Some philological notes

Though I enjoyed writing about the Persian origins of chiftele in the last post, I suspect that etymological musings are a blatant infraction of the food blog genre. However, as I've been writing up the recipes below I've started to wonder about the origins of some Romanian food words. And if you know anything about Romanians, it's that they love etymology. (Romanians are not unlike the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a man who can prove that just about every word is descended from Greek!)

Also, it's my blog, and I'll write what I want to.

Chiftele din dovlecei cruzi - Zucchini fritters

One of my great moments of enlightenment occurred when I realised that the kofta in malai kofta was closely related to the Romanian chiftea. Originally a Persian word, kofta generally refers to a ball of ground meat. In its various incarnations, the kofta is mixed with spices, herbs, onions, and a variety of vegetables. Variations of the word and corresponding food are to be found all over the Middle East and the Balkans. In Europe, the kofta owes its popularity to the Turks, who not only introduced their köfte to Balkan cuisine, but do a pretty good job of popularizing tasty köfte kebab, or şiş köfte, in Döner stands throughout Germany.

Salata de vinete, variation

A while ago, I made the claim that when it came to eggplant salad, the roasted eggplants had to be mixed with raw onions "or else." This was not as reckless a statement as it might seem, seeing as, at the time, I had spent almost twenty-nine years on this earth, most of them eating salata de vinete, and in all these years, I had never liked anything as much as eggplant salad with chopped, raw onions.

Imagine the shock I had a few months ago when I tasted an eggplant salad that did not, indeed, have raw onions, and lo, I found it good. Yea, even better than the eggplant salad of yore. So, this week, when my fridge broke down and I had to do something with the now-melted roasted eggplant I had stowed away in my freezer, I decided to try something similar: I lightly fried the chopped onion in the oil until it was translucent, and then added all of it to the eggplant.

The result is salata de vinete that you can eat for breakfast without worrying about your breath. (Though, I had it for lunch with raw green onions dipped in salt, but that just meant I was able to consume two kinds of onions rather than one!) It is also, and this should be noted as a possible strategic error, a salata de vinete that my boyfriend seems to enjoy more, and eat more eagerly, than the raw onion variety.


Note that it is also possible to mix a raw egg into this to make it even more creamy. I'm too scared of salmonella to do this myself, though by some magical effect, I'm not too scared of it to eat the result when someone else has mixed raw egg into a recipe.