Feeling rather pleased with my first attempt at making mamaliga. Used corn meal given to me a couple of weeks ago by Ileana (from #132) and some goats cheese, cottage cheese and herbs bought yesterday in Medias. I followed a recipe on mamaliga.com and served it with mici (pronounced "meetch"), plus a salad of tomato, red pepper and cucumber. For pudding I had some homemade fresh fruit salad of yellow melon, nectarines and kiwi fruit with generous dollops of smantana (sour cream). Delicious! The meal was washed down with a glass of "Roandola 2009" made from last year's grapes from the vines in what is now my garden and given to me by Paul during my visit to Viscri on Friday evening. Not sure if it is a very pale red or a rose made from a mixture of grapes as there are both black and white varieties in my courtyard and garden. Either way, the bottle Paul gave me is clearer than the one we sampled in Viscri and quite pleasant on the palate.
Earlier today I cut the grass outside the front of my house and then dug out the drainage ditch to improve the flow of rainwater and the floodwater pumped from my cellar. Yes, I'm still pumping daily as groundwater level has only gone down by about 20cms. As I was finishing digging out the drainage ditch, neighbour Ioan came over and told me he'd heard that when the workmen had finished filling the potholes in the road through the village, they would be coming to repair our gravel road, lay a new pavement and dig out all the drainage ditches! Oh well, my labours have at least made the front of my house look neater and considering it has taken the workmen over two months to fix the potholes in the 6kms of road between Laslea and Roandola, it could be another month before they turn their attention to our road.
Pruned a lot of non grape-bearing growth from four of my eight vines so the sun can get to the rapidly growing grapes. Tomorrow I will prune the other four vines. So far it looks like a bumper crop this year and if anyone fancies coming over in September to help with the grape harvest and getting the juice out of them, I can provide bed and meals for up to four people at a very special rate in return for a few hours labour!
I mentioned above that I went to Medias yesterday. It was a shopping trip and I first went to DOMO (branch of an electrical chain store) and now have a vacuum cleaner, much better than a broom and a handbrush and dustpan! Also went to Billa Zilnic (Austrian owned supermarket known as Billa Heute in Germany and Austria) of which my son-in-law is a fan! When Louise, Chris and the kids stayed with me in June we went to Medias and, to keep Chris quiet, we went to the new Billa Zilnic store, on the road to Sibiu, which had been open for less than a month. It is the third Billa branch in Medias and yesterday I went to the original town centre branch. I spent ages in the store but came out with a lot of the things I had been looking for to fill my kitchen store cupboard. Well, actually I don't have a cupboard yet, everything is on one of the two tables in the kitchen! The goat's cheese, cottage cheese and herbs I used for the mamaliga came from Billa as did some fresh and tinned fruit and veg, smantana, sausages, pork snitzels, chicken breast fillets, some food storage containers, cleaning cloths, five towels to supplement the few I brought with me from Grove, car washing brush and sponge, some Billa own label "ice tea lemon" drink and two bottles of Murfatlar, my favourite Romanian wine which is sadly not available in England. I finished up spending more than I had intended (420 lei - £82) but my trolley was VERY full and I now have enough food to last through July as well as most of the sundries I had been looking for.
Now, what Romanian cuisine can I have a go at tomorrow? Sarmale wrapped in vine leaves perhaps? After all I have plenty of large vine leaves to hand.
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