when everything goes wrong in the kitchen…
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:
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- 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.
Tags: 2008/09, food, health, language, learning, money, postcard: Romania, tradition
rayres
Oh dear! I knocked my bowl of pancake mix (so far two eggs and two mashed bananas) on the floor last night. Was not happy.
Anyway, I’ve made polenta a couple of times. I didn’t really enjoy it once it was set, cut into pieces and fried or baked, it was too stodgy.
I have heard you can make pizza bases with it though which is worth a try for me being gluten-free. With a good topping and a thin-ish base I think it could be good.
The best polenta I made was a bit gourmet. I think I used chicken stock (can’t remember?) to make the polenta and then towards the end poured in a pottle of cream and a hunk of parmesan cheese grated in. It was delicious!!! I served it with sausages cooked up with onions, capsicums and mushrooms in a gravy.
The photo was well worth it!
[…] perseverance. Our initial introduction to the stuff provided amunition for a blogpost entitled *when everything goes wrong in the kitchen* Glad we kept trying. Now we’ve got corn growing in our little […]
You know, I’m going to have to try cooking that for my brood.