tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3217199749924044852024-03-26T23:37:40.873-07:00The Cooking RomanianRecipes, Thoughts on Food, and the Occasional Bout of Philologyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-81045467979606842212012-09-23T04:42:00.001-07:002012-09-23T04:42:15.379-07:00Stalking the Wild ChestnutIt's Saturday afternoon, the baby won't nap, and we decide it's time to go for a walk. Berlin is in full-on fall mode, and we want to walk around as long as we still can. So we bundle the kiddo into his stroller, and head to Hasenheide.
Ah, Hasenheide. Each corner its very own dealer. I am thinking I should do an art project in which I collect the favourite recipe of each drug dealer in the parkihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-52314344023948092822012-07-30T09:49:00.001-07:002012-07-30T09:49:52.573-07:00Shakshuka for dinnerA friend and I were talking about food blogs lately. I said I didn't post to this one as often as I might like, because food blogs are so photo-oriented these days, and that's started to mean that they're super professionalized too. What I mean is: unless you have ten high-quality, processed photos documenting every step of the dish, taken either by natural light or with a serious lighting setup,ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-43624243982152996862012-07-17T11:52:00.003-07:002012-07-17T23:28:11.168-07:00Corn Soup aux homardsDoes it seem like there are a lot of soup recipes on this blog? Are you quite sick of soup yet? Alas, this will not stop soon. I've mentioned before that I don't like repeating other people's recipes too much. So I only feel comfortable writing up recipes that I've altered a great deal, that I know are unavailable to the general public, that are from my family, or that I've invented wholesale. ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-64363892204283882972012-04-26T00:59:00.002-07:002012-07-27T11:16:49.758-07:00Herring under a fur coat variationProbably the strangest gift we got at our recent baby shower was a package of herring from Belarus. The strangest, but as it happens, the very first one we enjoyed. It was from a Russian-American friend with whom I'd discussed the joys of herring and beets, and although she couldn't have known that I had an open can of sliced beets in the fridge awaiting their fate, it almost seemed meant to be ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-22575059041202491532012-03-01T13:19:00.001-08:002012-03-01T13:19:14.569-08:00Russian Beet SaladI wish I were a better updater of this blog. It has, as far as I can tell, twelve whole readers -- why can't I think of them, and of their need for Romanian food?
Well, several factors stand in my way:
1. Most of the time, I don't cook Romanian food. I have a huge collection of cookbooks, and love to experiment either with a variety of world cuisines, with recipes I find online, or with dishes ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-75096232524329289372012-01-08T21:24:00.000-08:002012-01-08T21:24:00.511-08:00The Hungry Reader's Peanut SoupLately, I've acquired a pretty full collection of books by John Thorne. The obsession started with Simple Cooking, which I thought was exquisitely written. I remember writing Thorne, and receiving a very kind note back from him. I picked up a few more of his books from Amazon, and while Simple Cooking remains my favourite, I've enjoyed picking through the others too.
