Recipes from Lithuania

OK, so Lithuania was a strange combination of failure and triumph. It was like the Wide World of Sports of blog nights. You know, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Yes, I am old enough that I remember that.

Lithuania, as you may know, is one of those European nations that is sort of on the fringes of the continent. It's one of three Baltic nations (the other two are Estonia and Latvia), which means that it borders the Baltic Sea in northern Europe. Despite the northernliness of it, I was surprised to learn that Lithuania actually has a pretty mild climate--it never really gets any warmer than 70 degrees, even in July, and it doesn't get much colder than 20 degrees (though those are averages, of course). My husband would love it there.

 Castle of Trakai, Lithuania. Photo by SU.

Lithuania is a former Soviet state--today it is kind of a funky democracy. It has a president, but much like the Queen of England, the office is largely ceremonial, though the president does have some foreign affairs and national security powers. She also appoints the prime minister and a bunch of other offices, and those are the people who do the actual running-of-the-country stuff.

Lithuanian cuisine is pretty similar to eastern European fare, at least in my mind. They eat a lot of barley and potatoes and other stuff that grows in cool climates, like beets and mushrooms. Influences range from Polish and Jewish to German culinary traditions (you'll find dumplings, crepes and kugel on Lithuanian menus). Here are the dishes I chose:

Baked Pork in Mushroom Sauce (Kepta kiauliena grybø padaþe) 
(from The Anthology of Lithuanian Ethnoculture)

• 2 lbs pork, any cut 
• Juice of 1 lemon 
• Powdered bay leaves 
• Salt and pepper to taste 
• 6 tbsp vegetable oil or butter  
• 3 oz dried mushrooms 
• 2 onions, finely chopped 
• 1 cup mushroom cooking juice 
• 2 tbsp sour cream 
• 1 tbsp flour 
• 4 tbsp butter 

Vedarai (Potato Sausage)
(from Eastern European Food)

For the sausage:

• 12 medium peeled russet potatoes, finely grated
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 3 tbsp butter or 3 strips bacon, chopped
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 tsp marjoram (optional)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Hog casings, rinsed three times

For the gravy:

• 1/2 lb bacon, diced
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 cup sour cream
• Black pepper to taste

Beets with Horseradish
(also from The Anthology of Lithuanian Ethnoculture) 

• 4 beets, cooked, finely grated 
• 1 cup grated horseradish root 
• 1/4 tsp pepper 
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• Juice of 1/2 lemon 
• Salt to taste

Lithuanian Honey Cake  
(from Natasha's Kitchen)

For the cake:

• 1/4 honey
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 3 large eggs, beaten with a fork
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3 cups all-purpose flour

For the cream:

• 5 cups crème fraiche
• 5-7 tbsp confectioners sugar
• 3-6 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 2 lemons, zest

For the candied orange peel:

• 2 oranges
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 cups water

So I'm going to start with the sausage, because it was the most disastrous part of the meal. Now, here's me thinking that because I made sausage that one time, back in Belgium, that I would just be able to whip it up again, no problem. After all it's not even real sausage, it's potato sausage. I guess I overestimated myself.

Anyway, first you're supposed saute the onion in the butter, or with the bacon (that's what I did). When the onion is soft, take it off the heat and let it come back to room temperature. Now mix the grated potatoes with the onion and add the eggs, marjoram, salt and pepper. The thickness of the mixture should be roughly equal to the thickness of ground pork. If it isn't, add some flour.

So I did all that after I dug out my meat grinder, which I've used exactly that one time, and I frustrated myself mightily trying to remember how to put it together and use it. Now, the unfortunate thing about my meat grinder is that the clamp that secures it to the work surface doesn't actually open wide enough to fit on my counter, or my dining room table for that matter. In fact the only surface that it will go on is one of those stupid little folding TV stands. So I set my TV stand up in the living room, because I figured that's where I could sit most comfortably and make sausages, and I attached the meat grinder to it and here's what happened:

As per the instructions, I stuffed the potato mixture into the grinder and turned the handle, and liquid went everywhere. It dripped out of every single crevasse in the machine and spilled all over the wobbly TV tray and onto the floor. It was an absolute mess, and by the time I filled all the casings I'd also soaked an entire beach towel in potato water.

