Egyptian rice

Polish: ryż
Aymara: arusa
Turkish: pirinç
Wolof: maalo
Thai: ข้าว
Tagalog: palay
Caló: corpiche
Samoan: alaisa
Mongolian: тутрага
Maori: raihi
Malay: padi
Chechen: дуга
Arabic: أرز
Icelandic: hrísgrjón

This Egyptian method of cooking rice is one of many Egyptian ways, since they eat a lot of rice. If you use yasmin rice, the savour will be magic. First you have to wash the rice several times, until the water from washing is clean and not milky. You should not break the rice grains, so wash it carefully.

1 cup washed rice
1 spoon clarified butter (ghee or Butterschmalz, you can do it at home, I will show you how but not today)
salt

1. Ghee has to be melted and hot in the pot. Drain two spoons of rice and fry them until light brown. If ghee was really hot, your rice may puff but that is not a problem



2. When ready, add the rest of rice and water. How much? Just to cover the rice and 1 cm more. Add salt (usually half spoon) and try if the water tastes good. Add more salt if needed.

3. Cover and cook for about 10 minutes without mixing. When rice absorbs all the water, let it rest on a very low heat some minutes more. It should be loose and shouldn't stick to the bottom of the pot.

(just my imagination) black salsify in white sauce

Polish: wężymord
Lithuanian: gelteklė
Finnish: mustajuuri
French: scorsonère
Dutsch: Schorseneer
Hungarian: feketegyökér
German: Schwarzwurzel
Swedish: svartrot
Portuguese: escorcioneira



Black salsify is a long thin black root. Centuries ago, eating it was considered efficaceous against the bubonic plague and snake bites. Inside it is white and tastes similar to asparagus; it is even calles winter sparagus sometimes. This winter vegetable is quite unknown here in Poland but in Germany you can buy it in all supermarkts during the wintertime. I was experimenting a bit with this vegetable, so I can suggest you a tasty way of preparing it.

3 roots of black salsify
3 yellow carrots, parsnips or carrots
2 cloves of garlic
1 spoon of butter
1/2 cup of sour cream
salt, sugar, pepper, nutmeg

1. Wash salsify and carrots carefully. Don't peel! Put into boiled water with a sppon of sugar and half spoon of salt. When soft (after about 20 minutes) take them off from the pot and peel off under cold water. Black salsify is difficult to peel before cooking and very very easy to peel under cold water after being cooked. Cut your vegetables into about 4 cm pieces.


(here: peels and white peeled salsify)

2. Put butter and sour cream in a pot, add garlic.

Anyway, you can just cook it and serve with butter and chopped parsley green. Simple and delicious.

(just my imagination) buckwheat: 2 sorts

Polish: gryka
Upper Sorbian: hejduška
Finnish: tattari
Esperanto: fagopiro
Korean: 메밀
Lithuanian: sėjamasis grikis
Welsh: gwenith yr hydd
Japanese: ソバ
Catalan: fajol
Romanian: hrişcă



I heard that kasha means in English (due to Jewish inmigrants) buckwheat porridge, but in Polish kasza means any cooked cereal, and we eat cooked grains of millet, barley, buckwheat, maize porridge and wheat. Buckwheat is really really healthy, contains rutin to strengthens the capillaries, especially when not roasted. Roasted grains are brown and have a catacteristic smell; not roasted are almost white with a greenish shade, they are healthier and their taste is milder. There are many ways of preparing it but my last hit is unroasted, white buckwheat with vegetables, which I call it my Polish tabbuleh :)

1 cup of not roasted buckwheat grains
1 bunch parsley leafs. Don't be confused, look at this picture. The white root is also parsley.



1/2 yellow paprika
1-2 pickled cucumbers / gherkins (or any other pickles, but has to be sour)



1 spoon of herbs (dill, cilantro, thyme, anything you like)
1 spoon oil (olive or flax)

1. Wash buckwheat grains. Cook them in 2 cups of water and half spoon of salt, covered, on a low heat. Buckwheat should absorb all the water.

