Miccsoda?

What can you learn from a single line on a menu?  Well, at times, quite a lot...

The picture is the specials at the "grill" by the swimming pool at a hotel in Hungary.  Each day a different location is represented (though actually the US managed to get on twice in the 7 available days).  On Saturday (Szombat) as you will see the region of choice is Transylvania (Erdely)  Now the first thing to notice is that to represent Transylvania they've chosen the Szekely flag, which  neither sums up Transylvania as a whole, nor even the Hungarian element of the Transylvanian population, but never mind, let's move on.

The first item on the menu is "Csevapcsicsa", which anyone who has ever been to anywhere in the former Yugoslavia will recognise as a Hungarianised spelling of a word from Serbian/Croatian/etc.  Ćevapčići, are small turds (frankly the most descriptive word) of minced meat with herbs and stuff which are barbecued or otherwise grilled.

Now it is very true that in Romania a version of Ćevapčići are indeed eaten.  They are called mititei or more commonly, mici. You see them absolutely everywhere, at every outdoor event.  Occasionally on a Hungarian language menu or board you might see "mici" written as "miccs" to phonetically render this Romanian word in Hungarian.

So what we glean from this word is that (a) mici are being sold as a Transylvanian speciality.  From a Hungarian perspective this may not be far removed from the truth, I suppose, since the average Hungarian traveller, brave enough to enter Romania at all, is never likely to venture south of Brasov; (b) they are implicitly (with the flag and all that) being sold as a Szekely food.  Even the most hardened psychotic Szekely nationalist would not think of suggesting that mici were anything other than Romanian;  (c) it is assumed that a Hungarian clientele would not recognise the word miccs (or mici), and so they are offered the serbian/croatian word instead.  This is probably because most Hungarians seem to have been on holiday to Croatia at some time or other, but have probably not dared venture into the wilds of Erdely.

Onwards. These mici are being served with kemences burgonya, or ( I presume) roast potatoes. Literally "oven potatoes", anyway.  Could be jacket, I suppose. Anyway, the only time I've ever eaten either roast or jacket potatoes in 9 years living in Transylvania have been the times when I've cooked them. So, again, not an especially local speciality.  Mici, as everyone from here knows, are served with a massive glob of mustard and some bread.  If potatoes are involved at all, it would be as chips.

The final part of this very Transylvanian dish is tepett salata. That translates literally as "torn salad". No, I don't know either.  I have two possible theories here - one is that in the quest for your authentically rustic, peasant, and hence Transylvanian, experience, they have elected to make a salad that involves the lettuce being torn, authentically and rustically.  The other is that in Hungary they believe that the poor Transylvanians, can't actually afford knives.

This restaurant wasn't actually that far from the border either. Still, I guess this happens all the time, and Hungarians would likely point to the weird things called "goulash" on menus worldwide, or what passes for "chicken paprikash", in similar establishments as being proof that no-one is immune from this sort of thing.

This has been today's textual analysis lesson. 

Words don't come easy

When Bill Bryson moved back to the US (to live not far up the road from me, in fact) he wrote a book of his experiences as a long time expat returning to his home country, called "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" (I think). Anyway, one of the most memorable bits for me was his comment that there were words that he wasn't sure of the American English for, having not needed those items when he was growing up (I think he left the US when he was 19). I don't have the book in front of me, so I can't vouch for this quote exactly, but the one that sticks in my mind was him going to a DIY shop (or Hardware store as it would have been) and asking "I need some of that stuff you fill holes in walls with. My wife's people call it Polyfilla". with the guy responding "Ah you mean spackle"

My problem is similar only at least Bryson had words which he knew in English, just in a different version of English. I have words which I only know in foreign languages. The first one of these to cross my consciousness was rucula, which was a delicious salad leaf I first encountered in Spain. Later I learned the Italian (rucola) and then arugula which I'm not even sure what language it is in. Finally I discovered that in English it is called "rocket", which frankly is a bloody stupid word. This comes about mostly because I am knocking on a bit and in my day fancy vegetables like rocket were not available in England. Salads had iceberg or cos lettuce in them, and that was your lot.

But there are also words which I still have no idea of in English. Yesterday we went out and picked some mushrooms and wild fruit, most of which I have no idea of what they are in English. The most commonly picked wild mushroom round here seems to be the rókagomba, which translates literally as "fox mushroom". I have no idea what it's called in English, though I am sure it's not fox mushroom. There are also the csirkelab gomba ("chicken leg mushroom" which to me looks a lot more like coral), the galambgomba (pigeon mushroom) and various other evocatively named edible mushrooms. Last night I had a delicious mushroom omelette made of fox and bear mushrooms (rokagomba and medvegomba).

We also picked a lot of szamoca - these are small wild fruits of the strawberry family. They may actually be known as wild strawberries in English, but I'm not sure. And a fair few afonya, which I do know because I used to pick then in England growing up (bilberries in case you're wondering. NOT blueberries as many dictionaries will tell you).

Away from food, like Bryson, I have some difficulty with some construction words too, mostly because I obviously have never done any construction/DIY work in England (I'd never done any anywhere to be honest until I moved here). However, for whatever reasons, it seems like most words used for such items here tend to be Romanian rather than Hungarian (I mean by everyone). So for example there is this material called gips carton (Everybody calls it that but it must be a Romanian word rather than a Hungarian one). I can't even describe what it is exactly, but it is a sort of board material that is not wood, but is strengthened in some way. The inner walls of our renovated barn are made of it. God only knows what the English is for it. There is also a kind of thin wood that you use for the walls of sheds and similar called (something like) lumberia (again that must be a Romanian word).

So if you ever see someone in a branch of Jewson or somewhere looking a bit lost and asking for some gips carton or lumberia, before idly speculating whether it would be possible to pick fox mushrooms in the woods over there, then it's probably me.

Fruits of our labours

As regular readers of this blog (not sure if I should go with a plural there, but what the hell) will know, last year we became landed gentry and purchased a house with a garden. Well, I say house, but I really mean crumbling-building-once-used-as-a-house. Anyway, the barn is in the process of being made into a liveable space and should be done by July, but the house is no less, and possibly more, decrepit than it was this time last year.

