

There's really nothing to it. Cut the tomato into wedges, arrange them around the plate, decorate with onion slices (yes, even for breakfast!), crumbled feta cheese (the fattier, the better), and olives. A drizzle of olive oil and a shake of salt and pepper, and you're done.

The hard part is really picking the tomatoes. Try to find some with taste. This kind of salad is not even worth making in winter with supermarket tomatoes.

Israeli Avocado Salad

Don't think I can't see you shaking your head. Israeli? I thought we were going to get Romanian recipes. I bet they don't even have avocados in Romania!

Well, fine, I'm cheating a little bit. But I have three very good reasons for doing so:

• I grew up with this recipe, as made by my father, so it's in the Romanian file of my food memory cabinet. (Sorry -- I am coming up with all sorts of grotesque explanatory metaphors today!)
• Because it's an appetizer spread, it fits well into a traditional Romanian first course of raw vegetables, salamis, and spreads.
  
• A ridiculous proportion of the Romanian diaspora in North America made its way to these fair shores via Israel. So Israeli food is fair game, as far as I'm concerned, especially when the dish fits so smoothly into a Romanian meal.

The recipe itself is simple. Mash an avocado, mix in the juice of one lemon, salt and pepper to taste. Finely dice an onion -- preferably red, for reasons of colour and taste -- and add that too. Finally, dice a hard-boiled egg and mix it gently into the avocado salad.

Due to the added egg, this spread is doubly rich and creamy, but the onion keeps it from being too heavy or monotonous.

Grandma's advice in the New York Times

Those of you who read this little blog (and it is, alas, a little blog) have seen me mention my Romanian grandmother. The truth is, I have two grandmothers, both Romanian, and both wonderful cooks. One excels at simple, light food, and the other is a master of the most elaborate concoctions, including desserts that would make any New York pastry chef weep and then launch himself off of a high rise. (I love simple, homemade North American desserts -- pies and crumbles and carrot cake and such -- but the stuff that's retailed is a disaster. We'll leave a discussion of the tasteless cakes I would have in Toronto and the abomination that is the NYC cupcake for another post.) Still, I refer to both ladies through the mythological composite, my "Romanian grandmother."

And this weekend, my Romanian grandmother made it into the New York Times Magazine food issue.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/10/11/magazine/20091011-foodrules.html

If you click on the fourth box, "Share," you will see the advice on portion control my maternal grandmother always gave me. Of course, my father was quick to point out that Romanians don't eat like this at all. We typically eat big dinners, and, as he put it, the only breakfast worth mentioning is the giblet soup served after an all-night bender. (Don't hold your breath waiting for that recipe to appear here.) I recognized the truth of what he said about dinner, but I've also enjoyed a breakfast while visiting the mountains near Baia Mare that included salami, ham, fried fish, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, and cheese, all washed down with tuica (plum brandy). After eating all of this, my travel companion and I could do nothing but lie on the grass on one side of a mountain and look at the mountain opposite until lunchtime rolled around.