2. Chop finely parsley greens, paprika and cucumbers

3. Mix all the ingredients, add herbs and oil to taste.





Ok, now you ask me how differrent is a toasted buckwheat. First of all, before cooking it is dark brown and after cooking, brownish-light pink. The taste and smell is stronger (untoasted buckwheat is mild) and tastes great with mushroom sauce or curd. Just take a look at toasted buckwheat with diced carrots, onions and herbs:

Romanian celery moussaka

Polish: seler
Turkish: kereviz
Sardinian: giùggiuru
Albanian: Selinoja
Hungarian: zeller
Slovak: okolíkatý
Romanian: ţelină
Zulu: useleri
Breton: ach
Chinese: 芹菜
Ukrainian: cелера
Flemish: selder
Vietnamese: cần tây
Arabic: كَرَفْس
Greek: Σέλινο
Quechua: kapin

Moussaka is a very popular dish in Balkans, Turkey and Romania. I don't know if celery moussaka is made in each of this regions but I found a Romanian recipe how to do it. I translated it with a help from UniLang friend, but of course changed it on my own way. Root celery is not one of the prettiest vegetables. I never liked its smell and always refused to taste a dish that contained even a bit of it. Now I know it is very healthy and I had to find a way to eat it and enjoy it. Here it goes: musaca de ţelină



200 gr turnip (about 3 medium turnips)
200 gr potatoes (about 2 big potatoes)
400 gr celery root (about 1 big root)
500 gr ground meat
2 eggs
3 onions
salt, pepper, nutmeg
1 cup sour cream
1 handful mint / parsley green
oil, butter

1. Cut vegetables into thin slices and fry each sort of them separately

2. Chop onions very fine, fry in oil. Add meat and chopped mint or parsley, salt and pepper to taste and fry.

3. Combine sour cream with 1 egg, scramble, season with nutmeg, salt and pepper

4. Grease a baking pn with butter. Cover the bottom of the pan with sliced fried celery slices.

5. Add egg to meat, mix well. Divide meat into 3 portions. Cover the celery layer with the first portion of meat.

6. 3. layer - fried potato slices; 4. layer - meat; 5. layer - tfried urnip slices; 6. layer - meat; 7. layer - cfried elery root slices; 8. layer - sour cream with scrambled egg.



7. Bake for about 30 minutes (or until the sour cream sauce is brownish) in the oven (250C)

Turkish spinach cake

Polish: szpinak
portuguese: espinafre
Dutsch: spinazie
Gujarati: પાલક
Persian: اسفناج
Guarani: ka’anaite
Russian: Шпинат
Greek: σπανάκι
Korean: 시금치
Luxemburgian: Päinetsch
Basque: ziazerba
Irish: spionáiste

Spinach cake (Ispanaklı kek) is a Turkish green wonder. Recipe was taken somewhere from the net. I found several recipes in English and Turkish and compared them and chose something in-between :) It was fun translating the ingredients and way of preparing since I never learnt Turkish, but languages are my passion so when I can join languages with cooking I am twice happy.



3 eggs
1/2 cup oil (mine was sunflower seeds oil)
1 package frozen spinach (450gr)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar
1 tsp lemon juice

1 cup whipped cream (next time I'll take 2 cups)
1 tsp gelatine (not necessarily)
1/2 cup chopped pistachio

1. Cook spinach in half glass of water until soft, and drain very well. You must receive a spinach puree. Chop it very very finely.

2. Beat eggs with sugar and vanilla sugar until eggs are nice yellowish and sugar is melted. Add oil and continue mixing. Add drained spinach and lemon juice. Mix, mix, mix!

3. Sift flour with baking powder to the spinach batter

4. Grease the pan and strew it with breadcrumbs, pour the mass and bake about half an hour in 180C. When ready, divide into two layers.


(one of thelayers waiting to be covered with cream)

5. Top, middle and aside top with whipped cream (optionally, like in my case, mixed with 1 spoon of melted gelatine) and sprinkle generously chopped pistachios. Yummyyyyy!