But, setting aside all that, last week just before I went to Prague I made a pesto almost entirely from ingredients that we ourselves had grown. I say we grew them, but it seems a little too easy. Dig up some ground, stick some seeds in and then just let them get on with it. Though it doesn't always work, of course, since we do have one patch which seems to resolutely resist producing anything worthwhile (even the weeds grow slowly there).

So, anyway, without further ado, Pesto alla Bankfalva.
You will need:

• Large handful or two of rocket/arugula/rucola (this was one of those words I learned in other languages before English, since when I was a lad we didn't have rocket and had to make do with lettuce)
• A couple of cloves of garlic
• Some walnuts (about 10 per handful of rocket). Shelled, of course.
• Olive oil
• Salt (these last two were the ones that didn't come from the garden)

Stick everything in a blender and errm, blend, until such time as it all has become a pesto like consistency. Add olive oil as required if more liquid is required. Cook pasta, and stick some of this delicious green gold on it and mix up a bit. Et voila! Or whatever Et voila is in Italian.

Now, there may be those who are at this moment boiling with rage about the un-pesto-ness of this pesto. Pesto purists, for example, will see the replacement of pine nuts with walnuts as an act of great treason (but pine nuts are unavailable here, and we have a walnut tree, so nerr). Also using rocket instead of basil will almost certainly set some peoples' teeth on edge (but our basil hasn't grown much yet, and the rocket is almost as prolific as the weeds, so double nerr, and anyway don't knock it until you try it - rocket pesto is the business). However, it also shouldn't be forgotten that pesto purists would insist that parmesan cheese ought to be in pesto, so I think we can safely conclude that pesto purists are mentalists who would rather make their primi smell of vomit, than eat something tasty and wonderful, so discounting their views is easy.

Cold Turkey on Bread

I have given up bread. Not permanently, but for the time being. I haven't eaten so much as a crumb of bread since Monday. This is quite frankly, the hardest thing I have ever given up - and I have, over the years, given up a lot of things, many of which are regarded as quite seriously addictive.

So, why, you may be asking, have I chosen to give up bread? Well, primarily it is an attempt to shed a kilo or two. You see, I love bread. I really love bread. I eat it for breakfast dinner and tea (or, if you prefer, breakfast, lunch and dinner). Bread is delicious, and filling and it can be modified in many different ways. And the bread in Romania is particularly delicious (or at least the bread here is, I'm not really sure if it's a country wide phenomenon). So, because of this craving for bread, and the advantages of having many many delicious loaves everywhere, I eat a lot. And, not uncoincidentally, I have gained a certain amount of weight since I arrived here. So, I thought I'd better cut down a little, but rather than just limit my number of slices per meal, I thought I'd go cold turkey and see how it went.

Well, it's going really hard. Every meal, I wonder to myself "Maybe I could just have one slice. That won't do any harm" I walk into the kitchen for any reason, and my eyes are drawn to the breadbasket. I crave it. Really. I am increasingly convinced that it's an actual physical addiction, since it is so strong. Even writing this is sending my stomach into rumbling overdrive, as my mind repeatedly inhales the word bread...bread...bread...

Now I;ve never heard of any ingredient in bread that would make it physically addictive, but I'm convinced there must be one. This is not just a psychological thing, this is real and physical. The few times I've stopped drinking coffee have had a similar (yet less powerful) effect, and when I gave up smoking I had nothing like this sensation.

So, can anyone tell me if I'm dreaming this, and whether there really is any addictive ingredient in bread that my body is craving? And if so, can I get a patch for it, or something? Gluten gum? A yeast patch? There must be some way of dealing with this?

Inglia

In the second of our holidays this year (hark at us, two foreign holidays and owners of an out-of-town estate for weekending. Fancy bastards. But don't be fooled. I'm still, I'm still Andy from the block) we went to England (Or Inglia as Paula calls it). Now I know England is a fancy holiday destination for many people, but you'll have to take it from me that spending a fortnight in August in guaranteed grey skies and sub 20 degree temperatures is not really my idea of a well-used summer. Still...

Good things about England:

• It's got my extended family in it
• Ditto some friends
• Many free museums and art galleries
  
• Indian food
• Excellent beer
• Pubs
• National parks
• Pubs in national parks
• Beautiful scenery and nice villages
• Pubs in nice villages in beautiful scenery
• Public footpaths
• Walking along public footpaths in beautiful scenery in national parks with family and friends and stopping in a nice village for a fantastic pint at a great pub

Possibly there was a little bit of repetition there.

Bad things about England

• The weather
• The prices of everything (except for the free museums and art galleries)
  
• The weather
  
• Traffic
• The weather
• The way that public transport is designed specifically to rip off foreign visitors (you have to buy train tickets weeks in advance in order not to need a second mortgage to travel 5 miles, you have to have an Oyster card in London, blah blah blah)
  [On the other hand, foreigners don't get charged to drive on motorways - why doesn't the UK do what many countries inc. Hungary, Austria, Switzerland do and force visitors to pay a temporary road tax? It's all a bit baffling]
• The weather
• The quality of the food. Now this sounds like I'm out of touch a bit, but it's true - 20 years ago, food in pubs was utter garbage, but then there was this wave of change and food in many pubs became interesting and different and well prepared. Now it seems like things have slipped back again, and pub food is just bland and a bit rubbish again. Obviously you can get delicious food from any country in the world in restaurants, but outside those things have really gone downhill. Why is that?
• Did I mention the prices? And the godawful weather?

Anyway, we had a very good trip (despite the weather/price thing). My father-in-law came along too, which I knew would be interesting since he is a man who loves to travel, but mostly, it seems, so he can remind himself how good Transylvania is and how rubbish everywhere else is. Erika took him to Barcelona about 5 years ago, and he still regales all and sundry with tales of this terrible "tapas" that he was subjected to there. I jokingly warned my mother that she ought to prepare a couple of soups to keep him happy, but then was surprised to discover that in fact he really was freaked out by a lack of daily soup in the diet (and even when we had soup, even though it was pronounced delicious, it was the "wrong kind of soup"). I'll no doubt hear this Christmas when he starts holding court after a couple of palinkas, what other things the English do wrongly (there's no room for shades of grey, you'll understand).

