POTD 16: Moldovan Gingerbread cookies

Candies and sweets are quite different here. While you will find your Snicker bar and M&Ms at most stores, the desserts that Moldovans prefer are ones you’ll find more easily. This gingerbread-like cookie is my favorite kind of Moldovan cookie.

A couple weeks ago, my friend Maggie set up a tour of a bread and beer factory in her town. We were able to see the whole process of everything made by this company, which included breads, cookies, sodas, beers, and cvas (a non-alcoholic beer that isn’t bad). We also were able to try some cookies fresh from the oven. And they had additional flavors of their gingerbread cookies (honey and peanut butter) So good!

Jackpot

I found a loaf of sliced bread at my local store for the second time this month. Life is good.

Poftă Bună!

Poftă Bună, which is Romanian for bon appétit. You can’t have a meal in Moldova without being wished poftă bună! Moldovan food: it’s not that weird. There are lots of the same things as there are in the USA. Bread, pasta, lots veggies and fruits, chicken, pork, sausage, salami, etc. Most of the stuff I know and recognize. For me, the main differences are how food is served/prepared/portioned and what is served more frequently. For example, the butter is cut like slices of cheese, the cheese is cut like slices of bread, and bread is cut like, well, slices of bread (not everything is different). Tomatoes are eaten like apples. And if you don’t ask for a 3rd serving, people might think you don’t like the food.

The biggest struggle for me is the meat. Dad, I think you would love it here. The meat is mostly kinds of pork. Lots and lots of kinds of sausages and salamis. And fatty sausage and salamis at that. And if it’s not some kind of pork, whatever meat it is, it’s very fatty. Most of the time, the meat is served still on the bone. And many Moldovans eat every piece of meat…including the marrow. It was weird the first time I heard my host family eating meat and it was crunching.

But if there is one piece of information to remember when eating Moldovan food, this is it: never bite into anything assuming there aren’t seeds or bones. I only made that mistake 10 or 11 times.

Here are some popular Moldovan dishes, foods, and drinks that are new or interesting for me…

• Compot: boiled fruit with sugar or honey. Tastes like Kool-Aid. 
• Plicinta: mini pies filled with cheese, cabbage, potatoes, or fruit. Very tasty, and very common. The ones filled with cabbage are my favorite. 
• Mamaliga: cornmeal mash. Made from water and cornmeal. I like this a lot too. It reminds me of grits, which kind of makes it a comfort food for me. 
• Sărmale: rice and veggies (and sometimes meat) rolled in cabbage or grape leaves. This isn’t new for me; I had them in the States before. But I wanted to include it in the list because they seem to be at many masăs. Stuffed peppers are also very popular (they use the same stuffing as sărmale). 
• Răcituri: meat jello. When I first heard about this dish, even though I knew this wasn’t correct, I pictured a jello mold with pieces of meat floating in it. This is not correct. To me, it looks and tastes like congealed chicken broth. And it’s very salty. 
• Hrișcă: brown buckwheat. I like this very much. It is very oaty. Parascovia serves it with something very similar to spaghetti sauce on it. 
• Brînză: sheep cheese. It’s very similar to goat cheese or feta in texture. It can be sweet or salty. I really like the salty kind with tomatoes. 
• Pelmeni: meat ravioli/dumplings. Maybe I don’t need to include this on the list, but this is one of my favorite meals. So I wanted to mention it. It is basically mini dumplings, and Moldovans serve it with sour cream instead of soy sauce. And I really like it with the sour cream. Funny thing though, they are in the frozen food section. Wouldn’t it figure that the American’s favorite dish is a frozen prepared dish? 
• Salată de crabi: egg salad with artificial crab and potato. It’s very yummy. 
• Chefir: buttermilk (kind of). It’s like a chunky buttermilk. Very thick and sour. When my host family gave it to me to try, they insisted that it’s good for my stomach. I felt like I was drinking sour milk. 
• Păpănaș: small, dense pancakes. They are very sweet and yummy. Parascovia makes them almost every weekend, and I eat it with dulceață. 
• Dulceață: jelly with pieces of fruit. It is very sweet, with the juices and chunks of the fruit. It’s very dessert-like. 

Countdown Until Next Good Hamburger…364 Days

This weekend was lots of fun. I was able to attend a USA Independence Day celebration put on by The American Chamber of Commerce in Moldova. There was food and drinks and music.

The food was very good. It was hotdogs and hamburgers. When I first got there, only the hot dogs were out. And by the time I got a hamburger, I was so excited about having it, I gobbled it down before I could take a picture of it. I was told by some of the current volunteers that this celebration is the only time they get a decent hamburger. I’m already counting down until my next one.

It was so great to have American food. That is something I have been missing pretty much since I have been here. I feel like the 3-year-old who wants what she can’t have. As soon as I find out I can’t have hamburgers, that’s all I want no matter what else is offered.

I found the interpretation of the “American” food interesting. The meat of the hotdogs and hamburger were delicious, but buns were much larger then the pieces of meat and were very chewy. Everything else is not what I would generally think of as American. The sides were couscous and pasta salad; both delicious, but the flavors reminded me more of Greek. And the cupcakes were very dense cake with raisins in it. And although I enjoyed the food a lot, the Moldovan version of American food made me wonder about how much America probably butchers ethnic foods.