Day 146 - Cooking in Moldova

lemon meringue pie image by texascooking, via Flickr.com

Cooking in Romania was a challenge in part because finding time to buy food was a challenge and in part because the range of what was available was limited. The shelves in the shops were full, but they were full of the same thing, not full of variety. For example, where in the U.S. the aisle with canned vegetables would have cans of all sizes and brands with corn, beans of all types, peas, asparagus, potatoes, palm hearts, tomatoes, peppers, and so on, in Romania a single shelf was full, top to bottom, left to right, of canned tomatoes - just canned tomatoes - in cans of the same size and brand.

The silver lining, of course, is that I could always find canned tomatoes.

Other items I could always get included chicken, lemon juice, sour cream, sugar, flour, a variety of soft cheeses, cabbage, onions, potatoes, cooking oil, eggs, and bread. That's about it. So I learned to take advantage of what was there.

For example, one of the types of cheeses I could always get was cașcaval, a moderately firm whitish cheese that was about the same consistency as mozzarella. And a common appetizer in the restaurants in Romania was cașcaval pane, or fried cheese. And I loved it. To prepare cașcaval pane, I needed an egg, a cup of flour, bread crumbs, cooking oil, and seasonings. With the egg, flour, and seasonings, I made a batter. After heating oil in a frying pan until it was hot, I dipped 1-inch thick slices of cheese into the batter, rolled the battered slices in breach crumbs to coat them, and then placed them in the hot oil to cook, turning each once to ensure even cooking.

I brought a variety of herbs with me which meant I had plenty of options for ensuring variety in my meals, in spite of the similarity - cașcaval pane with dill one day, with basil the next, with oregano the next, and so on.

I also brought The Joy of Cooking with me. While I could never find all the ingredients for any recipe, I could always get chicken so I worked my way through the poultry section of that cookbook, picking up whatever ingredients I could find and using what was available, mostly cabbage, onions, and canned tomatoes, as replacements for other ingredients.

cheesecake image by kitsunebabe, via Flickr.com

But my special favorites were lemon meringue pie and cheesecake. While there weren't lemons in Romania, there were always bottles of lemon juice. Using the juice, along with the eggs, sugar, flour, and salt that were always available, I was able to mix up the crust and cook up the lemon mixture for the pie.

Cheesecake was more problematic. There was no Philadelphia cream cheese available. There also wasn't any ricotta or cottage cheese. But there were a number of different soft cheese as well as yogurt and sour cream. On weekends that I stayed in Iași, I tried different cheeses and combinations with yogurt or sour cream in a Joy of Cooking cheese cake recipe.

Once I moved to the apartment that had formerly been the French lecturer's home, I had a friend nearby to help me test my experiments, another Fulbrighter, Paul, who lived in one of the two hotels on the plaza where my apartment building was located.

Paul's hotel suite was larger than my apartment, although he didn't have a kitchen. So I could count on getting a positive reaction from Paul when I offered to bring over some cheesecake in exchange for an hour or two of watching TV in his suite.

function image by Dallas Film
Society Images, via Flickr.com

Because Paul's suite was so much larger, he agreed to host a cocktail party in honor of the International Visitor whose visit was arranged by the Cultural Affairs Officer of the American embassy when the IV came to Iași for his lecture.  It was my introduction to the world of diplomatic functions, events hosted by ambassadors or their staff to entertain and network with other diplomats and contacts within the local population, something I became much more familiar with in future years.

During the event at Paul's suite, I learned a trick from the Cultural Affairs Officer's wife. She would look around the room in order to find the oldest person in attendance. She would then approach that person and begin a conversation. After a few minutes, she would suggest that the two of them find a more comfortable place to continue their conversation, at which point she would lead the guest to a sofa so that they could both sit down. I liked that approach. As an introvert, I was never comfortable mixing at functions. I figured out how to start up a conversation, but I was never comfortable moving on to another conversation. That sometimes meant I managed to start up a conversation with another introvert in the room, someone as uncomfortable with making conversation as I was and equally uncomfortable moving on. Those conversations were painfully long. But Mrs. Cultural Affairs Officer's approach had two big advantages. First, the oldest person in the room usually had the most to say, often the most interesting content as well. And second, sitting down is a much more comfortable position to be in if the conversation turned out to be one of those long and painful ones.