Anyway, I twisted the casings to make links, pricked them and then boiled them in salted water, which is not what I should have done because they promptly untwisted and I was left with one giant sausage instead of a bunch of small ones (the recipe also says you can bake them at 350 degrees). Either way they should take roughly 1 hour to finish.

I kind of tried to twist them back, with limited success.

While the sausages are cooking, fry the rest of the bacon with the onion until the onion is translucent and the bacon is cooked through. Drain off the fat and then mix in the sour cream and black pepper. If the sauce is too thick, add a little bit of milk. Serve the sausages with the sour cream sauce poured over.

On to the pork:

First rub the meat all over with lemon juice, then sprinkle with the salt, pepper and powdered bay leaf. Now put the oil and meat into a casserole and bake at 350 degrees, basting occasionally. The meat is done when the internal temperature reaches 145 degrees.

Meanwhile, cook the mushrooms in boiling water and remove with a slotted spoon, reserving the cooking water. Melt the butter in a medium sized pot and julienne the mushrooms. Add the mushrooms and onions to the melted butter, then whisk in the flour. Add the mushroom juice, sour cream, salt and pepper while continuing to whisk. Turn down the heat and let the sauce thicken.

Slice the pork and pour the sauce over to serve.

OK now for the easy part, the beets:

First roast your boats in a hot oven until soft. Peel them and grate them.

Now grate the horseradish, then mix everything together. Done!

Now, for the cake. First, do some deep breathing. If you're into yoga, do that, too. This cake is complex and labor intensive. By the time I was done making it, I vowed I would never do it again ... Until my kids made it clear to me that they would quite happily eat that cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Here goes.

First, you're going to be making some candied orange peel. To do this, you need to peel the oranges and then cut off as much of the pith as you can (that's the bitter white part). I actually scraped mine down so I could only see orange.

It kind of took a while but it was worth it. In fact I might actually make my own candied peel next year for the Christmas cake, instead of buying it. It tasted much nicer than that uber-expensive packaged stuff.

Now boil two cups of the water and add the peel. Let it soften up for a few minutes and then drain and set aside. Next, bring the other two cups of the water to a boil and add the sugar. Reduce heat, then drop in the peel and let simmer until the peel is translucent. This should take about 30 minutes. Drain and transfer to a drying rack (I used my pizza screen because it has smaller holes so the peel wouldn't fall through). Let dry for three to four hours, then chop fine. Reserve the syrup it cooked in, not because the recipe said to but because it's yummy.

OK now mix the crème fraiche* with the lemon zest, sugar and lemon juice. Please note: don't use an electric mixer. That's what I did and my crème fraiche curdled. It was awful, though my husband did manage to save most of it by straining it. So don't use an electric mixer, instead just fold it all together. Keep tasting it until it's to your liking. It should be a little bit sour with a hint of sweet. Finally, fold in the candied peel.

*Note: Crème fraiche is super expensive, and super easy to make. The day before you make this cake, mix 5 cups of heavy cream with 2/3 cup of buttermilk. Cover it with a clean towel and let it sit out overnight in a warm place. In about 12 to 18 hours, you will have crème fraiche.

OK now put the sugar, honey and butter in a medium pan and heat gently until melted and blended. Use a low flame so you don't scorch the ingredients. Remove from the heat and add the eggs, but keep whisking as they go in, otherwise the heat from the melted butter will scramble them.

Now whisk in the baking soda until well incorporated, then add the flour in 1/2 cup increments. Fold it in gently--when the texture is a bit like Play Dough it's ready.

Cut the dough into 8 equal sized portions. It's important to do this while it's warm. Trust me on this one, because I didn't believe the author when she said that and I let mine cool down. When cool, it's really difficult to roll out.

Which brings me to the next part: rolling out. Flour a rolling pin and a large surface and roll each piece out into a circle with about a quarter inch thickness. Use a nine inch plate as a template to make sure all the circles are exactly the right size. Save all those trimmings--you'll be using them later. Unless you literally can't make your circles large enough because you were dumb and tried to do all of this with cold dough.

Are you tired yet? Next you'll be baking each circle at 350 degrees for four or five minutes on a sheet of waxed paper, until golden. When done each circle should resemble a sort of large, thick tortilla. Let them cool separately on a wire rack. Keep going until you've baked them all.

