Going off road... and to the Gulf Coast

I realised yesterday that my sincere efforts to keep this a focused blog, a blog which would only deal with Romanian food and with nothing else, also made this an empty blog. A sad, abandoned, postless blog.

Which is a shame. Because I would love to write about other kinds of cooking experiments -- various curries, attempts at Middle Eastern dishes, my first Texas chili. And I would love to write about the strange and rich food culture of Dallas and Texas: the ethnic grocery stores, the plethora of food festivals, and the restaurants.

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.