The second week of our stay we spent in a house in Runswick Bay in the North York Moors - an area of the country I hadn't been to for donkey's years, and one which is spectacularly beautiful (and well endowed with great pubs serving Black Sheep, a truly delicious beer - hence it ticked many of the boxes above). The heather was flowering on the moors, the weather could have been worse (though it could have been much much better, let's not get carried away), my whole family managed to make it, and we had a great time. My father in law was particularly interested in the beach and the tides. There aren't really tides round these parts - the Black Sea and the Med don't have them, and so the idea of the sea coming in and out (a total difference in height of 5 metres between high and low tide when we were there) and the wildness of the beach, was really fascinating for everyone. Also visiting a waterfall called "Falling Foss" which amused the Hungarian speakers of the party. For me it was the roads which had signs warning you of 20%, 25%, 28% and (in one place) 33% gradients which were the real trip. They make the road coming down Harghita towards Csikszereda look flat.

Some pictures:

Multi-punt pile-up.

Most English scene ever - Morris Dancing in the pissing rain
(outside Lincoln Cathedral)

Beer arriving at one of those pubs-in-gorgeous-villages I was mentioning (Beck Hole, N. Yorks)

Whitby - deeply linked through fictional character to Transylvania
(and through non-fictional character to Australia)

Staithes

Arty pic, that was in no way staged. We found the stones looking like that just as the sea washed them ashore. Honest.

Runswick Bay at lowish tide

Heather on the moors

Mad half-English child ventures into icy North Sea

Alacant let go

What can I say about Alicante/Alacant? On the negative side, it's a pretty ugly place. There is a castle on a hill in the middle of the town, and there's the sea and the beaches, which lend some appeal to the place, but that aside it's just ugly modern apartment building after ugly modern apartment building.

On the plus side, the weather is great, and the food and wine are delicious. Before this trip, turrón was something I'd only had in one of those hard blocks that is common to eat in Spain at Christmas, but every meal seemed to end with some delicious new variation on the almond rich cakey type theme, or on a couple of occasions even a turrón ice cream. Alicante wine was a revelation too, as was some of the superb food we ate - one dish with spinach raisins and pinenuts was particularly superb. I also had the best Mexican meal I've eaten since I was in California. (I did do some work, too, honest).

And finally, I feel I ought to mention the hotel we stayed in - the abba centrum. It's part of a Spanish chain, and it was excellent - very high quality business hotel at an extremely reasonable price. I'm not usually one to rave about these things, but it was really good. Shame it has to be named after that mawkish seventies Swedish pop group, but I guess you can't have everything.

Tök paprikás

Yesterday I invented a new dish, which, I believe, will quickly become accepted as a new standard in Hungarian cuisine. Actually, I cannot imagine that nobody has previously hit upon this dish, so I probably was not actually the first discoverer of this, but like Columbus, I am laying claim to it anyway. (Googling "tök paprikás" brings out two links, so there is the suggestion that I am not exactly the first, but close enough - in 2008, two links is practically as obscure as to be on the dark side of Titan)

Anyway, paprikás, for anyone who doesn't know, is the true national dish of Hungarians. Goulash is all very well and that, but people don't eat it that often. Chicken paprikas (Csirke paprikás) is guaranteed to be on any menu anywhere in the Hungarian speaking world (possibly with the exception of vegetarian restaurants, though even they probably serve it as it may be an act of treason not to). Chicken is the most popular version, though there are others, including mushroom paprikas which is pretty damn finom (delicious).

Well, yesterday while in a friend's garden I hit upon the superb idea of tök paprikás. First though I will have to explain what tök is. A tök is kind of a courgette, but not really. It's a much lighter green colour, and it has a thicker skin. Even in the US, a country which seems to have thousands of different varieties of squash, I never saw the tök. Though it does resemble the summer squash quite a lot, except that it's pale green and not yellow. It's pretty good as long as you don't make the mistake of thinking it's just a light green courgette. It has a firmness and density that allows for some different options. It doesn't go quite as well in a ratatouille as a courgette for example, but for tök paprikás it can't be beat.

Anyway, I was complimenting our hosts on their tök crop, and they said, yes, but they're only small at the moment. I argued that they weren't small at all, but actually perfectly sized. Picking them late when they're massive, runs into the same problem that you get with courgettes - thick inedible skin, massive seeds that you have to scoop out, tasteless flesh. To prove that I was correct, and they utterly wrong, I offered to cook one. And thus was born tök paprikás.

Without further ado then, to the recipe for this great invention that will be sweeping the world within a few short millenia:

Finely chop an onion and slowly cook it in oil until transparent (is the verb I need here "sweat"?). Add to this some paprika (piros paprika as it is known here - the red powder made from dried and ground red peppers). Fry for another minute and then throw in your quartered and sliced tök (at this point my hosts were stunned when I didn't peel the tök, but that's people for you. Weird), some fresh dill and some salt. Put a lid on it for a while and let it cook (the tök exudes its own liquid so you don't need to add any). Stir occasionally. After about 10-15 minutes it should be done, at which point, you throw in some flour, and then some milk, stir until it has a thickish sauce. Bring it back to the boil for a minute, and Robi's your uncle. Tök paprikás. It goes well with mashed potato.

(This recipe works for any other paprikas you want to make, just substitute your ingredient of choice for the tök. I'm now trying to work out what other things would work. Aubergine wouldn't, I reckon, but kohlrabi might. As might leeks. I'll let you know.)

It may have helped that all the ingredients were so fresh (tök, onion and dill were all especially picked just for this dish and cooked within 10 minutes of their harvest). I also fried up the tök plant flowers for fun, and they actually turned out to be delicious too (though if not peeling tök was weird, eating flowers was positively certifiable).

The Great Romanian Restaurant Scandal

I was going to write something about some US food critic called Anthony Bourdain and how he's managed to upset Romania with his less than positive review of the country. But fortunately Dumneazu has done the job for me admirably. If you've time on your hands you can also plough through the 1350 comments (and counting) on Bourdain's blog. From what I can gather the main problem here is that he (or his producer) chose to hire some Russian bloke who knew nothing at all about Romania as his guide (presumably on some "Let's pretend this is all still the Warsaw Pact" concept), a fault they exacerbated by proceeding to do the whole Dracula tour thing. I think if they had managed to cram Nadia Comaneci into the thing they could have really made the cliche complete.

Mind you, the service in restaurants here is, for the most part, appalling. And Romanian food is not exactly exciting. I think if you use the word "spice" here, people think you mean salt. This is not to say that Romanian food is bad, just homely and not the kind of taste sensation that is going to take the world by storm a la Thai, for example.