Now bake all those little scraps, if you have any little scraps. Put them in a food processor and pulse until you get some fine crumbs.

The home stretch: spread 1/3 cup of the crème fraiche mixture on each cake piece. Top with the next piece, pressing down, and repeat. Keep going until you're out of layers, then frost the sides with the leftover crème fraiche mixture, unless you curdled all yours and don't really have enough left over to do that.

 Now dust with the breadcrumbs and refrigerate overnight. Or don't--it's a lot moister once it's absorbed some of the crème fraiche, but pretty delicious the day you make it, too.

I didn't have enough crème fraiche to frost the whole thing.

Here's what we thought. But wait, first I have to say that between grating potatoes and grating beets and grating horseradish by the time I was done with this my arms ached so badly I could hardly lift them. So now that you know just how out of shape I actually am:

Beets are my new favorite thing, so I loved the beet salad with the grated horseradish. Yum. And I enjoyed the pork, too, with the mushroom sauce. It was basic, but basic in a nice, hearty way. The sausage was, meh. It had a lot of potential but it was an awful lot of mess and trouble for what basically amounted to some mashed potatoes in a sausage casing. If I did this again, I would definitely use more bacon. A lot more bacon.

Now, I bet you wanted to know what we thought of the cake. It was a ton of work and like I said I swore I would never do it again, but you know what? I would totally do it again. It was that good, and worth the work for sure. Anyway now that I got all the kinks worked out I'm pretty sure I could make it a lot more quickly next time. And I promised my kids there would definitely be a next time.

Next week: Luxembourg

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Recipes from Liechtenstein

I have finally met a cheese I don't like.

I once would have thought it was impossible. I *love* cheese. Before I had kids, one of my favorite things to do was visit cheese shops and sample all the different cheeses, and then go home with some exotic, wonderful cheese that I've never had before and eat it with some sort of fancy or unusual cracker. Haha! Like I could ever do such things today, with four kids in tow.

So up until this point I have not been phased by the idea of ordering cheese online, even though it costs a lot of money to ship the stuff (We don't really have any gourmet cheese shops here. Scratch that--up until two days ago I didn't know we had a gourmet cheese shop here, but that's a different story.) Anyway I was getting my exotic cheese from iGourmet.com, and that's where I got the two cheeses I used for this week's meal.

Let me back up a little before I start telling you that story. This week we are in Liechtenstein, which is a really, really tiny country in Central Europe. It is so small, in fact, that not only can you not see it on this big map, but you also can't really see it very well on the zoomed in version, either:

Liechtenstein is tiny. At 62 square miles, it is roughly the same size as New Milford, Connecticut. Never heard of New Milford, Connecticut? That's because it's tiny.

Now, clearly Liechtenstein has a short man's complex, because despite its diminutive size it has a lot going for it. In fact, it has the highest gross domestic product per person in the world when adjusted by purchasing power parity. No, really. And if you measure by GDP per capita, it is the second richest nation in the whole world, after Qatar. It also has one of the lowest rates of unemployment anywhere in the world (1.5%). Liechtenstein is mountainous, which means it's great for skiing (not that I ski or anything) and (I'm not making this up) it is also the word's largest exporter of false teeth. Which I don't know, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that someone put that little factoid in Wikipedia for fun and it's not actually true, but it does make for entertaining reading.

Schloss Vaduz, Liechtenstein. Photo by jimynu.

Anyway, the food in Liechtenstein is is heavily influenced by its neighbors, Austria and Switzerland. Potatoes are popular there, which seems to be pretty typical for the region, and the nation's large dairy industry also means that cheeses are an important part of the cuisine. Really, really stinky cheeses.

So here's my menu (both recipes are from Liechtenstein's Tourism Board):

Pepper Venison

• 2 lbs shoulder of venison
• 3 oz onions, chopped
• 2 oz carrots, chopped
• 2 oz celery, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, pressed
• 8 cups red wine
• 1 cup apple cider vinegar
• 2 bay leaves
• 6 cloves
• 8 whole allspice corns
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 10 juniper berries
• 1 sprig of fresh thyme
• 2 tbsp flour
• Splash of port or sherry

with:

Käsknöpfle

• 4  3/4 cups flour
• 8 eggs
• 7 to 8 tbsp fresh water
• Pinch of pepper
• Pinch of nutmeg 
• Pinch of salt
• 1 small onion, sliced
• 2  tbsp butter 
• 2 oz Appenzeller cheese, grated
• 2 oz sour cheese, grated

So I was excited about this. I've never cooked venison before and I had to go on a bit of a hunt for it--I finally learned that I could order stew venison from the co-op here in town. That's one thing checked off my to-do list. And then there was the cheese.

