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| After cooking the eggs, potatoes and carrots, the scraping begins |
Alexandra has warned me that tonight's night might not be exclusively traditional for Moldova, and thinks most people from former Soviet countries will recognize the festive salad, prepared and served in a way that it resembles a cake. She came to Germany at 10 years old, but still remembers a few years of the Soviet era, and when I asked her if she also has the seminal memory of 'the first time eating bananas' which many of my blog hosts can recall, she confirms this is the case for her as well. She also mentions seeing packaged yoghurt as quite a novel product.
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| Chopping the herring for the next layer |
Her parents and grandparents learned to be creative with a relatively limited 'palette' of ingredients. The 'classics' were potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage and beets. These all have in common that they can be stored in the cellar for a long time. Tonights dish, the 'herring in a fur blanket' contains most of these staple ingredients. However, processed in quite a novel way for me! Alexandra shares that this dish is pretty foolproof. Though it is labour intensive, you do not need any special skills. She confesses to being 'lazy' by boiling the potatoes, carrots and eggs in the same pot, and by using precooked vacuum packed beets. The remaining two components are mayonnaise and salted herring, and onion (optional). Even for people who do not really like herring, this dish is palatable, as the salty fish is well camouflaged by all the other ingredients. Basically, you do a lot of grating to create a layered 'cake' on a flat round plate: boiled potatoes, (raw onions,) finely chopped herring, carrots, mayonnaise, eggs, beets, mayonnaise and eggs. I don't think I have ever seen anybody grate a boiled egg till now. The visual effect of the top layer is what gives this dish its name. It is indeed somewhat reminiscent of a fur coat.
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| Grating the beet on top of the carrot layer |
The mouth feel of the dish also pretty unique. It is funny, as all of the ingredients are so familiar to me, but the final dish is still surprising! Alexandra has told me it is a good partner food for vodka, hence we down an ice cold shot before starting on our festive salad. Not Moldovan vodka though. The country is better known for its wine, and at least in the eighties, most households would make their own wine. A popular tourist attraction in the country are the big underground wine cellars of Cricova; maybe also one of the relatively few well-known tourist attractions...
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| The final layer, the grated egg which is the 'fur coat' |
Alexandra visited the Cricova wineries when she last went back, the only time she returned to the country of her youth, twenty years after having left. It was almost a different country, so much had changed! Even the language spoken by most people, which she remembered as being Russian, had shifted towards Romanian. This is quite a loaded subject, I later find out. Moldova, now basically the poorest country in Europe, is politically quite important due to current geo-politics. The main factions are 'pro-Russian' vs 'pro-Western'. At the moment, the government is pro-Western, and the war in neighbouring Ukraine has had a strong impact with bombing of electrical plants in Ukraine meaning Moldova lost electricity in half of the country as well. I myself knew very little about Moldova before meeting Alexandra, with the breakaway region of Transnistria ringing some bells due to clickbaity videos of people visiting the 'country that does not exist'...
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| Beautiful cake salad! |
When Alexandra mentions to Germans that she is originally from Moldova, the response is normally: "Oooh! Interesting!" and then silence...as, like me, they know extremely little about this country between Romania and Ukraine. Even the capital, Chisinau, is often mispronounced by news reporters (it's kee-shee-now rather than chih-zih-now). Alexandra came to Germany with her parents, grandparents and even her great-grandfather. As the latter spoke Yiddish, they initially just spoke that language in their new home, and most Germans could understand that perfectly well. Interesting to me is that Alexandra's father has by now moved back, despite all the struggles Moldova is going through economically and politically, it is clearly still home to him. When things calm down, I would be happy to come for a visit and taste the famous wines of Cricova!
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Moldovan cuisine in general has has a lot of similarities with Romanian food, and a very popular dish in Moldova is polenta, called mamaliga, much loved by Alexandra's grandfather. Basically the same dish prepared for this blog for my Romanian meal!
