Cozonac

Cozonac is a quintessentially Romanian baked item made for Easter and Christmas in particular, but also for other holidays and celebrations. I know many Romanians who don't dare to try baking cozonac because they think there are many things that can go wrong. So they leave it for their grandmothers and mothers to make it for them. The secret of making good cozonac is a warm kitchen, warm utensils, and warm ingredients, since the dough is based on live yeast which needs consistent warmth in order to be active.

Here are the ingredients I use:

For the dough:
1 kg flour (at least 11% gluten, the higher the better)
300 g sugar
250 ml milk
4 large eggs
125 g butter
vanilla
lemon zest (grated lemon peel)
15 g salt (not shown in photo!)
1 package of 10-15 g dried yeast

For the filling one can use a number of different things, such as cinnamon or Turkish delight, but the classic version is with walnuts and that is what I provide here.

For the walnut mixture:
200 g grated walnuts
200 g sugar
vanilla essence
rum essence (or alternatively maple essence)




Heat 100 ml of the milk until warm. Pour it into the bowl of your stand mixer (unless you are kneading it by hand). From the flour add 2-3 tablespoons of flour. Add the yeast and stir until the ingredients are combined. Let it stand for half an hour.

Add the rest of the flour to the bowl. Next add the eggs, sugar, lemon zest, vanilla, and salt. Warm the remainder of the milk and pour it over the other ingredients. The milk should not be hot but should be warmer than room temperature. Begin mixing with the stand mixer. Melt butter and pour it at warm temperature into the mixing dough. Continue mixing until it looks like this:

It should take approximately 10 minutes on speed 2 to reach this point.

Cover the bowl with a moistened tea towel or paper towel, wrap it in a warm tea towel, and put it in a warm place to let it rise for at least an hour and a half.

Allow the dough to double in size. Take it out and divide it into 4 equal portions. Place them on a work surface (such as a rolling board) that has been sprinkled with flour. You can use wax paper if you wish.

Let them stand there for another half an hour to raise further. In the meantime butter the baking trays thoroughly.

Take one portion and divide it in two. Stretch one of the two pieces into a rectangle roughly 30x20 cm. Cover them (not all the way to the edges) with 1/8 of the walnut mixture and roll it up.

 

(I tried adding the beaten egg white to the walnut mixture and it clumped, which it normally wouldn't have, so I'm leaving out that step for when you do it! I also included a photo above of one I made filled with cinnamon.)

Do the same with the second half of the portion. Then twist them together.

Grab the braided dough from both ends and place it in a baking tray. Do the same with the rest of the dough until you've filled all four baking trays.

The trays with the dough in them should be kept at a warm temperature. I often have them in the oven with the light on, which provides just enough heat to keep them warm. You could also put the oven on at around 35-40° Celsius/100° Fahrenheit. Wait for them to rise further, for about another hour. When they have doubled in size, glaze them on top with egg mixture. For this use one egg yolk and a little bit of milk mixed together. Glaze the cozonacs with a brush.

Return them to the oven and let them rise for another half an hour. Then turn the oven on at 180° Celsius/350° Fahrenheit and bake them for 35-40 minutes.

When they are ready they should look like this (one is with cinnamon which looks different):

Pofta buna!

Sarmale

Sarmale is the Romanian word for stuffed cabbage, and it is considered our "national dish" more than anything else is. Even though people all over the world take meat and rice and wrap a cabbage or vine leaf around it, the Romanians have cultivated this recipe into an art form, and the results are really special. The version here aims to be both healthier and simpler than other versions that you will typically eat in Romania (and find explained in cookbooks and online tutorials), containing less saturated fat and leaner meat than most Romanian cooks tend to use. I prefer to buy my own pork meat and mince it myself at home, so that I know how much fat is in it, and can buy a leaner cut of meat to mince.

In the winter we use pickled cabbage, but in the summer we use green cabbage, and the latter is what I'll be using here.

Image from Pixnio

Choose a cabbage with loose outer leaves, because you will need to be able to detach each of them individually without tearing the leaf itself. For this recipe you need 10-15 leaves. If you happen to have several cabbages of this sort, you might just use the outer leaves from several cabbages for the sarmale. The inside of the cabbage can then be shredded for use later in this recipe, or used for a different recipe like coleslaw.

Place a large pot with water on your stovetop and bring it to a boil with the lid on. Place two or three leaves at a time into the boiling water for about 10-20 seconds each, until the leaves are softened slightly, to make them more flexible and easier to roll. After you have done this with all of them, allow them to cool before continuing.