What's that smell? (Photo by Artizone)

Appenzeller is available on iGourmet.com, which described it as being "appreciated by cheese connoisseurs around the world," and "a delicacy on any cheese platter." Sounds great, doesn't it? I ordered some. In retrospect, I am a little angry that nowhere on the iGourmet website was I warned about what I was getting into.

Now the sour cheese, that was a bit more of a challenge.

Sour cheese cannot be had anywhere in the US, and I suspect there's a pretty good reason for that. Several sources referred to it as "strong" or "not for everyone." I was not dissuaded, because up until that point I'd never met a cheese I didn't like, strong or otherwise. I looked for Handkäse, I looked for Harzer, and even for some of the lesser-known varieties of sour cheese from the region. The closest I could come (which probably isn't close at all) was Limburger. So I got some of that, too.

Armed with all of my hard-to-find ingredients, I started with the venison.

First place four cups of the wine in a pot with the apple cider vinegar, half the vegetables and all of the spices. Bring to a boil, then remove from the heat and let cool. Pour over the meat and let marinate in the fridge for a couple of days (or up to a week).

Filter the marinade into a saucepan and reserve. Let the meat drain for a couple of hours, then heat the oil in a pan and sear the meat on all sides with a little salt.

Gently heat the marinade on the stove. Meanwhile, heat up some oil in a separate pan and saute the rest of the vegetables. Add the meat and stir until it darkens (mine was already almost black from marinating in the wine for all that time). Now add a cup of wine, a little more marinade and the spices. Let stew for an hour or so, until the meat is tender.

Remove the meat with a slotted spoon and transfer it to a warm plate. At this point the recipe starts talking about what to do with the pig's blood, which was news to me because pig's blood wasn't anywhere in the ingredient list. But then it says to thicken the stew with toasted flour if you don't have any pig's blood, which was good, because I didn't have any pig's blood. So I just toasted the flour in a dry pan until it took on a golden color, and I mixed it with a little water before adding it to the sauce.

Now add the port or sherry. Put the meat in another pot with the rest of the wine, and add the sauce. Season with a little salt and pepper.

And now for the Käsknöpfle.

I made the mistake of opening the cheese and grating it before I made the dough. Don't do that.

Appenzeller is stinky. In fact, it's so stinky that I didn't even notice the Limburger, which for most Americans is the stinkiest cheese going. Appenzeller is so stinky that I smelled it for hours. The odor permeated everything. By the time I was done making the dough, I had no appetite left from smelling the Appenzeller.

So wait until the very end to grate the cheese. First, put the eggs, flour, water and spices in a bowl and make a dough. Let rest for 20 minutes, then grate. Laugh because you think I must be joking.

I couldn't grate this. It just wouldn't go near the holes in the grater. So I recruited my husband and kids to roll it out into really small lengths of rope and cut it into tiny pieces, which is probably not traditional but it seemed to work.

While your family is slaving away at this, fry the onions in the butter until golden.

Drop your finished pasta into boiling, salted water and cook until the pieces float. Remove with a slotted spoon and top with the grated cheese and the onions.

So despite the smell, it really didn't taste that bad. I've actually found that to be true with most stinky cheeses--the flavor tends to be pretty mild compared to the stink. But because I'd smelled that stink all evening, I just couldn't eat it. I mean, I did, but I didn't enjoy it. Neither did my kids.

I did like the stew. It was really rich and flavorful. In fact it was so rich and flavorful that it was almost disappointing, because it could have been any meat in that dish. I didn't particularly even notice the flavor of the venison.

My husband was unphased by the stinky cheese. So unphased that a few days later he put the rest of the Appenzeller on omelets. My poor kids walked into the kitchen and about fell over from the stink. We had to throw out half the omelets because no one would touch them, myself included. Though Martin did eat his, and so did my older son, whose culinary adventurousness never ceases to amaze me.