The thing about Thorne ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-90780661090738916802012-01-05T19:19:00.000-08:002012-01-05T19:19:00.122-08:00Dry-fruit cookies (Fursecuri - variation)In the last post I wrote about roasting squash while I made raisin cookies. But although I had most of the ingredients in the house, I didn't have everything, and I was working from a different recipe than the one I posted here. The recipe I used, also from my grandmother Nadia, is more precise but makes about double the amount, that is, a truly impressive quantity of cookies. Make this full ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-18639055986974350782012-01-03T19:07:00.000-08:002012-01-03T19:09:38.443-08:00The Environmentalist's Squash SoupLast week, in a hazy, happy holiday mood, I decided to make fursecuri cu stafide. I made a haphazard but tasty variation of my previous recipe (will post soon), and I worked with a different set of measurements -- one that yielded a much larger amount. The only problem was that while mixing the batter doesn't take very long at all, baking all of these cookies, even with four cookie sheets at my ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-82506363897162457232011-12-10T21:11:00.001-08:002011-12-11T00:42:54.682-08:00Cauliflower in mayo - Conopida cu maionezaWhen you grow up Romanian, you know the taste of boiled cauliflower well, too well. One of the delights of learning to cook for myself was discovering that other, more exciting things could be done with cauliflower too -- it could be roasted to nutty sweetness, for example, or stir-fried with curry leaves, turmeric, and coconut, or pureed into a satisfying creamy soup. Cauliflower could be ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-77980721658115329192011-12-10T20:53:00.001-08:002011-12-10T21:10:16.678-08:00Grandma's tomato soup - Supa de rosiiWhen I was very little, I was an incredibly difficult eater. It's hard to believe now that I have a voracious and pretty catholic appetite for food, but my family spent most of my childhood trying desperately to convince me to eat. For, as you may know, in Eastern Europe a child who doesn't eat is nothing short of a tragedy. It never seems to occur to anyone that the kid will eat when she's ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-40768922079732314212011-11-30T13:45:00.000-08:002011-11-30T13:46:02.803-08:00It's always good times when a restaurant reviewer gets miffyNancy Nichols has to be my new favourite restaurant reviewer... at least after reading this delicious review of MesoMaya in D Magazine:
D Magazine : Restaurant Review: MesoMaya
The best line, and one that gets at all Fancy Presentation of Bad Food, has to be: "Then someone in the kitchen uses a squeeze bottle to zigzag white cream sauce across the top until the mess looks like a mud pile ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-29914149578264534222011-11-28T22:35:00.001-08:002011-11-29T13:29:38.037-08:00And, plop, there goes my identity...This evening, after coming home from work I:
1 - Baked some oatmeal-whole wheat bread.
2 - Made chicken in peanut sauce from the Oprah Magazine Cookbook.
3 - And in the meantime, rendered my own chicken fat from the skins left over from #2.
Yup, I've officially become a wife. Judging by these foods, I can't quite tell if I'm a Middle America wife or a Crunchy Granola wife or a East European ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-963615747774074542011-11-27T09:49:00.001-08:002011-11-27T10:54:41.131-08:00The Romanian's French Onion SoupIt's a bit of a running joke in my marriage that I like onions and garlic. Now, when I say I "like" them, you might be tempted to think that I sort of enjoy them, or that I appreciate a well-placed sliver of red onion, or that I think roasting some garlic for an hour and then pureeing it into the hummus is a good idea. And while these things are true, it's more accurate to say that I'm obsessed ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-35830034661301002512011-11-17T10:01:00.000-08:002011-11-17T10:03:51.253-08:00Blog on the Language of FoodThanks to a Slate article on the etymology of macarons, I just discovered this blog on the language of food by a Stanford linguist, Dan Jurafsky. Now, this essay, and the blog in general, really appeal to my sensibilities: medieval history, cultural mixing, word change, and the contrast between sweet and savory. I'll be reading Jurafsky's other posts soon (and hoping that he posts some more), butihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-7021487764051201432011-10-16T14:34:00.000-07:002011-10-16T14:36:28.294-07:00Searching for the WurstI haven't posted in ages -- the sign of a busy life, but also one with a lot of fun, experimental, and inventive cooking that went unphotographed and undocumented. However, I am planning to return with recipe ideas and food experiences soon. Until then, I'll share the news that an essay of mine on culinary fusion in Texas will appear in the literary journal The Southwest Review.