Later edit: OK, I've now watched the whole show (on YouTube) , and really can't see the problem. I mean the Dracula stuff is really unnecessary (and someone really should have told him that Dracula was, in fact, a fictional character), and why they chose a Russian guide is a bit baffling, but he doesn't slag off Romania, and obviously actually enjoys his trip to Maramures. Not sure why so many people are up in arms about it. Just because this Zamir took him to two awful "theme" restaurants? He does point out that one of them is full of tourists from Nevada. I find Bourdain's personality a bit grating, but I can't understand why people are so bothered by the programme.

Seven Hills

(Apparently this blog has been locked by "spam prevention robots". I always thought there was a niche in the kids TV market for an avenging army of Transformers type vigilantes going round trashing supermarkets who dared to sell processed meat in cans. No idea when this post will get published in the meantime)

I have more of my holiday experience to post on, but am just back from a short work trip to Iasi in the east of Romania, and needed to let any readers out there know that I have discovered a truly excellent Romanian beer. This is not to say that some of the better Romanian beers (Ciuc, Ursus, Silva dark, etc) are bad, but they're not excellent exactly. They're just reasonably good quality fizzy lagers, not much to write home about. But in Iasi I was introduced to a stunningly good beer. It's called Sapte Coline (7 hills). It's unfiltered and unpasteurised and really it compares well to some of the good Belgian beers. It also comes in extremely cool bottles. Here's their website.

There is, of course, a catch. 7 Coline is only available in certain restaurants and pubs (no shops) and only in Iasi (at least this is what my Iasish hosts told me). I hereby start a campaign for wider distribution of what is by far and away Romania's best beer. I hope you join me, and if not, that you make the trip to Iasi to sample this amazing find.

Gastronomic globalisation

It has been three years since I moved to Romania, and in that short time much has changed here. I'd like to let you know that it was my arrival that caused the upheavals, but I suspect that things were just motoring along anyway and the fact that I showed up made bog-all difference.

Among the changes is the availability of certain food items. Now a mere three years ago, there were very few "fancy" goods on sale. You could easily get your locally grown vegetables in season, your various forms of salami, your polenta, and your coca cola. But there were a number of items that were less easy to find, or, to be completely honest, impossible outside maybe of a few specialist delicatessens in Bucharest (By the way, as a complete aside, is the plural of delicatessen delicatessens? It looks wrong.)

But slowly things started to show up. I first noticed this in the vinegar aisle, where the usual clear "white" vinegar ruled supreme, but gradually inroads were made by first apple/cider vinegar, then red wine vinegar, and now even balsamic. You still can't get malt vinegar for your chips, but then outside of the UK I've rarely seen that (you can get it in the US, where it is marketed as a "gourmet" product, because it's exotic and foreign).

Other things that have become available:

• Broccoli - I know to the outsider that will sound odd - after all broccoli is practically ubiquitous, no? Not here. It only existed in ice bound packets, untouched for decades down the bottom of freezers in the frozen section of some supermarkets. Now you can buy it fresh in the market. Occasionally.
• Capers - not fresh, obv., but in jars
  
• Foreign wines - you have to go to fancy places like Carrefour or Spar to get them but they exist. (Note: Hungarian wines were available previously, but people here would consider them only loosely foreign)
• Herbs. Fresh ones. Well, you could always get dill and parsley, and mint grows by the roadside, but things like basil and coriander were merely a kind of late night had-too-much-wine fantasy. Not anymore. You have to drive all the way to the Spar in Udvarhely to get them, but get them you can.
• Exotic crisps - with enticing names like "Hot Salsa" (about as hot as a November day in Csikszereda), and "Sour Cream and Onion".
  
• Courgettes. You could always get these kind of faux-courgettes, which were light green (as opposed to the more traditional dark), but now at the market you can buy real ones. Sadly the growing community have not quite sussed the vegetable properly yet, and tend to overgrow it and let it become too marrow-esque. By only buying the very small ones, I'm hoping to send a message. (Though that message is probably read as "Here comes that stupid English bloke again, he'll buy all these underdeveloped marrows")
• Soy sauce - Not sure who uses it and for what, since it doesn't seem to be a key ingredient in anything that anyone eats, but it has appeared on the shelves.
• Chick peas - Again not in any great abundance, but in more specialist shops you can find them. I remember when I arrived I asked about them but nobody was really sure what I was on about. This was even after I had taught myself the Hungarian word (csicseriborsó). Now I can even say the word, show people the peas themselves and they still have no idea what they are. You can also buy humous in certain places, on a lucky day.
• Fresh fish - the szekely tend to look upon fresh fish and other seafood as being the work of satan. Not so much trout which is fairly common, but anything else really, and until recently I knew of nowhere in town where you could buy fresh fish. Bizarre, huh? I suppose being so far from the sea, it's not terribly surprising, but in these days of foods having their very own carbon footprints, you'd think people would slowly get used to the idea. I even saw fresh octopus in the Spar in Udvarhely. I bet no-one bought it.
  

Things that haven't yet become available

• Dijon mustard. Well, I think you can get it in Carrefour, but beyond that you have to be content with that much less flavourful vividly coloured Romanian Mici mustard
• Tortilla chips. You can actually get ones that are cheese-flavoured, but as "all cheese is sajt" as I like to say, oh-so-wittily, and as tortilla chips should be unflavoured anyway, this is of no value. Before the arrival of fresh coriander this lack was of no great consequence, since without salsa, who needs tortilla chips? But now I am able to make my own fresh and delicious salsa (particularly given the abundance of utterly fantastic locally grown tomatoes), the lack has grown into a desperate need. So desperate in fact that I considered making my own tortillas, just so that I could let them go stale and then fry them up. But then I found a recipe for making tortillas that said I needed something called "masa harina", and added that you couldn't really buy it in the shops, but if you lived near a tortillera (tortilla factory) they would sell you some. At which point I threw the book across the room screaming "If I lived near a tortillera I wouldn't be making tortillas, MORONS!", quite freaking out my family.
• Chutney - no surprise really as Indian food is hardly taking the country by storm, but occasionally I dream of a day when I can pop down the shop and buy a jar of mango chutney or lime pickle to go with my curry. I did actually bring some back from England once but in a moment of cross-cultural comedy my mother-in-law threw it away thinking it was jam that had gone bad.