Next week: Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy

Liechtenstein Liguria, Italy Lithuania Lombardy, Italy Lorraine and Alsace, France* - See more at: http://travelbystove.blogspot.com/p/the-list.html#sthash.0kc4RoYd.dpuf

Liechtenstein Liguria, Italy Lithuania Lombardy, Italy Lorraine and Alsace, France* - See more at: http://travelbystove.blogspot.com/p/the-list.html#sthash.0kc4RoYd.dpuf

Liechtenstein Liguria, Italy Lithuania Lombardy, Italy Lorraine and Alsace, France* - See more at: http://travelbystove.blogspot.com/p/the-list.html#sthash.0kc4RoYd.dpuf

Liechtenstein Liguria, Italy Lithuania Lombardy, Italy Lorraine and Alsace, France* - See more at: http://travelbystove.blogspot.com/p/the-list.html#sthash.0kc4RoYd.dpuf

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Recipes from Latvia

I'm pretty sure that the weather has something to do with how much I enjoy blog meals. Caribbean food, for example, really is better on a hot day. And Eastern European food is better on cold days.

Sadly, it was nowhere near a cold day when I did my Latvian meal. We still haven't had any really cold days here in California, but it was most definitely not cold a few weeks ago when I did this meal. I actually am starting to wonder if alphabetical was the way to go with this endeavor, or if I maybe should have done this geographically.

Latvia would definitely be a February meal, or maybe early March. It's in the Baltic region of Northern Europe, bordered by fellow cold nations Estonia, Lithuania, Russia and Belarus. In July, it reaches scorchingly hot temperatures in excess of 67 degrees. In February it drops all the way down to 16 degrees. My husband would probably love living there.

 Cēsis Castle, Latvia. Photo by Graham.

Latvia is another one of those nations that got swallowed up by the Soviet Union and then spat back out again after the empire dissolved in the early 90s. During World War II it was also invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany, which is an interesting factoid because it's not something you really hear discussed when people talk about World War II. Through all of it, Latvia maintained its uniquely Latvian culture and language, and today it's actually a prosperous little nation, though it is still cold.

Anyway it makes complete sense that when you live in a freezing cold environment, you eat a lot of rich foods. That's what helps you achieve a layer of insulation to protect you from the elements, right? There's a lot of fat in Latvian food (and not a lot of spices), and typical menu items include potatoes, pork, eggs and cabbage. Here are the recipes I chose:

Breaded Pork Chops
(from Latvian Stuff)

• 6 pork chops     
• 3 tbsp light cream
• 1 egg     
• 3/4 cup bread crumbs
• Butter and oil     
• Salt and pepper     
• Flour

Kartupeli ar Dillēm (Boiled Potatoes With Dill)
(from Saveur)

• 2 lb small Yukon Gold potatoes, unpeeled
• 1/3 cup sour cream
• 6 tbsp fresh dill, minced
• 4 tbsp unsalted butter
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Latvian Rye Bread
(from The Rīgas Stradiņa Universitāte)

For the starter:

• 3 tbsp coarse rye flour
• 1/2 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
• 1 1/4 tsp sugar 

For the bread:

• 5 cups coarse rye flour, sifted
• 2 1/2 cups water
• Pinch of salt
• Caraway seeds to taste

Grey peas with bacon (Pelēkie zirņi ar speķīti)
(from Cooking Latvia)

• 7 oz pigeon peas
• 4 strips smoked bacon
• 1 small onion
• Salt

Jåñi Cheese
(also from The Rīgas Stradiņa Universitāte)

• 2lb, 3oz skim milk dry cottage cheese*
• 169 oz whole milk (avoid ultra-pasteurized)
• 3 1/2 oz sour cream
• 2 eggs
• Salt
• Caraway seeds
• 3 1/2 oz butter, melted

* I bought milk that wasn't ultra-pasteurized, which is something you need to make cheese. But I think the cottage cheese needed to not be ultra-pasteurized, too.

Yes, this was a lot. Let me just start by cautioning you against ever trying to make cheese and bread on the same day. It's really quite a stupid move.