I'll post more ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-26147006591611627602010-02-24T10:33:00.000-08:002010-03-06T08:50:41.572-08:00Saving the Soup; or, Creamy Bean CurryA little while ago, possessed of a small package of mixed beans and desiring to improve their place in the world, I made the Tuscan Multi-Bean soup from The Daily Soup Cookbook, by Leslie Kaul and Bob Spiegel. It's a vegetarian soup, so it doesn't have the hearty flavour of meat stock. It does have celery, garlic, onion, rosemary, bay leaves, tomatoes, and a variety of beans, however, so I ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-8021289744984643662010-02-17T09:33:00.000-08:002010-02-17T09:36:12.288-08:00The Romanian solution to a stuffy nosePart of what I love about the ethnic-foodie-blogosphere is learning how much my native Romanian cuisine has in common with other traditions. In this case, a post over at Yulinka Cooks on horseradish made me realise that the Romanian word for the substance, hrean, comes from the Slavic languages, and is related to the Russian хрен. When I was growing up, we tended to have both white horseradish atihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-81303644217068643192009-12-25T05:32:00.000-08:002009-12-27T12:20:22.049-08:00Christmas on Lake ConstanceIn the Southern-German city of Konstanz, you can begin dinner with a light salad of mâche grown on the nearby Reichenau (also known as the Gemüseinsel, or "vegetable island"), continue with fried trout that was caught in the Bodensee that very morning, and pair it with a Konstanzer white wine. In the village where I'm spending Christmas, the butcher and his slaughterhouse are in the middle of theihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-80659968690585945832009-12-10T23:11:00.000-08:002009-12-10T23:21:07.822-08:00Bine aţi venit! (Welcome!)I just wanted to extend a quick welcome to visitors who arrived here from the Foodie Blogroll.You can imagine my delight when I saw that I made it onto the "Most Recent" list.Do explore my little blog, and leave me your comments. I'm also happy to get links to your own recipes if you think I might enjoy them.In the next couple of days, I plan to post recipes for Moroccan orange salad, Indian ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-23034152090755248592009-12-05T21:09:00.000-08:002009-12-05T21:30:55.736-08:00Medieval Romanian Cookery in translation: "Add in a foot of veal for inquiring"One of the neat things about having a counter is that I can see how people reach this website. One reader, for example, searched for "medieval romanian cookbook" and, because I mentioned Nicholas Orme's Medieval Schools in a previous post, was offered this blog as a first-page result on Google.
This made me, of course, do the same search, which led me to a couple of websites, both associated ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-67417555684082817522009-12-05T13:48:00.000-08:002009-12-05T21:14:31.168-08:00Headcheese and BrainsWhen a friend wrote recently on his blog, Food With Legs, about making brawn, headcheese, pâté de tête, whatever you want to call it, I wrote him saying that I knew the food well from my childhood as piftie. And there was nothing that could ever get me to eat it again.
I should probably explain that the Romanian version of headcheese not only involves odd pig parts suspended in gelatine, but theihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-85125276483329003102009-12-04T08:45:00.000-08:002010-03-06T08:51:45.852-08:00Making Greek Ricotta Dumplings, and then throwing a bunch of tasty ingredients on them
The New York restaurant Kefi is one of those places that's my idea of a good place to eat. Casual, perhaps a bit too loud (ok, so that part isn't so ideal), with inexpensive, moderate portions that are very, very tasty. Perhaps the most delicious dish I have had there is the small, warm bowl of sheep's milk dumplings, tomatoes, pine nuts, and spicy lamb sausage. So you can imagine my delight ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-79102086696437089402009-12-02T22:30:00.000-08:002009-12-02T22:35:11.247-08:00Lentil, Apple, and Arugula Salad
This is a very simple salad that is great for lunch or dinner. It is both light and incredibly filling. Despite the fact that I made a double portion the last time I made it, resulting in my having to eat this one salad for an entire week, it still tasted good days later.
I first had this salad in Germany, made after a magazine recipe, so I can't give credit where credit is due! I've simply ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-34980597201394847572009-11-29T22:33:00.000-08:002009-12-05T21:23:46.243-08:00Alexandria, Astoria!Saturday afternoon, I am in New York, and I'm restless. I know that I should go somewhere walkable, so as to exercise those muscles that have atrophied in the Western wilderness I now inhabit. And yet, I can't think of any place in Manhattan where the interest provided by the shops will be worth the walk in the cold. I reflect on how I never really figured out how to enjoy New York when I lived ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-321719974992404485.post-83287928965634683322009-11-21T22:36:00.000-08:002009-11-21T22:36:22.212-08:00Coupez les avocats en deux!If you enjoyed my previous etymological musings here and here, you will love Matthew Driscoll's essays on the avocado, courgette, ginger, and turbot at Etymologiae cibariorum. If nothing else, you will learn how to make flavorful lawyer balls.
ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.com1