Savor the Flavor
Mamaliga’s main chef Gabi Bucataru was featured on the main page of the online foodie community Foodbuzz.com, and exciting social networking that’s all about cooking, sharing, and getting to know more people who are passionate about food!
Le Dough – (Bread Day 2) A somewhat more complicated day. I started off by taking the sponge out of the fridge and cutting it into rough pieces to help it warm up faster (about an hour). I covered it so it would not crust […]
The one great thing about the blogosphere is that one can actually get in touch with the blog author for advice, tips on a certain subject and get precious direction.
One of these examples is a fellow foodie – Nicole – the author of the fantastic Pinch My Salt blog full of superb recipes, tips ideas and marvelous pics, who had a great photo chronicle on making her own sourdough starter from scratch. Her detailed pics and description inspired me to make my first sourdough starter. If it is a success it will be passed down to my next generation, and probably mention in my will how to share it among my children so they wont fight over it.
Mother Sponge
Creating a starter, also known as Mother Sponge, is a very simple process. You are basically creating a habitat where the already existent yeast (in our case in the flour and maybe in the air), will reproduce happily ever after, by feeding it with a mix of water and flour (un-bleached, all purpose).
Apparently the Mother of all Sponges, lives in San Francisco, CA, where a bacteria named Lactobacillus Sanfranciscensis was discovered in the sourdough starters made there, the main culprit for the bacterial multiplication.
And you wonder why real-estate prices are so high over there…
Ingredients
It cannot be more simple. I followed Nicole’s recipe that calls for:
The reason for the whole wheat flour is because it has much more wild yeast than all purpose flour.
I mixed all these and poured the result into a glass jar, where I will be monitoring its progress (or regress), by adding a rubber band that indicates its initial level.
I get a kick out of imported goods translations in English on their labels. You can see their native marketing department trying hard to come up with a decent convincing phrase.
It is usually Friday and Sunday when it is my turn to cook in the Bucataru household. So I thought of posting a weekly review of what I whipped together in the weekend Mushroom Stuffed Galantined Chicken Jacques Pepin shows a way of completely boning […]
One of the recipes I recall from early childhood in Romania was one that my Grandmother, Mom and virtually everyone would make on a warm summer afternoon – as an enchanting snack, the eggplant dip.
A remarkable eggplant recipe, this simple eggplant dip can be eaten with fresh bread, chips, pita bread.
Please, do not take cooking lightly (pun intended). If kitchen business was enough to oust Thailand‘s Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, over accusations of violating the constitution, because he appeared on a cooking show he used to host 7 months ago before becoming a PM, how […]
Stuffed cabbage, also known as “Sarmale” in Romanian. is a social event. Grandmas, aunts, gather in the kitchen and all they do for that morning is talk and stuff cabbage leafs! Beside the fact that Sarmale is one of the dishes you MUST try, there […]
As Wikipedia’s entry for mamaliga or Mămăligă (/mə.mə’li.gə/), states
“Mămăligă Romanian: Mămăligă, Russian: Мамалыга, Polish: Mamałyga, cornmeal mush is a dish made out of yellow maize traditional for Romania and Moldova. It is better known to the rest of the world in its Italian form – polenta.”
the dish is by no means something that Romanians can appropriate more than just being a traditional food to Romania as well as to the whole Balkanic Peninsula. In fact, even if I am a Romanian (living in Chicago), I can’t point out a dish that strictly belongs to Romania due to the cultural influence of continuous Balkan occupations that ruled the small country during the history.
But what IS (or WAS) Mamaliga after all?
Mamaliga was simply a convenient food that was used by farmers or peasants as a staple food, a substitute for bread. Then it became part of the contemporary Romanian cuisine, (or rather Balkanic cuisine), as well as a creative dish in restaurants.
As simple and innocent it sounds, Mamaliga represents a whole identity concept Romanians refer to, a subject that can slide in the philosophy realm that I’ll restrain getting into it for now. I’ll rather keep Mamaliga what it is: food!
This Mamaliga blog is dedicated to my latest passion – cooking – Romanian cuisine with tangential subjects like culture, Romanian diaspora, music, cooking videos, recipes and such. Hope you’ll find it interesting!
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