First we're going to make the bread, because that takes days. Literally. You need between 28 and 36 1/2 hours to make this bread.

First you have to make the starter, which you do a day and a half before baking. Now, I never have any luck with this sort of thing. I've tried a couple of times to make sour dough starter and had no success whatsoever. So I did not have high hopes for this, either.

What you're supposed to do is add the 3 tbsp flour to the buttermilk, then add the sugar and cover. Let ferment in a warm place for eight to 12 hours. I'm assuming that when you're done, it should be frothy. Of course, mine wasn't.

Now heat up the water and add 1/4 cup of flour. The water should be almost (but not quite) boiling. You're trying to form a medium-thick porridge, so keep gradually adding flour until you get the right consistency. Now add the starter and mix well. Cover and let ferment in a warm place for another 8 to 9 hours, or until the mixture gets sour.

Now you need to make a leaven. To do this, mix a third of the flour with hot water and mix with a wooden spoon until smooth. Let cool to about 95 to 105 degrees, then add the starter. Mix until smooth.

Sprinkle some flour over the the dough and let rise in a warm place for 10 to 12 hours. Now start kneading, adding flour, until you have a nice elastic dough. It should be firm and not sticky. Cover and let rise in a warm place for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until it increases in volume by 1/3 or 1/2.
Transfer to a loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees for 1 to 2 hours. The bread is ready when you knock on it and it sounds hollow.

Because my starter never got frothy, I added a small amount of yeast to mine. Cheating!

Now for the cheese. First put the cottage cheese in a food processor and grind it up. Now, this is supposed to be a dry cottage cheese, which is hard to find in the US. So I just tried to drain off some of the liquid after I ground it up.

Now heat your milk until it gets to 194 to 203 degrees. If you've ever made cheese before, you know how important it is to get this right because the temperature of milk affects what kind of cheese you end up with. Pull up a stool and sit there with your wooden spoon, and stir and stir and stir. It will take a long time. When it finally reaches the right temperature, add the cottage cheese to the milk. Keep heating until the temperature reaches somewhere between 185 and 194 degrees.

So now you should start to get a clear whey separating to the top. This did not happen for me, and I think it was because the cottage cheese I used was flash pasteurized, though I could be completely wrong. At any rate, the cottage cheese alone was not enough to convince the mixture to separate, so I ended up adding a little bit of vinegar. That did the trick, but I don't know how much it ended up changing the final product.

Once you have a good separation, poor off the liquid and transfer the solids into a clean, damp piece of cheesecloth. Hold the corners together and roll the cheese back and forth across a wooden surface to remove any excess moisture.

Now place the cheese in a bowl and, using a wooden spoon, mix with the sour cream, eggs, salt and caraway seeds.  Return to a pan with the melted butter and cook over  low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, or until melted and shiny (the temperature should be about 167 to 176 degrees). The higher the temperature and the longer the heating time, the harder your cheese will be.

Now transfer the cheese back to a damp cloth. Tie the corners of the cloth together and place under a weight in the fridge. The cheese is ready to slice when it has cooled.

Now for the easy stuff, starting with the peas. If you're using dried peas, cover them with water the day before (sometime during the process of making the bread). Then add salt and cook the peas until soft. I used canned peas so I skipped this step.

Now fry the bacon and add the onions. Cook until soft. Add the peas to the pan and fry for a few seconds. That's it. I know, simple compared to those last two recipes.

OK, the potatoes. Are you tired yet? First bring 8 quarts of salted water to a boil. Add the potatoes and cook until they can be easily pierced with a fork (about 12 to 15 minutes) Meanwhile, mix the sour cream with the dill, butter, salt and pepper.

Drain the potatoes and remove the pot from the stove. When the potatoes have drained, return them to the pot with the sour cream mixture. Cover the pot and give it a good shake. Transfer to a bowl and add salt and pepper, if needed.

Finally, the pork chops. Start by beating the egg together with the cream. Then mix the bread crumbs with the salt and pepper. Take a meat mallet and tenderize the pork chops on both sides until about a quarter inch thick. Now dip in in the egg mixture, then in the bread crumbs.

Heat some oil in a frying pan over a medium flame. Fry on one side, then add a tablespoon of butter and flip. When both sides are golden, the chops are done.