I can't think of a nice pithy but conclusive way to close this post. So this will have to do.

The world's most refreshing drink

I have recently been introduced to the most delicious and refreshing beverage known to humanity. All you need for this drink are two basic ingredients - málna szörp and ice cold (fizzy) mineral water. Now obviously while most of the people reading this can easily access the second of those ingredients, you may be less familiar with the first. Indeed you may actually need to make the málna szörp before you can go ahead and then use it in the drink. Oh, and by the way, in case I haven't flogged this horse far enough, the European centre of fizzy mineral water is Harghita County, Romania, and it is utterly great - I can either go and buy it by the case load for ridiculously small amounts of money (something like 0.8 RON/litre ≈ 15p/€0.25/$o.30), or I can just go and fill up a bottle for free in any spring in the vicinity (and every village has at least one spring. 25% of all Europe's mineral water springs are in Harghita County. Yes, 25% of all of Europe.) Not everyone is fortunate enough to live in this fizzy-watered paradise though, so you can just go and buy a bottle of whatever takes your fancy in the mineral water front. One day you'll all be drinking Borsec and Perla Harghitei, but while Romanian remains 50 years behind the rest of Europe, our water-exporting infrastructure is not ready to handle the huge demand that will one day see Harghita County world-renowned for its borviz.

So, what is málna szörp, you may be asking. Málna is the Hungarian word for raspberry, and szörp sounds like it should mean syrup. It probably doesn't as that would be far too easy, but it'll do (I've seen it translated as "cordial"). Since I've never seen málna szörp on sale anywhere, not even here, you'll have to make your own. This however is very easy:

Take your raspberries. I don't know from where you "source" your raspberries (to use the modern management vernacular), or how much they cost, but you can use any quantity (I'd recommend a kilo or more). We got a bucket full off one of the gypsy women down the market which turned out to be 3.5kgs (that's quite a lot of raspberries). Put your raspberries into a big pot (or two big pots if you've got too many to go in one). Mash them. Use a cup or something to squash them as much as you are able. When you've mashed them to a pulp, pour in a litre of water for every kilo of raspberries (this doesn't have to be mineral water, regular tap water will do). Leave them overnight.

The next day, rig up some kind of elaborate draining system. If you don't have that many raspberries, this will probably be a sieve which drains into another pot. If you have more than your sieve can hold, then you'll need a kind of muslin lined colander. In the pot into which the liquid is to drain put 1 kilo of sugar for every kilo of raspberries (I know that sounds a lot, but trust me on this.) Then go ahead and leave the raspberry mush/water mixture to drain onto the sugar, ideally overnight again, but a few hours ought to just about be enough if you're pushed for kitchen space.

Et voila. The next day you have large quantities of delicious sweet málna szörp sitting waiting to be bottled. So, you wash out a few bottles, fill them with the málna szörp and bob's your uncle. 3.5 kgs of raspberries produced 6 litres of szörp. And 6 litres of málna szörp goes a long way - to make the drink that will quench your thirst and set your taste buds atingle, you need to put about a centimetre in the bottom of a glass and top up with your ice cold* mineral water.

(*I should perhaps add here that my insistence on ice cold mineral water is a bit controversial. While you or I might think for a refreshing summer drink, ice cold is best, here any kind of food or drink served at a temperature outside of an approximately 20 degree wide lukewarm band is regarded as a bit suspect. People happily drink coffee that has gone cold, don't really like their soup to be too hot, and eschew very cold drinks. It's all very odd. I am regarded as a bit freaky in my insistence on drinking my hot drinks hot, my cold drinks cold and having my cooked food served hot. )

Nipples

Sadly this year the strawberry season came and went before we even realised it had ever got going. One day they had just arrived and were selling for a pricy 8 Lei/kilo, a few days later they had dropped to the standard 3 L/kg for in-season strawberries, and then seemingly a day later they had gone back up to 7 or 8 again. Looking back, I can see that two years ago, we still hadn't made our strawberry jam by this time, so I'm not mistaken, the season was not only extremely early, but over unexpectedly fast. Something to do with the mild winter and the hot spring we've had. Anyway, no jam for us this year.

The tomatoes are in though and are bloody gorgeous. I have no idea what the variety of tomato is called that we mostly get here, but they look like tomatoes with nipples. (I tried a google image search of "tomatoes with nipples" to see if I could show you what I mean, but for some reason just ended up with lots of pictures of nipples and very few tomatoes. That's the Internet for you.) They are incredibly tasty, juicy, delicious and all in all quite possibly the best tomatoes in the world (the tomatoes, I mean, not the pictures of nipples. I'm saying nothing about them) . I would gladly eat a kilo a day. Ok, maybe not that many, but I am getting down them. (Is there any danger of overdosing on tomatoes, by the way? I know they're somehow related to deadly nightshade or something, so perhaps there is some kind of threshold which you can pass and end up killing yourself with them. If I disappear from the blog suddenly, that might be why)

On Wednesday I made gazpacho, and even though I say so myself, it was delicious. The very first time I had gazpacho many years ago, I thought the whole idea of cold soup was ridiculous verging on the inedible. At some stage in the past though I revised this view considerably and now view gazpacho as one of the finest inventions that man has ever come up with. Here, just for Marshall is the recipe I used:

Stick the following in a blender:
¾ kg tomatoes (preferably be-nippled ones, but if they are not available, any ones that weren't bought from a supermarket will probably do)
1 large cucumber (or 3 -4 small ones if those are the type you get round your way)
1 green pepper
1 small onion
2 cloves of garlic
75 ml olive oil
75 mil wine vinegar
juice of one lemon

Put lid on, blend until liquid. (You can also keep aside one tomato a bit of cucumber and a bit of pepper and chop them up small by hand and then mix them in after to give the resultant soup a bit of bite). Chill for two hours - and while you're doing that, put the gazpacho in the fridge. (Oh ho ho. I should be on telly, I really should). That's it basically. Simple as anything. You can add a little salt and pepper if you think it needs it, but it might not so taste it first.

I know, I know, it looks like I've just described a recipe for salad in a blender, but that's basically what it is. And it is 100% delicious. Trust me. I'm off now for a tomato based lunch.

