[Sca-cooks] Romanian Cookbook: name, fruits, salads

[Sharon Gordon]

Thanks for posting about the book and including some recipes.  I have an
idea about a couple of the mystery words.


Pear and quince. Take pears, remove the skin and cut, then put in water.
Then remove from the water and boil with wine and ground sugar and clove,
and with whole cinnamon [stick], and when you serve, put on a slice of
fried bread and cover with sugar.

***This is a redaction question.  Here would you think that putting the
pears in quince water might help prevent darkening of the pears?

Salads:
flowers of 'boranza'

***Here I am wondering if this might be borage though the modern romanian
word for borage is pretty far from that.  Borage flowers are tasty in
salads.
http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/cgi-bin/arr_html?Borago+officinalis Some info
http://ibiblio.org/herbmed/pictures/p03/pages/borago-officinalis.htm photo
purpley-blue flowers
http://ibiblio.org/herbmed/pictures/p03/pages/borago-officinalis-4.htm photo
white flowers
http://ibiblio.org/herbmed/pictures/p03/pages/borago-officinalis-5.htm photo
lavender flowers
http://www-ang.kfunigraz.ac.at/~katzer/engl/generic_frame.html?Bora_off.html
borage words in many languages
http://www.seasoned.com/issues/200008/c.mh.p3.html borage flower syrup
recipe
http://www.ediblewild.com/boragejel.html borage jelly

 or
'limba-boului' (litterally: tongue-ox, some kind of indigenous flower, I
guess. Limba could be lamba, rabbet, as well)'

***Just to toss out another strategy, boului could be two words bou and lui
if it's take directly from latin.

***There are two plants that I know of that are called ox-tongue in English.
They sort of resemble dandelions.
One is
Picris echioides
http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/cgi-bin/arr_html?Picris+echioides Some info
http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?where-genre=Plant&where-taxon=Picr
is+echioides some pictures
http://plants.usda.gov/cgi_bin/plant_profile.cgi?symbol=PIEC US States where
it grows wild
And it's all over Britain as well

A second is
Picris hieracioides
http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/cgi-bin/arr_html?Picris+hieracioides Some info
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/wildlife/flowers_hawkweed_o
xtongue.html Photo


Salad. Mix lettuce, leafs of 'boranza', fatty herbs,

***The idea of fatty herbs is intriguing.  Any thoughts on what that might
include?  Herbs where the seeds are used to make oil? Or herbs with
succulent leaves like purselane?

 leaf of 'matacina',

***If you split matacina up into mata and cina, from  the stem mat (in
latin) you get meanings of matter, timber, rushes, ripe and morning.  The
cin stem tends to go to things that are curly or wrapped around.  Combining
these brought together  a thought of what we eat as curly endive (sometimes
called chickory in the US) or maybe even escarole.
http://www.wegmans.com/kitchen/ingredients/produce/vegetables/endive.asp
Photo
http://www.foodsubs.com/Greensld.html photos
In modern romanian, matasea broastei is a water weed and I could see the
matasea sounding similar to matacina, however I don't know what this water
weed is called in any other language.
In modern romanian, cina means supper or to eat supper.


tops of 'molotru',

***There is an herb called moly or Golden garlic in italian.  Moly or molyos
is the latin word (though it looks rather Greek).
http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/cgi-bin/arr_html?Allium+moly Some info
Garlic tops or scapes are tasty in salads.

***Also, in modern italian, parsley is called prezzemolo.  Some parsleys,
notably the Hamburg Parsley do have large edible roots, so making the
distinction to use the tops would make sense when wanting the green part in
a salad.

***Additionally mol (in latin)tends to be part of words meaning to soften or
things which have been coarsely ground like grits or flour and this makes me
think grain flours, mustard flour, or pesto like things. The tr stem goes in
a lot of words that mean three of something and also to the word for wheat.


Salad of red beet, boieled whole or ripe in 'spuza' in ??? use, cut the
leaves, cover with capers, rosewater, oil, salt and sugar.

*** Wonder if that could be liquid of spuza or in a spuza kind of pot?
Modernly spuza in Romanian mean "hot ashes."   So maybe they are giving the
option of boiling or roasting it?  For the "in calti uzi" part, cal (in
latin) usually has to do with feet and hard rock/round pebble like things,
though it can also refer to heating things.  To me it would make sense that
you boiled the foot(root) of the beet and either did or didn't boil the
leaves as well.  If you boiled the plant whole with the leaves on, or at
least the root whole, it would help keep the color from bleeding into the
water which would make for a prettier salad with the root and leaves each
remaining their respective colors.


Salad of 'morcovi' (carrots, maybe parsnips?) boil with water and salt, cut
in slices, cover with salt, vinegar, oil and ground pepper.

***The word morcovi is used modernly still in Romanian and means carrot.

***All in all, this book looks like fun!

Sharon
gordonse at one.net