So this was very good meal. It would have been more delicious if it was cold outside, because it was very heavy, what with all the pork and the bacon and the stodgy bread. I did like the bread but I think the failure of the starter impacted it--it was quite heavy and didn't really rise completely. The cheese, well, hmm. I don't know what it was supposed to be like so I can't really comment on whether I got it right. It was very soft, like a queso fresco. It also had those caraway seeds, which I don't love. It tasted OK with the bread but I don't think either of them were really worth all of the effort.

Loved the pork chops and potatoes, and of course the pigeon peas because I like pigeon peas in almost any form. And you can't really go wrong with bacon, can you?

It was a very challenging meal and I'm glad I tackled it. I might not be attempting cheese again for a while, though, and I almost certainly won't ever be attempting any home made starter again. But those pork chops and potatoes, give me a nice February evening and I'll do that one again.

Next week: Lazio, Italy

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Recipes from Kosovo

So, the cooking part of this blog is currently about three weeks ahead of the blog posts. Which is usually not a problem, but a few minutes ago when I went to start writing this entry and I looked back at the list I went, "Wait, did I do Kosovo?"

I had to rack my brain and I still couldn't remember doing Kosovo. Which is really telling because I spend literally hours in the kitchen every week doing these meals, so for me to completely forget one either means that A) I am losing it or B) it was really, really, not very memorable.

I am going with B, even though you're all out there nodding your heads going, "Yeah, it's totally A."

Photo by Jarek Jarosz.

Kosovo. Land of mountains and some other stuff. Damn, I just pissed off a bunch of people in Kosovo. Forgive me, for I am an American, and I get all of my information from the Internet. Kosovo is not one of those countries that makes the news, at least not since 1999 when its Albanian and Serbian populations decided to start killing each other. Fortunately NATO put an end to all of that before the end of that same year, after which they put the whole region under transitional UN administration. In 2008, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, much to Serbia's chagrin (Serbia still doesn't recognize Kosovo as an independent state). So now Kosovo is a very tiny, very independent country all of its own, complete with food so unmemorable that no one ever talks about it on the internet.

It's Eastern European food, which, I don't know. I like some Eastern European food. Who doesn't enjoy a good goulash? But in my (limited) experience, Eastern European food is very heavy and very simple, both qualities I don't really love in a meal. So everything I could find was simple and, yes, dull, and I guess I must have been cooking it in my sleep or something.

Anyway here is the menu:

Mantia Dibrane
Oh yeah, now I remember.
(from Kosova Sot)

• 8 cups flour
• 2 cups lukewarm water
• 2 tbsp oil
• Salt to taste
• 1 1/3 lbs minced meat
• 3 large onions
• Salt, oil and black pepper

Pastiço (spicy potato oven)
(from njoftime.co)

• 1 pound of boiled potatoes
• Juice of two lemons
• 2 tbsp parsley, minced
• salt and olive oil
• cayenne pepper
• 1 onion
• 7 oz tuna
• a spoonful of mayonnaise

Kurore 
(from The Apricity)

• 3 eggs
• Sunflower oil
• 2 tbsp of brandy
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 2 1/2 cups plain flour
• 2 oz dried fruit, chopped fine
• 1 cup ground almonds
• 1 1/2 cups honey

OK, let's do the Mantia Dibrane and get that out of the way, because it's the most traumatic part of the meal. So here's what's going to happen. I am going to post about my experience with this recipe. And then someone from Kosovo is going to come along and say, "You've ruined the good name of Kosovan food! And you didn't even spell "Kosovar" right! You should learn to speak the language, and also I would never serve Mantia Dibrane and Pastiço in the same meal!" That's what will happen. That's what always happens when I get something wrong. And I got this terribly, terribly wrong. But I'm blaming it on Google Translate and also the fact that, seriously, that's the recipe?

Because look at the recipe: flour, water, oil and a little bit of salt. There's nothing in that dough recipe to actually make the dough rise or even just puff up a little. It's a recipe for effing Play Dough. Have you ever tried to bake Play Dough? Then you know what happens.