Fillet of Crap

I recently discovered this video, which purports to show "A World Without Romania"

I learned one or two interesting things from it - like about Nicolae Paulescu, who invented insulin, and learned what it was that Henri Coanda (who up till that point had been nothing but the name of an airport*) was famous for.

However, I started to disbelieve what I had been told by the video when it reached the bit which mentions that Romania has created the "most mouthwatering dishes in the world". Now, I have no wish to offend anyone, but come on. Coming from a nation which has a global reputation for producing some of the world's worst food, I am not about to start comparing Romanian cuisine to English here, but really without trying I could think of at least 50 countries which have better food than Romania. And that's before starting to subdivide countries like India and China into different regional cuisines. Of the three commonly-quoted traditional "national" Romanian dishes, two of them (sarmale and ciorba de burta) are almost certainly Turkish anyway, and the third (mamaliga) gets translated as "corn mush" on menus. This is not, of course, to say that Romanian food is bad, but it's not up there among the world's great cuisines. How many Romanian restaurants are there in a place like London, for example?

It's a shame, because until that point, I had been enjoying the video, although the fact that they had chosen someone to narrate it who couldn't pronounce Romanian words to save his life was a bit of a let-down. I think the pronunciation of "multumesc" (sic) is the lowest point. The Romanian pre-cursor to baseball, therefore, following on from the ludicrous food statement, was significantly less interesting than it would otherwise have been. Of course when it gets to the end you realise it's an ad for Ursus beer, which also lowers the tone somewhat, and possibly explains the bland "trailer for a poor quality Hollywood action movie" aesthetic (Ursus being a beer brewed by that bastion of blandicity, Miller).

Anyway, watch it (it's about 5 minutes long) if you have the time.

[*Spotters badge for anyone who can spot the pop culture reference here without resorting to google]

Not near, but Spar

When I was a lad (some years ago) the most common shop in England was "Spar", which apparently was some kind of franchise operation by which corner shops could sign up to be a spar and benefit from their distribution networks and so on. It was basically a byword for the cheap corner shop, and in fact their slogan was the obviously memorable "So near, so Spar". You weren't using the shop because it had a great selection or because it was cheap, you were very definitely using the shop because it was local and convenient. But times changed and Spars started disappearing from Britain's high streets, to be replaced by VG and Londis, and god knows what else. I have no idea if there are still any last remaining Spars in the UK, but I haven't seen them for ages.

I knew the shop still existed though, since I'd seen them elsewhere in Europe. But never have I seen a Spar like the ones that are now opening in Romania - large edge-of-town supermarkets with parking and allsorts. Yesterday we went to the one that's just opened in Udvarhely and I found myself wandering the wide, pushchair-friendly aisles with barely disguised glee.

Fresh herbs!

Basil, rosemary, sage, oregano, and most incredibly, coriander (cilantro for US/Spanish readers). Sadly the coriander was past its best (giving the lie to the "Mindig Friss" slogan that is plastered everywhere), but it was there. that's the point.

Wild rice

I mean we've only just sighted brown and basmati rice in Romania, and here we are with wild rice already

Sea food

Most people round here when you suggest that things like prawns or calamari are worth eating look at you as if you're completely unfit to have taste buds. But here there were not only those two things, but mussels and even octopus too.

Rice wine vinegar

I can't really think of a use for rice wine vinegar except for making sushi and since there were none of those sheets of seaweed you use for wrapping, the special rice that you use, or even more crucially wasabi, it's not that useful yet. But one day. Oh yes, one day

Australian wine

I'm not likely to buy any, delicious though much Aussie wine is, because it costs much more than Romanian wine - and Romanian wine is also excellent, but again, it's nice to see it

and finally...

Fresh rucola

...or arugula, or rocket, or what have you. Rocket is one of those words which I learned in English after I'd learned it in other languages first. Mostly, I suspect because we didn't have rocket in England when I was growing up, and had to make do with lettuce or lettuce. And I can't really bring myself to use the word rocket now that I have learned it because it sounds so bloody stupid. But anyway to find some of that stuff, for sale, fresh, and in Romania made my day.

But why has Udvarhely got this retail heaven while we in Csikszereda have been lumped with bloody Penny Market? The kind of place that gives cheap and nasty a bad name. It's a disgrace, that's what it is. But think of me this evening, while I'm eating freshly made pesto, with a side of arugula salad, and a fine bottle of Romanian red, and weep.

Ardeal Meals

I am seized by a hunger to post about food and drink here, and so to kick off I thought I'd do a little bit about meals and what they involve. As ever, I am not 100% sure if my cultural commentary is on Hungarian, Romanian, or just Transylvanian norms, so it may be up to my commenters to fill in some of the details.

Before actually getting to the food itself, then, the first thing the foreigner notices (or the first thing this foreigner noticed, to be honest), is the meal times themselves. The day begins early (at least on work days) and many people start work at 7 or at the latest 8. So breakfast is an early affair, and seemingly not very important. Many people seem not to eat it at all, and instead have a coffee and a pastry at work at sometime during the morning. The meal (really the only substantial meal of the day) is lunch.

Lunch involves soup and a main course. Always. OK, maybe not for everyone, but for most people, and for many people if it doesn't involve soup and a main course they haven't actually had lunch. My father-in-law definitely needs to have both of those two elements in order to feel like he's eaten, and not to react like Shirley Valentine's husband does in the first half of that film. It also involves palinka as a kind of appetite inducer, or something (I suspect it's just an excuse to drink palinka since there's no actual need to induce an appetite by the time lunch comes around). The other thing the outsider needs to know about lunch is that it doesn't really get eaten until 3pm. Occasionally you'll see lightweights having it at 2, but anytime before 3 is really a little bit fainthearted. This makes it apparent why the workday starts so early - you see most people actually work something like 7-3 and then go home for lunch and be done for the day. It takes a bit of getting used to, but I actually like it a lot now. In fact, I've started wondering why nobody else has come up with this excellent work-day-system.

So, there is this late lunch, and then the rest of the day is free (or you know, you fill it with the other chores of everyday life, so it's not free in the sense of you get to do whatever the hell you want, but it's not sold to the man). Dinner, such as it is, tends to be a light snack at around 8pm, just to keep the wolf from the door. This snack is usually zsiros kenyer and red onions. Zsiros kenyer is what used to be called "bread and dripping" when I was growing up, and is now almost certainly consigned to the memories of the elderly (like me) as a cholesterol cluster bomb. In short it is bread (sometimes toasted) spread with animal fat, and then sprinkled with paprika (the red powder not the peppers themselves). The red onion is peeled and chopped and the diners take bits of it, dip it in salt and eat it. It's very good, but you have to check with your partner as to whether any kissing might be on the menu for the later evening before you tuck in, as either you both eat the onion, or neither of you, or the kissing opportunity is lost.