A tightly-wound cabbage is much harder to use because leaves tend to tear. But if that is all you have to work with, you can proceed in the following manner. Place the whole cabbage in boiling water. Remove it every 15 seconds or so (using protective gloves so you don't burn yourself) and cut or tear off the outer leaves which have been loosened through boiling. Repeat this process until you have enough leaves.

Ingredients for the filling mixture:

• 1 lb (1/2 kg) minced pork 
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1/2 green bell pepper, diced
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 2 tbsp rice or 1 cup boiled rice
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp dry dill
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• Optional: 1 tsp paprika 

You will also need cabbage (obviously) from the beginning of the process. Later in the process, you will need the following additional ingredients (listed separately from the filling mixture above to avoid confusion): 

• 4-5 oz tomato paste or 2 cups of diced tomatoes
• 2 bay leaves
• A dash of thyme
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• salt
• Optional: crushed red pepper 

Reminder: these do not go into the filling mixture! 

Mix the ingredients for the filling mixture together in a large bowl.

Then proceed to take cabbage leaves one at a time. Place a spoonful of the filling mixture on a leaf and roll it up tightly, as shown in the videos below.





Repeat until you run out of filling and leaves. This quantity of ingredients should produce about 20 sarmale.

Stack the sarmale inside a slow cooker for the best results. (You can also cook them in a pressure cooker or even an ordinary pot. But the procedures in those cases are very different and not those described here.) Add water to cover all but the top layer of sarmale, plus 1/2 cup oil, the 2 bay leaves, a dash of thyme, salt, and crushed red pepper if you want them a bit spicier. 

Set the slow cooker on high until it starts boiling, then turn it down to low and leave for 4 hours.

After 3 hours, remove the lid and add the tomato paste (or tomatoes). It should be spread evenly across the top, without stirring or disturbing the sarmale that are already in the slow cooker. The best way to do this with tomato paste is to spoon out a little of the liquid from the slow cooker into a small bowl and mix it together with the tomato paste. The result can then easily be poured back into the slow cooker. Replace the lid and turn up the temperature to bring the contents back to a boil, and then turn it down again. 

When they are ready, they can be served with sour cream on top and bread or mamaliga (polenta).

Poftă bună!

Donuts

This recipie is a mix of Romanian and American approaches to making donuts. Romanian donuts are called 'gogosi'. They are spherical and empty inside made from yeast dough. I like the shape of American donuts better, since frying them evenly is easier. And in case you didn't know, that was why that donut shape was invented in the first place!

Here are the ingredients: 

500 g all purpose flour

1 package dry yeast (10 g)

50 g melted butter

2 eggs

250 lukewarm milk 

1/2 teaspoon salt

1teaspoon sugar 

1 spoonful yogurt

Vegetable oil (for frying)

Mix together yeast, milk, sugar and a third of the flour. Let it stay covered in a warm place for 15 minutes or until it becomes foamy. Then add all the other ingredients and start the kneading. I mixed mine for around 10 minutes (at speed 2 if you are using a KitchenAid stand mixer). 

Cover the dough and let it rise in a warm place for an hour, or until the dough has doubled in size. Then take it from the mixing bowl (as a whole big lump all at once) and stretch it on a wooden board that had been greased in advance with vegetable oil.

Cut the donuts as shown in the picture above. If you do not have a donut cutter, you can use a glass and a thimble (or better, a one-inch plastic container of the kind used for rolls of film) to create the shape. Remove the dough from the donut holes and in between the donuts. Make that extra dough into a ball, place it back in the mixing bowl, and let it rise again for half an hour, and at that time repeat the above steps with that dough. Also leave the now-separated donuts to rise for half an hour.

In the meantime, heat oil to medium-high - in a small saucepan if you want to make them one at a time, in a Dutch oven or frying pan if you want to fry more than one at a time.

Place the unfried donut in the oil, being careful not to splash. Use a fork to turn and then flip the donut. A minute or at most two should be enough time for it to fry on a given side. Then take it out and put it in a glass or ceramic dish so that any excess oil can drip off from it. Repeat these steps until all the donuts are fried.

When they are cold, you can roll them in powdered sugar (to make them really good, add a little vanilla to the sugar). Or you can make icing. Here are the recipes:

Maple icing:

Ingredients:

1 cup confectionary sugar (with cornstarch)

a drop of maple flavor

1 dessertspoonful of milk

Mix them together to make a paste.