And it just gets worse from there. I know I am always complaining about Google Translate, but just for kicks I'm going to tell you exactly what Google translate told me to do with this recipe. Are you ready? Here it is:

"In the tray table or thrown flour, lukewarm water, oil, salt and mix, made from pulp forming 30 small cakes. Each cake augmented by depleting as licking the hand. Kuleçtë coated with butter and join tenner. Each tëhollohet tenner in a huge lump and the three layers together in a single lump. PETA divided into squares chess. For fillings squares needed mince, onion, chopped fine, salt and black pepper. Measures prepared in oil and fry the bottom of the rash of little red pepper thrown for color. Measures should be left to cool and then fill the boxes with previously prepared. Each square is rolled diagonally from the four sides (such as envelopes) and put into baking pan to be baked. Mantia baked half an hour. Once ripe covered with a napkin for 10 minutes. Served with yogurt."

OK so first of all, "augmented by depleting as licking the hand." No matter how many times I turned that one over in my head I did not come out any wiser. I sure as hell wasn't going to be licking my hand, I can tell you that much. "Kuleçtë," and "tëhollohet" are typical missed words like you would see in any Google translation, though I don't know what the hell "join tenner" is supposed to mean. And where the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals comes into this, I have no idea.

So armed with these explicit details I set out to make Mantia Dibrane. First, I mixed together the Play Dough ingredients. Then I fried up the mincemeat with onions, salt and pepper and nothing else, because god forbid there should be any actual flavor in there or anything.

Then I rolled out the dough and cut it into squares about the size of chess pieces, which is one of the few instructions I actually gleaned from that mess Google Translate gave me. I also saw that bit about red pepper "for color" and figured I could add a little paprika. At this point I stopped caring because I could see all the way to the end of this terrible road, so instead of trying to bundle up the meat in little packets I just put half the squares down in a greased casserole and then spread the meat over that, then I put down the rest of the squares.

Then I baked the whole mess for 30 minutes.

Seriously?

So there's your answer. I couldn't remember Kosovo because I actually blocked it out of my traumatized brain. 

So meanwhile make the potatoes, which weren't actually so bad. First parboil them until they are just tender, then let them cool down. Slice them and mix with lemon juice, parsley salt and a minced chili pepper (I read that as ground cayenne, which is the only sort of cayenne we get here, so instead of a minced chili I just used powder).

Now transfer half of the potatoes to a glass serving dish, and then spread the tuna over the top of that.

Now add the rest of the potatoes and transfer to the fridge to chill.

Did you notice the part where there wasn't any oven involved, even though "oven" is in the (translated) name? Me too.

Now for the dessert. First beat the eggs with the oil, brandy and lemon rind. Now add the flour bit by bit until you get a soft dough. Divide into 32 pieces and roll each piece into a small ball.

Heat about two inches of oil in a pan until bubbles rise around the non-stirring end of a wooden spoon. Drop the balls in and let them fry until golden on all sides. Remove and drain on paper towels.

Now mix the fruit with the almonds and honey. Cook over medium heat until the mixture thickens a little, then drop in the fried balls. Roll them around so that they are completely covered with the honey mixture, then remove and let sit for 10 minutes before serving.

So what do you think happened to the Play Dough? You're right! Solid rock. It was completely inedible, at least I thought so. Martin ate it. He said the biscuit type stuff was like dumplings. Yeah, like petrified, 100 year old dumplings. Awesome. Oh and the meat had no flavor, like I didn't know that was going to happen.

This was clearly a translation failure combined with a recipe that probably had missing ingredients. My suspicion is confirmed when you look at the photo that went with the original recipe: that's clearly a yeast bread. With a few more seasonings and a bread that actually had some sort of leavening agent, this would have been a completely different experience. But I can only critique the recipe I actually made, and I was faithful to it. In all its awfulness.

I did like that potato salad though. I have no idea why it was an "oven" anything, but it was pretty good. I ate the leftovers for a couple of days, and that's always an indication.

The dessert was OK. It smelled divine, but the balls themselves were kind of chewy and not very nice in texture. Again, nothing went into the dough to stop them from being stodgy, and I don't really like stodgy. But it was OK. It's not like we threw any of them out.

So yeah, that's Kosovo. If you are from there, I welcome your comments. But please, don't just drop in here and curse my name and then fly off again. I want to know what the right recipe is, or I want a better one. I am always happy to do over, and if there was ever a better candidate ... well ...

Next week: Kurdistan

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