Dishes
Perhaps the best known Moldovan dish is a well-known Romanian dish, mămăligă (a cornmeal mush or porridge). This is a staple bread-like food on the Moldovan table, served as an accompaniment to stews and meat dishes or garnished with cottage cheese, sour cream, and pork rind. Regional delicacies include brânză (a brined cheese), and ghiveci (a mutton stew). Local wines accompany most meals.
Traditional for the Moldovan cuisine are dishes combining diverse vegetables, such as tomatoes, bell peppers, aubergine, cabbage, beans, onion, garlic, and leek. Vegetables are used in salads and sauces, they are baked, steamed, pickled, salted, or marinated.
Meat products hold a special place in the Moldovan cuisine, especially as the first course and appetizers. Chicken soup and meat, known as ciorbă is very popular. Roast and grilled pork, beef meatballs, and steamed lamb are common. Meat and fish are often marinated and then grilled.
Traditional holiday dishes include stuffed cabbage rolls with minced meat (known in Romania as "sarma" and in Turkey as "dolma"), pilaf (a rice dish), jelly,, noodles, chicken, and much more. The holiday table is usually decorated with baked items, such as pastries, cake, rolls, buns, and a variety of fillings (cheese, fruit, vegetables, walnuts, etc.), known in Romania as "cozonac", "pască", and "poale-n brâu".
In certain regions, the cuisine of various minorities is predominant. In the Eastern areas, the Ukrainians eat borscht; in the South, the Bulgarians serve the traditional mangea (sauce with chicken), while the Gagauz prepare shorpa, a highly seasoned mutton soup; in the Russian communities, pelmeni (meat-filled dumplings) is popular. Also popular are a variant of Ukrainian varenyky called colţunaşi, filled with fresh white cheese (colţunaşi cu brînză), meat (pelmeni or colţunaşi cu carne), and cherries.
Read more about this topic: Moldovan Cuisine
Famous quotes containing the word dishes:
“No more anything to drink;
Leave those dishes in the sink.”
—Herman Hupfeld (1894–1951)
“There has come into existence, chiefly in America, a breed of men who claim to be feminists. They imagine that they have understood “what women want” and that they are capable of giving it to them. They help with the dishes at home and make their own coffee in the office, basking the while in the refulgent consciousness of virtue.... Such men are apt to think of the true male feminists as utterly chauvinistic.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“First there’s the children’s house of make believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)