#13 Moldova
- Jen
- Apr 22, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 4, 2022
Where: between Romania and Ukraine.
GPD per capita: lowest in Europe.
Bio: I used to be part of the Ottoman Empire, then the Russian Empire. Post WWI, I declared independence and then joined Romania. Later, Soviet Russia interfered and I became the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. I rebranded as “Moldova” in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Romania used to be my bessie and we even have our own secret language but now we’re not that close because Romania likes Europe and I like Russia but they don’t like each other.
Interests include wrestling, rugby union and cheap beer.
Moldovan cuisine is similar to Romanian, with many of the well-known dishes being common to both countries. Fertile soil makes it ideal for a large variety of fruits and vegetables, meat production, cereal crops and dairy.
Dishes
The traditional peasant food staple is mămăligă, similar to polenta, served with stews and other dishes. It’s usually mixed with brinza or sour cream.
Brinza is a sheep’s milk cheese similar to feta.
Sarmale is common in various forms in former Ottoman Empire countries. In Moldova, sarmale is rolled cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and veg, and sometimes meat, and served with sour cream. It’s not a celebration in Moldova without bringing your stuffed cabbage!
Ardei umpluți is Romanian (or Moldovan) for “stuffed peppers”. Their filling is similar to the sarmale and usually involves some sour cream.
Moldovan soups are typically quite sour, made so by the addition of fermented grains. The most popular soup is perhaps zeama, which is a chicken noodle soup.
Plăcinte is a fried bread or pie stuffed with brinza or cabbage and is super-popular.
Wine
Moldova is the 20th biggest producer of wine in the world, and, this is exciting: home to Mileștii Mici, the largest wine cellar in the world. The cellars run for 200km and hold 2 MILLION bottles of wine!
As well as growing the standard introduced grapes for wine (cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, and so on), Moldova still produces a significant quantity of traditional grape varieties.
I arranged an essential lockdown delivery from Transylvania Wines, an online retailer of Romanian and Moldovan wine. I bought a bottle of the Chateau Purcari 2016 rară neagră (a solid 4* on Vivino) and it was a thoroughly enjoyable wine: beautiful forest fruit (cherry, plum) palate and nicely balanced acidity. I have no idea how you’re supposed to describe a wine but those were the vibes I got and I recommend it.
Cooking Moldovan
Moldova is a Christian country and it had been a whole week since my last (homemade) HXB (industry chat for hot cross bun), so I investigated Moldovan Easter bakes…
…and found the pasca.
A pasca is a sweet Romanian (and now Moldovan) Easter bread with a creamy, cheesy filling and is as symbolic of Easter in Moldova as HXBs are at home. The filling represents the resurrection of Jesus Christ (I think he may have risen too far in my pasca).
I usually approach enriched bread making with a significant degree of trepidation, but I drew on my proficiency in the art of HXBs (for which I have Paul Hollywood to thank) and got stuck in!
The pasca dough is enriched with milk, butter and eggs and goes through two stages of proving: one prior to shaping and one after shaping. I struggled with the shaping part. Half the dough goes into the base, so far so good, and the other half is braided. It was neat enough for a first EVER dough braid, but I didn’t roll out the strands to be quite long enough so ended up with reduced space for filling in the middle.
The filling is a cheesecake-type filling. The recipe called for ricotta, of which there was none in Morrison’s, so I went half-and-half cottage cheese (quality high-fat version) and cream cheese.
The pasca was pretty good. I enjoyed the slight tang of the cheesecake filling with the bread. I think I would prefer the bread to be a bit spiced, but perhaps this is just because I enjoy a HXB so much. The texture and consistency are similar to a HXB and it’s a dream with a cup of tea.
Top tip: day old pasca is excellent slathered in fridge-cold salted butter.
Top tip 2: substitute ricotta with cream cheese only rather than a mixture with cottage cheese because the cottage cheese left a few lumps in the filling.
For dinner, I opted to make ardei umpluți because who doesn’t love a stuffed pepper?!
As well as a ricotta shortage, Morrison’s had no minced pork, so I used a high-fat minced beef, mixed with onion, a small amount of rice, egg to bind and plenty of fresh dill and parsley to stuff the peppers. The stuffed peppers were roasted low and slow whilst swilling in a sauce of passata and sour cream. So easy. Stick it in the oven, go away and do some colouring in (hence the cover pic of this post!).
I served the peppers with sour cream mash and braised greens.
It was a surprisingly unusual dinner experience to have such a traditional meat-veg-potato plate of food as this isn’t a format I tend to follow in everyday cooking. I felt like grannies and grandads would be happy with that. The peppers were divine! The slow roasting in the sauce made them so tender and roasted red peppers have such a seductive sweetness. I don’t think I would have thought to include fresh dill in meat-stuffed peppers but it gave them an incredible flavour.
Another Cook The World success!
Hopefully…TOGO…is a success…
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