And there you have it - basically one big meal a day and two lightish snacks. It makes me wonder how I've ended up putting on weight here.

Some of the actual foods served for lunch will follow in a later post, when I can be arsed writing it. (Tad busy at the mo' so blogging is liable to be light for the next couple fo weeks)

Cake

I made a cake yesterday(it was Erika's birthday). Not very interesting I know, but for me it was quite a new thing. While I fancy myself as a bit of dab hand in the kitchen, I tend to stick to main courses and starters, and avoid the baking/dessert area of the cook's ouevre. I have the feeling that aside from once or twice making a cake from a packet mix, that this was the first time I've ever made a cake from real ingredients using a recipe and that.

And it was delicious too. It was a carrot cake, which occasioned much suspicion from Bogi ("Carrot cake?" [quick mental translation, and then, incredulously...] "Murok tészta!??!"), and a certain amount of humour from everyone else. Mostly involving stuff about rabbits. But I had the last laugh when it turned out to be so good, and even the ridiculing Bogi, who normally treats my food as if it were alien in the extreme, enjoyed it. I mean I do realise that if you've never had carrot cake or heard of carrot cake before it does sound a bit weird - it is after all cake made (partly) from a vegetable. If some foreigner came into my house and started to bake a kohlrabi gateau or an artichoke eclair, I, too, would probably be a tad sniffy.

The last days of diszno

The weeks leading up to Christmas here are a time for festivity, fun, frivolity, and porcine genocide. Over the weeks of advent, I was invited to a number of these public executions at which family and friends gather to drink palinka, eat, chat, and kill and butcher a pig. It's just what you do at this time of year.

Now it's not the kind of thing that really appeals to me (well the social aspect does, but not really the death bit). I've seen and heard pigs killed before (it's a regular occurence in Micronesia) and they die a horrible screaming death. But, I'm all for community minded cultural traditions, and this seems to be one of them. I elected not to go to the ones I was invited to, mostly because I wanted to be available in case Paula started coming, and not to be standing around in some village three sheets to the wind on plum spirit when the phone rang.

But, 2006 promises to be the last year in which this tradition goes on. That is because EU regulations mean that pigs have to be slaughtered in an official slaughterhouse in the official EU-sanctioned way. So Christmases are unlikely to be the same again following accession. And I have no idea how I feel about it. How do I balance the fact that from next year onwards (assuming EU membership is confirmed) pigs will die in a more humane way (I think it involves an instant bolt through the brain or something), against the disappearance of what seems like an important social event in the lives of rural Romanians? Maybe I can institute a new tradition whereby people get together to ferment soy and make Christmas tofu.

(Diszno is pig in Hungarian, by the way).

PS
Hope you like the new little thing that tells you what the weather is like here in Csikszereda at the moment. Frankly I could just put a permanent thing in the side bar that says "It is fucking freezing", but this way you get to see whether the temperature is -10, -20 or -30 degrees.

Best things in Csikszereda

Well, it's the end of the year (or at least it was when I wrote most of this), and it seems only proper that I do what every other publication does at this time of year to fill up space. And that is to provide a "Best Of" list. Now, more or less everyone reading this will probably never visit Miercurea Ciuc (although those blanket invites are still valid), but on the off chance that someone happens across this page while googling "Things to do in Miercurea Ciuc" or "Lonely Planet: Csikszereda" or something like that, here are the best things you or anyone else could do while you're here.

Best restaurant (in town): Either of The Korona – a new place attached to an equally new hotel. Good décor, nice food, and dead cheap, or Park Hotel - Pretty rubbish décor, a bit like eating in a toilet, but the best food in town.

Best restaurant (within a reasonable drive): Lobogo Panzio Good food, and a nice place in the hills. The owner is an obviously entrepreneurial entrepreneur since he has built this very nice panzio, stuck cabins in the back, created a horse-riding centre and built a ski run. The website’s a bit rubbish though.

Best pizza: Renegade Pub and Pizza. Aside from the San Gennaro where they do real Italian pizzas (which are also very good) this is the only place in town that doesn’t give you ketchup with your pizza. And that, round these parts, is enough for a recommendation

Best bar: Probably Morpheus, but it’s a bit smoky (a common problem, frankly)

Best bar for watching sport: Gosser, where they have a big screen and a projector. I intend becoming a regular when the World Cup starts.

Best place to hang out (and also buy fruit and vegetables - and meat, if that’s the kind of thing that floats your boat): The Market. Not only do they have cheap and abundant produce, but it’s the best place in town for being multicultural. Stallholders come from all over the country to sell their wares to the hungry Hungarians of Csikszereda, and so it’s the only place in town where you can never be sure of which language to use. Also, not only is it a forum for Romanian/Hungarian interaction but there are also Roma salespeople there (particularly in wild foods seasons – mushrooms, berries, etc.). The other day, I was buying olive oil and the woman at the stall asked me if my wife had had the baby yet. I’d only been there once before. That’s service for you. (Plus their olive oil – extra virgin cold pressed, from Turkey – is way cheaper that anything in any supermarket and even in the big hypermarkets, Metro and Carrefour, that you have to drive to Brasov to visit)

Best small shop within a short distance from our house: Napsugar, without a doubt. Huge range of products stuffed inside a tiny phone-box like space. Moving around in there on days when there are more than about 5 customers is basically impossible. Also they sell good wine much cheaper than the bigger shops like Madezit and Profi.

Best place for a coffee: San Gennaro. I'd like to recommend it as a restaurant too, as it is a real Italian place and the food is authentic, but the portions are small and the prices are high (in Csikszereda terms - for anyone else it's dead cheap). The pizzas are good though - being real Italian ones.

Best Hotel: No idea really. The Fenyö is the most prominent, and it seems pretty good. If you want a three star business standard hotel, it's obviously your best bet. If you want something cheaper, then there bare numerous pensions and smaller hotels, which are also probably good. Since I've never had to stay in one, I am not really ideally placed to comment in this category.

