Pilgrims’ Progress

Brasov, Romania

…you end up with a lot of corn. A LOT!

Perhaps it all started last night.
Someone burnt the rice, but salvaged a fair portion of it.
En route to the table he dropped it.
Someone else put the oats on to soak for porridge in the morning. Being very chunky oats, they need to be soaked overnight – I don’t think even a whole day of boiling would soften them. That someone did not add enough milk or water and all was absorbed far too quickly, leaving over half the potful dry and tough.
So the mother decided to cook up the cornmeal she had bought. You see, she had noticed a phenomenal amount of the stuff at the market and in all the little supermarkets, and what’s more, people were buying it, so she assumed it was probably Very Romanian, and bought some herself. Besides, it was cheap! Mr Google confirmed her suspicion, provided some recipes and away she went. Only she misread the recipe and it did not occur to her until she was pouring in the two cups of cornmeal/cornflour (depending on where you live, you can choose which word to use – in any case, it’s the yellow gritty stuff) that six litres of boiling water was A LOT.
And two cups of ground corn did little to change the consistency of the water, let alone turn it into a thick bread-like substance. A quick re-search of yesterday’s computer pages revealed the magic water quantity to be six CUPS. Mother poured off three quarters of the water and added the rest of the packet of cornmeal, stirred like crazy, but not crazy enough and produced a barely palatable very bland lumpy porridge. Pouring over kefir and dolloping on jam improved the situation only slightly.
But we ate it. There’s a saying here about this dish (Mămăligă), which has long been considered the poor man’s dish:

He doesn’t even have a mămăliga on the table.

We did, and we will for a few more days yet! Leftovers from breakfast were turned into what is also apparently another Romanian dish – we took balls of the now cool mixture, stuffed them with cheese and baked in the oven. Crunchy on the outside and a bit like mashed potato on the inside, they were decidedly more of a hit than the breakfast gruel. They still lacked in flavour, but were promising enough that we decided Next Time (yes, there will be a next time!) we would fry up some onion, garlic, cumin and coriander, and mix that through before baking. A spicy tomato sauce on the side should do very well too! Here’s a pic, pre-baking:

 

But before we get to the next batch of corn-mush, we’ve got this lot to contend with. Upon our return from an afternoon stroll, we set to dealing with the remaining watery substance saved from the morning’s disaster. Waste not, want not.
Having learnt the lesson about adding the corn slowly, we added our newly-purchased bagful Very Slowly Indeed. I stirred, Jgirl15 sprinkled it over, one teaspoonful at a time. Painful, but effective – there was not one lump to be seen. And we also got it past the gruel stage, to a thick cake-like consistency. It was impossible to stir, but looked just like the pictures on our computer screen (which is not saying a lot – it really does appear none-too-appetising, but it’s cheap remember!) In fact, you can have a look if you like:

Now we need to decide what to do with it. Authentic local options include crumbling it into a bowlful of hot milk (we don’t have enough milk for that)….slicing and eating as is (we’d need at least butter and jam on top!)….eating with sour cream and cheese….slicing and frying with eggs and sausage. Ah yes, and we’ll drown it all in spicy chilli sauce. That sounds more like us.

But tomorrow morning we’ll be eating oat porridge – and it’s already nice-n-soft.

By the way, in the middle of tonight’s stirring, Mboy6 pleaded with us to look out the window. In spite of potentially condemning the corn to a final unceremonious death, and potentially more tragically, ruining our pot if it were to stick and burn, we took leave to follow the enthusiasm at the balcony window. And we grabbed the camera.

NOTE TO BE REMOVED LATER:
We have added a bunch of photos to this post. Feel free to click and look.

Brasov, Romania

New apartment.
New neighbourhood.
New market.
New prices (surprisingly more like Germany than Poland)

Leo and Lili organised an apartment for us to rent for our month here. We said we only needed a small one, but this was an impossibility. No-one was willing to rent a small apartment to someone with eight kids. So we have ended up in a very spacious two-storey, two-bathroom sprawling mansion!! Just the entrance hall alone is bigger than the living space in both our motorhomes put together! Then there’s another hallway (even larger) upstairs, not to mention three double bedrooms, a kitchen bigger than we have at home, an ENORMOUS lounge and dining area and a balcony.
To call it two-storey is perhaps a little misleading. We have two floors, but they are both within the context of a six-storey building – up near the top. The rest of the block is occupied by offices, which are a hive of activity during the day, but quiet at night. There’s a 24hour security man and a view across a busy main road (bus stop right at the door) to apartment blocks.