Place it in the microwave for 10 seconds, then spread it on the donuts.

For chocolate icing, use the above recipe but substitute a level teaspoon of cocoa powder in place of the maple flavoring.

Let the icing cool if you can bear to wait...

Cats' Eyes Cookies

This recipe is, as far as its ingredients and initial procedures are concerned, the same as for Harlequin. And so it is sometimes convenient to make both kinds of cookies at the same time. These work well for children (and grown ups) who would enjoy apricot layer cookies, but without the walnuts that are in Harlequins.

Dough:

150 g sugar (5 1/2 oz)
300 g butter (10 1/2 oz)
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg
400 g all purpose flour (14 oz; plus some additional flour for dusting the workspace)

Mix together the butter and sugar until fluffy, then add the egg, baking powder, and flour. 

Make the dough into a big ball, then divide it in 4. 

Put it in the refrigerator, covered with a paper towel, for 30 minutes or until it is cooled, but not crumbly. Take 1 ball out and stretch it on a floured work top with a rolling pin and make a rectangle 5mm (about 1/5 of an inch) thick. Try not to use a lot of flour, since that will change the consistency and the taste. 

Using a cookie cutter, cut the dough into circles. Place them all evenly on a lightly greased baking tray.

After they are on the baking tray, use a thimble to cut holes in the center of half of the circles.

Gather up the dough left behind from cutting around the large circles as well as the holes, and combine it back into a ball. Place that ball in the fridge and take an already-cooled ball from the fridge to work with next. Keep going like this until you are done with all the dough, including the leftovers.

Bake them at 350° F/180° C for 10 minutes or until they are lightly brown. Let them cool for just a minute, and then pushing them gently with your finger, transfer them to a cooling rack. Once one batch is cooled, you can stack them to make room for the next batch. 

Using a spoon, place apricot jam on the cookie circles without holes.

Then place a cookie circle with a hole on top.

You'll probably end up with around 50 assembled cookies, more or less, depending on the thickness of the dough.

Dust the assembled cookies with powdered sugar.

Enjoy! These cookies should stay fresh if kept in an airtight container in the refrigerator, even for a couple of weeks. But if you like them crunchy, eat them sooner rather than later, since the jam will soak into the cookies over time.

Vanilla Walnut Crescents

From all the cookies I have tried making, these are among the best from a variety of perspectives: they are loved by everyone, the favorite of many, and relatively easy to make. The recipe is based on one that I found in a Romanian cookbook by Silvia Jurcovan, Carte de Bucate (Bucuresti: Editura Tehnica, 1983, p.437).

The quantities and temperatures given must be followed precisely - they are not "more or less." For that reason (and not just because the metric system is more widely used) I will give the quantities in grams. 

Ingredients:

250g All-purpose flour

200g unsalted butter

100g finely-ground walnuts

 70g powdered sugar 

   1 packet vanilla sugar

Plus roughly another 100-150g of powdered sugar to coat the cookies in after they are baked.

Vanilla sugar is not widely used in the United States, but most international stores sell it. If you don't have it, you can substitute by adding 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence in the dough. 

Procedure

In a large bowl combine the butter, 70g sugar, and vanilla sugar together until the mixture is fluffy. Then add the flour and walnuts and mix them by hand until the dough sticks together.

Place the bowl with the resulting ball of dough in the refrigerator, covered with a sheet of wax paper. It should stay in the fridge for half an hour or until it is hardened. Then remove the dough from the fridge. Break off pieces and shape them into golf ball sized balls. Then put most of them back in the fridge to stay cold, taking just a couple at a time to work with.

On the wax paper, roll each ball with your hands until they are lengthened into long sticks.

Cut the sticks into pieces 2" in length.

Curve the pieces into crescent shapes and place them on a baking tray (in most cases you will need to lightly grease the baking tray with butter).

Preheat the oven to 350° F (180° C). Place one baking tray with the crescents in the oven for 10-12 minutes. They should be lightly brown, as seen in the picture below.

After removing them from the oven, do not let them cool for more than 2-3 minutes. Then move them gently with your finger to ensure they do not stick to the baking tray. They are very fragile while warm! 

Roll each cookie through powdered sugar until it is evenly coated and place it on a serving tray.

They taste better after they have cooled, but once you know how good they are, it can be hard to be patient!