Ghiveci

It’s a simple recipe which requires few ingredients and is very tasty.

tomato and eggplant

Ghiveci is national Moldavian/Romanian dish, here is simplest version of ghiveci developed by me, usually ghiveci has more ingredients varying from location to location like onion, carrot and bell pepper, but my version tries to underline the real taste of vegetables and if you’ll master this simple recipe you’ll be able to cook more complicated ones, recipes of which which I hope  will be publish on this site later.

Ingredients:

• tomatoes  – 1kg (about 2 pounds)
• eggplant (also known as aubergine) – 1.5kg (about 3 pounds)
• vegetable oil – enough to fry eggplant
• salt

(note that the ratio of tomatoes to eggplant depends on tomatoes sourness, the sourer are tomatoes the smaller quantity of tomatoes we’ll need)

So first we wash and cut our aubergines:

cutting eggplant

Then we start frying them, note that the eggplant absorbs a lot of oil during frying:

frying aubergine

While we’re frying eggplant we’ll cut our tomatoes:

cutting tomatoes

When tomatoes are cut we’ll start frying them, in traditional recipes usually first some onion is fried then tomatoes are added, but since we’re doing it simple we’ll just throw our tomatoes into a hot pan or a wok, without oil, because aubergines already have a lot of oil after frying:

frying tomatoes

Crush the tomatoes with a big spoon. Salt the tomatoes so that it will be a little over-salted, because we haven’t salted the eggplant. In about 15 minutes the sauce will be ready and then we’ll add eggplants:

giveci

We’ll stew it for about 5 minutes more and vuala it’s ready:

Ghiveci

Vegan Plov

This is veganized version of Uzbek pilaf (plov), which is very delicious and considered a “real men food”.

Making of plov has a lot of traditions one of them is that it’s made by men only.

So here is what we’ll need for plov:

Ingredients for vegan plov

Ingredients:
rice 3 cups

• carrots – 1 kg (about 2 pounds)

• onions – 1 kg (about 2 pounds)

• vegetable oil – 1.5 cups (traditionally cottonseed oil is used, but you can use any available vegetable oil, we’re using sunflower oil)
• dried chickpeas – 1 cup (if you don’ have them you can skip them, or switch them with canned)
• garlic 2-3 heads
• dried soy meat or TVP – 100 gr (0.2 pounds)  I don’t like soy meat and this pilaf can be made without it but I like the look of meat-eaters when they try this pilaf and I tell them that’s not real meat.
• hot chili pepper
• curcuma – 2 tsp
• coriander powder – 2 tsp
• cumin powder – 1 tsp
• Berberis – 1 tsp (if you’ll find any)
• salt – 3 tsp (but you’ll have to taste)

Also for making pilaf usually is used a big Uzbek wok and it’s made on fire, but since it takes a lot of space we’ll use a more European cauldron and will make the pilaf on stove:

Cauldron

If you have dried chickpeas you’ll have to soak them in advance:

Soaking Chickpeas

Better to do it overnight.
So now we have soaked chickpeas and we can start our plov. First of all we’ll need to wash and soak our rice:

Soaking Rice

Then we’ll clean and peel our vegetables:

Carrots and onions

Note that we don’t need to peel garlic cloves:

Garlic Cloves

In Uzbek plov they often don’t peal entire heads of garlic.
So let’s put our cauldron to heat and add oil :

Oil in Pan

Also we’ll need a kettle of boiling water soon, so it’s time to put it on fire. While oil is heating we’ll have to cut onion:

Cutting Onions

Note that real men do it in real time
Then we put it into our wok and start frying it:

Frying Onion

While it fries we cut the carrots, remembering from time to time to mix the onions, traditional way is to cut carrots into strips:

Cutting Carrots

But we also can grate carrots with almost the same result:

Grating Carrots

After carrots are ready you throw them to onions to fry a little:

Frying Carrots

In few minutes it’s time to add water, it should cover everything by one finger. With water we’ll add salt, curcuma, cumin, coriander, hot pepper, soy meat, chickpeas and garlic. The resulting mix is called zirvak, you try it for salt (it should be a little over-salted, because we’ll add rice later:

Zirvak

Zirvak should boil for about 20-30 minutes, but some chefs say the more you boil it the tastier will be the pilaf.
After that we’re adding rice, we spread it evenly on top:

Adding Rice to zirvak

Then carefully, we’ll add more boiling water to cover rice by about 2 fingers (1 inch).
When all the water evaporates:

Rice Almost Ready

You let it cook for a little more time 5-10 minutes, then it’s ready, you mix everything and you serve it with some salads, tradition is to have onions, or onions with tomatoes.

Vegan Plov

Summer Salad

It’s the tasty and simple recipe which will let you enjoy your lunch  in a hot summer.

ingredients:

• 3 tomatoes
• 2-3 medium cucumbers
• an onion
• vegetable oil
• salt

So we need to cut all the ingridients, we slice the onion in thin slices, cut the tomatoes in bigger slices and slice cucumber:

then we add oil (we’re using here refined sunflower oil, to preserve the taste of vegetables, but you can try the oil you like) and salt to taste and mix everything.

The tastiest thing in this salad is the dipping sauce which will form at the bottom of the plate, during the childhood it was our proffered part:

Summer Salad with Dipping Sauce