Polish Christmas dried fruits drink

Polish: rodzynek
Tajik: мавиз
Portuguese: passa
Malay: kismis
Greek: σταφίδα
Bavarian: Weinberl
Ukrainian: капелюх
Catalan: pansa
Sicilian: zibibba
Norwegian: rosin
Persian: كشمش
Furlan: passide

Dried fruits spicy hot beverage is a must on a Christmas Eve dinner in Poland, but in my family we drink it the whole winter. It is called kompot z suszu. Susz means all the dried fruits possible: usually apples, prunes and raisins but often also figs, apricots, pears, cranberries and dates, plus cinnamon stick and cloves, or also cardammon, nutmeg or ginger or everything toghether. You can add sugar but much better would be sweetening it with honey. A spoon of lemon juice is a good idea when you choose only sweet fruits, like for example a mix of raisins and figs (which is a very tasty composition and I strongly recommend it)



2 glasses of dried fruits all kinds
the biggest pot you have, full of water
1-2 spoons of honey
1 spoon of lemon juice
1 stick of cinnamon
1 spoon of gloves, cardammon or other spices from above



Cook the water. When boiling, add dried fruits and spices. Cook for half hour. Let it cool a bit and add honey and lemon juice to taste. Never add honey to a boiling beverage or water, otherwise you kill all the vitamins or minerals from your honey!

Polish milk and pumpkin soup

Polish: mleko
Cree: ᒎᒎᔑᓈᐴ
Old Prussian: pėins
Tatar: söt
Occitan: lach
Nahuatl: Chichihualātl
Mongolian: Сүү
Kinyarwanda: amata
Asturianu: lleche
Thai: นม
Bantu: béede
Faroese: mjólk
Romani: थूत



Pumpkin. Makes each autumn wonderful. To me a beautiful orange sunny pumpkin means a delicious fresh vegetable juice for supper or the best breakfast that can be: milk and pumpkin soup, in Polish: dynia na mleku. It is very easy to make, if you have a nice crisp pumpkin. You also need zacierki, Spätzle or any kind of tiny noodle made with eggs like this:


(this pic is not made by me, but taken from here: http://www.spaetzle-teller.de/Images/anleitung/medium/step5_890_840.jpg)

Or if you have not found them, take any tiny noodles.
I never measure the ingredients of this soup. I will give you the approximate quantity of ingredients



2 glasses of diced pumpkin
2 glasses of milk
1/2 glass of water
pinch of salt
1 tsp sugar
1/2 glass tiny egg noodle

1. Cook pumpkin cubes in 1/2 glass of water until soft. Mash with a fork until you have a puree with pieces of pumpkin.

2. Cook noodles in 2 glasses of milk as long as it is written on the package of your noodle.

3. Put the pumpkin puree to the pot with milk and noodles. Add sugar and salt and cook for about 2 minutes. Maybe you would like to add some more milk to reach the best consistence.

welcome

Witam serdecznie! Bienvenid@s! Selamat Datang! ברוך הבא Welkom! Benvingut! Καλώς ορίσατε! Dobro Došli! Bine aţi venit! 欢迎光临! Hoş geldiniz! Vælkomin! Szia! सुस्वागतम्! Ongietorri! Добро пожаловать! !مرحبًا بكم Willkommen! Tervetuloa! !خوش آمدید Bem-Vind@s! Bonvenon! Bienvenue! Welcome to my site!

My name is Ewa. I live in Warsaw, Poland. I am just finishing my studies at the Warsaw University, Latin Amerian Institute. I was really wondering in which language should I write :) It could be Polish, Spanish or Portuguese... but I chose English, cause lately I don't use this important language at all. Writing a blog would be a great opportunity to polish my English :D Feel free to correct my grammatical mistakes or to write me in Polish, Spanish, Portuguese or even German. or in any language ;) Nah, just joking, but the fact is that I am passionately fond of languages, was learning even Kashubian, Nahuatl and Euskera, still collecting phrasebooks and foreign language dictionaries and enjoying a lot surfing through foreign culinary sites. I also love cross-stitch embroidery, regional variants of Polish language, making home-made cosmetics and preserves, reading, travelling, healthy food and way of life, sports - especially jogging, and of course cooking. I will share here some of my recipes, most of them are not taken from any site or cookbook but are just imagined by myself or taken from my mum or grandmum. Also when I watch a cooking program, I take it as an inspiration, I compare similar recipes in books and internet, add my own condiments and the result is differrent, mine. I was a vegetarian for some time but I decided that I really like giblets (anyway, I don't eat meat too often, only once a month some delicious hearts or liver), I often bake bread, I don't eat pasta (I just don't like), I love all vegetables, I refuse eating tripes, I make fresh homemade vegetable juices daily and since September 2007 I don't eat potatoes. Not that I depreciate - but after discovering in my local market a man selling turnips, I don't eat potatoes anymore. I will tell you why later :) Okay then, feel free to write me about my recipes and I hope that you will leave my site inspired :)