Best annual event: The pilgrimage to Csiksomlyo. I know it's based around a weeping madonna (no, not that one crying after seeing how she looks on that Hung up video), and I was kind of rude about it when I described it, way back when, but it is quite remarkable.

Romania-wide categories

Best beer: Csiki Sör obviously (that's Bere Ciuc to any Romanian readers). I'm quite getting into Silva dark too.

Best wine: Romanian wine is the next big thing in European wine drinking circles, of that I am quite sure. It's often delicious and dead cheap. The well known brands are Murfatlar and Beciul Domnesc (both very good as long as you make sure you read the labels and avoid anything dulce and demidulce). I'm going to big up these bottles that we get that are labelled (in English) "Prahova Valley". Good wine and at $2 a bottle you can't go wrong.

Best bread: The bread here is fantastic, and in other places I've not seen such good bread. The Black Sea coast is rubbish for bread. Cluj must be good, because one of the very interesting loaves you get here is called something like Kolszvari Kenyer (Paine de Cluj), and has potatoes in it.

Best city to visit as a tourist: Sighisoara, no contest. I haven't been to every city in Romania, but I've been to the ones that people talk about as being interesting, so I'd be surprised if Craiova, for example, turned out to be a gorgeous place. Central Brasov is probably in second place, followed by Sibiu (though my view of Sibiu was tainted by the fact that it was being dug up when I was there). All those cities are Saxon ones. I have no idea why it should be that they're the nicest three. Did the West German government pay Ceausescu not to bulldoze them?

As an aside to the above: Best restaurant in Romania – the Hanul Dracula not far outside Sighisoara – though it is 4kms off the road down a rutted track.

Places I have not yet visited but really want to: The Painted Monasteries of Bucovina, and the Danube Delta.

Hrean man

Lately, I have been eating a lot of horseradish. I have decided that it (horseradish) is one of the finest and most underrated of vegetables. That, of course, is assuming that it is a vegetable. The Romanian word from horseradish is hrean and the Hungarian word is torma.

I have started eating it with everything. The other day, for example, I had a horseradish sandwich. It was gorgeous. And here I am not referring to horseradish sauce, or horseradish mixed with mayonnaise, but genuine strong, sinus-clearing, head-expanding, wasabi-esque horseradish. I'm thinking of writing a horseradish cookbook. This will be a triumph of marketing as it will basically just be lots of traditional recipes with horseradish added. I might even make it trilingual so it would feature, for example, fish 'n chips 'n horseradish, as well as tormás rakott krumpli, and of course mămăligă cu brânză şi smântână şi hrean. It would go down a storm in the lovers of strong tastes community of the Hungarian-Romanian-English speaking world.

Yesterday I dropped and broke a whole jar of it, which caused me much grief. I half expected the carpet to be eaten away this morning.

Sorry about the title, by the way, I couldn't help myself.

Winter Vegetables

It is, as you may be aware, winter. This means the range of veg. on offer in the market is significantly reduced. This, indeed, is why we spent much of September pickling, jamming and zakuszkaing. But now, as the cold begins to bite, the market is more and more the preserve of potatoes (Harghita county’s biggest export, surpassing even Csiki Sör), parsnips, leeks, kohlrabi, and other roots and tubers (is there a difference between roots and tubers? I have no idea). I have been introducing the denizens of Csikszereda to the delights of roast parsnips, which no-one seems to have seen before. Parsnips, by the way, are called paszternak in Hungarian (or at least they are in Transylvanian Hungarian – Hungary appears to name all of its vegetables differently from us, so I have no idea if this crosses the entirety of “old Hungary”). Since paszternak looks to me like a word of Slavic origin, I wonder if Boris Pasternak actually means Boris Parsnip. There aren’t that many famous writers named after vegetables, really, are there? I’m struggling to think of any to be honest. Maybe it’s a Russian thing. Perhaps Dostoevsky means courgette, Tolstoy is daikon, and Chekhov is curly kale.

[Linguistic aside: Weirdest Hungarian vegetable word, by the way, is that for onion. Now here in Transylvania onion is hagyma, which, while nothing like onion, is not especially weird. But recently I was sitting in the living room minding my own business while Erika made onion soup in the kitchen, when suddenly a blood curdling scream rang through the apartment, followed by the cry “bloody Hungarians”. Other than Erika herself, and Bogi, there were actually no other Hungarians present in the flat at that time, so I was slightly baffled by this outburst. Rushing to the source of the problem I discovered that what the cry was referring to was the cookbook that she was using for the recipe. The dish called for “vöröshagyma”, which literally translated means “red onion”, so that is exactly what she had used. But, in Hungary, and the reason for the outburst, vöröshagyma means the kind of onions that are by no means red. What you or I would call yellow onions, or just plain onions. They (the bloody Hungarians) call red onions lilahagyma (lit: purple onions). At least I think, anyway. I could of course be way off here, and it wouldn’t be the first time]

Back to the topic at hand: I love parsnips, me. The other day I made potato and parsnip cakes. They were excellent. On another winter food related ramble, I also recently made vichyssoise. Now for those who don’t know, vichyssoise is the posh French word for leek and potato soup. In the cookbook which I consulted for the recipe it stated that I could serve it warmed through or chilled as that is how it is eaten in France.

Now, I've nothing against cold soup, per se - I enjoy a good gazpacho, and I'm even prepared to believe that cold leek and potato soup would taste pretty good. But there is one glaring problem with this idea. That is that leeks and potatoes are winter vegetables. Who, in their right mind, wants to eat cold soup in the middle of winter? Gazpacho is basically salad in a blender, so that one I fully understand and go along with, but vichyssoise? It’s madness I tell you.

We ate it hot, as nature intended.

In other soup related cultural insanity news, Hungarians eat fruit soups. Apple and sour cherry are the two I've seen. There comes a point where you have to bite the bullet and admit that your soup is in fact a cleverly concealed dessert, and I think Hungarians need to come clean on this one.

(By the way, Microsoft Word’s spellcheck function recognises vichyssoise but not gazpacho. I wonder what it makes of mulligatawny? Oooh – it's recognized. Why is gazpacho given the cold shoulder I wonder? Maybe the dictionary compilers refused to recognise cold soups. I may have to do some more soup/word crosschecking research)