Right on our street are small supermarkets, kiosks, pizzeria, petrol station, hair dresser (who also does manicures, pedicures and something we don’t understand), travel agent, light shop, second-hand clothing store (there are five of these within ten minutes’ walk in one direction), and, of course, a gazillion apartments.
One block over is a big supermarket – no, let me rephrase that. It is not big by French Carrefour standards, neither is it big by even Kiwi standards, but it is bigger than the more frequent little mini-markets. There is also The Market. A huge high-roofed affair, it has small shops around the outside – butcher, baker, cheese-ery, random-goods-store, and in the middle are rows of high wooden tables. Mostly fresh fruit and vegetables are displayed on these, but there are also hand-hacked wooden spoons, baskets, a great stack of dark grey dinner-plates and other miscellaneous items. There are four shining milk dispensers – bring your own bottle and go home with fresh raw milk!

Generally speaking the produce lacks the finesse of the Polish market – most probably because far less of it is imported. There ARE grapes and bananas, but not pineapples or avocadoes or mangoes. In contrast, there is plenty of horseradish, bunches of dried herbs, jars of pickled everything – in fact there are metre-high tubs of pickled gherkins and whole pickled cabbages – and there are parsnips, beetroot, carrots, potatoes, turnips, garlic, beans. Soup will definitely be on the menu. In fact, it already has been. Our favourite pumpkin soup has turned all the tastier with the addition of Eastern European sausage and sweet peppers. YUMMO.

 

The bread is delish. It’s reminiscent of South Italian semolina bread – crunchy crust, doughy inside, fairly solid. White, but not fluffy. It comes in big loaves – two kilos worth, but you just buy as much as you want. There are other breads too (brown, plaited, plain fluffy white, batons, rolls), but this big round loaf seems to be the main bread of choice. It’s certainly become our favourite.
Our sweets-ectasy of Krakow, was always going to be hard to replicate. It would be difficult to do in New Zealand, and we get the feeling it will be impossible here. The Romanian range of cakes seems to be more closely related to that in Bulgaria than Poland. In the shops, that is. At Lili’s apartment we had a divine pumpkin cake, and tomorrow we’ll make  scrumptious cinnamon and apple rolls at our place – but, thankfully, we will be spared the temptation of putting on weight here!

New Recipes.

CINNAMON ROLLS
1/2 C warm water
1 packet yeast (about 1t, I guess)
   Dissolve

1/2C scalded milk
1/3C butter
1/4C sugar
1t salt
1 egg
   Add in that order, allowing the butter to melt before adding egg

2C flour
   Add to milk mixture and mix until smooth
   Then add yeast mixture

1 1/2-2C flour
   Add a little at a time, until not too sticky
   Knead
   Set aside in a warm place (yay for radiators!) until doubled in size (~1 1/2 hours)
   Roll out into a large rectangle
   Cover with any of the following:
      butter, sugar (brown is nice, but we could only buy white), cinnamon, grated
      apple, chopped nuts (it’s walnut season here), chocolate chips (we didn’t!)
   Roll up tightly from the long edge and slice into as many pieces as you’d like
   (maybe about a dozen)
   Place spirals in a greased oven dish and set aside to rise for another half hour

Ours rose so much that there was no room to pour over the syrup and we just had to add it when serving, but if there is space in your dish, it’s really yummy to pour over a syrup made with 1/4C sugar and 1C water – goes nice-n-gooey.
Bake for 30 minutes, probably at 180*C, but we had a temperamental gas oven!

 

And LILI’S PUMPKIN CAKE (note 1C=150ml)
4 eggs
2C sugar
   Beat together

2C milk
1 packet vanilla
zest from one lemon, grated
2C oil
   Add

1T baking soda
pinch of salt
flour
   Add until the dough is no longer pourable, but not too thick
   In a greased oven dish, spread out half the dough

~1kg fresh pumpkin, grated
1C sugar
   Combine and spread over top of dough

1t cinnamon
~1C chopped nuts
   Sprinkle over and top with remaining dough
   Bake at 200*C for one hour
For a big oven dish, use six eggs and change the cups to 200ml!!!

LILI’s CHILLIES
Take about a kilo of chillies, chop them up and pack them into (probably four) jars.
Heat 1/2l vinegar, 1/2l water, 2T sugar, 2T salt, 1t peppercorns and 4 bay leaves. Pour over the chillies and seal the jars.
Cover with a towel and blankets for 24 hours (really, truly)

We added these to the soup Lili served the day we arrived.
She thought it hilarious that Rob then also added them to his layered potatoes.
Lili offered more with his coffee. This time he declined.
But we did eat more the following morning on eggs.

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