Romanian lovage sauce recipe

Polish: lubczyk
Kashubian: lëbiszk
Persian: انجدان رومی
Azerbaijani: dərman levistiki
Icelandic: skessujurt
Bulgarian: Девесил
French: livèche
German: Liebstöckel
Hebrew: לווג'
Finnish: liperi

Spring generously gives us vegetables and herbs. I just bought a bunch of of differrent leaf vegetables and fresh herbs at my local market. Lovage. I just ate it fresh for the first time... Dried lovage is added often to the chicken broth in Poland and is a component of many dried herbs mixes, but there is nothing better than a fresh greeny ingredient in our kitchens. It is easy to cultivate, even in the pot on your balcony. And there is something about love in this herb, I am very sure... in Poland people used to put lovage leaves to the first bath of a baby-born girl, which had to bring her love in the future life... for same reason, girls were putting it into their hair or dress during their wedding. Today we only believe that lovage can increase the libido...
The recipe is inspired by Romanian way of preserving this lovely herb, called pasta de leuștean, which is kept in the fridge and added to the soup whenever you like. But try to eat it like pesto sauce with your favourite pasta!

a bunch of lovage (about 200gr)
olive oil
salt (about a teaspoon)

optionally (to make a pasta sauce):
garlic cloves
maybe a bit of pine nuts / almonds / pistachios
maybe a bit of cheese

Wash lovage and separate leaves from stems. Grind them with olive oil and salt and in this stage you can put the result to the jar and pasteurise it the way you usually do and enjoy the celery-like, aromatic fresh taste of lovage after its season. it is great to add a bit of lovage to the soup, stew or pasta sauce. But I thought, this great and simple puree could be eaten like pesto, just with noodles, so you could add, to your taste, ground pistachios, pine nuts, cheese... My palate was satisfied with lovage, garlic, olive oil and salt, and japanese buckwheat noodles. Yummy :)

Egyptian vermicelli with sugar

Polish: krajanka / nitki
German: Fadennudeln
Portuguese: aletria
Turkish: tel şehriye
Spanish: fideos
Estonian: niitnuudlid
Bresciano: formentì
Greek: φιδές
Persian: ورمیشل
Czech: vlasové nudle

I am not a big fan of pasta; actually, I prepare them sparsely at home. Once a month or less. But Egyptian-style sugar vermicelli is something I really like, depsite of being pasta :) It was the first Egyptian dish I actually tried. Cheap, easy and sweet, is a good alternative if you wanna eat something sweet but your fridge is empty. I hope you will enjoy شعرية بالسكر, Egyptian vermicelli with sugar recipe, as well!

vermicelli (let's say, 1/2 pack / about 1 cup)
ghee, 1 tablespoon or more
water (about 1/2 liter)
sugar to taste, about 5 tablespoons

1. Fry vermicelli in ghee until golden brown, stirring all the time. Do not burn them!



2. In a saucepan, dissolve sugar in water. Add golden vermicelli (together with ghee in which it was fried). Cook on a medium heat until vermicelli are soft

3. You can serve it hot or cooled (my idea is to sprinkle the dish with cinnamon and serve with vanilla quark)

German tuna pasta

Polish: tuńczyk
Turkish: ton balığı
Catalan: tonyina
Latvian: tuncis
Rapanui: kahi
Lithuanian: paprastieji tunai
Arabic: تونة
Japanese: マグロ
Russian: тунец
Thai: ปลาทูน่า

People were fishing tunas even in the antiquity, while canned tuna was eaten since the beginning of XX century. Now, the canned version is eaten especially among students and diet-watchers. I learned this simple dish when I was studying in Germany. If yiu have not much time but wanna eat something tasty, prepare this: Thunfisch-Nudeln.

about 500 gr noodles (or less)
1 canned tuna (better without oil)
1 cup tomato puree (packed or made on your own from fresh tomatoes)
2 big onions, 2 garlic cloves
a handful parsley
salt, pepper
grated cheese

1. Cook noodles the way you always do, chop onions and parsley finely and grind garlic

2. Fry onions and garlic until golden, add tomato puree and stew some minutes, until tomato puree is thicker. Add drained tuna, stew a bit more. Season with salt, pepper and parsley to taste

3. Combine cooked noodles with tuna sauce and sprinkle with grated cheese before serving

Turkish pumpkin pasta

Polish: makaron
Basque: makarroiak
Icelandic: núðlur
Gujarati: મૈકરોની
Mongolian: хөндий
Faroese: makaroni
Chinese: 通心粉
Maltese: mqarrun
Thai: มะกะโรนี
Slovak: makaróny

I promise, one day I will learn Turkish. Yes, I love all the languages and because of many reasons. The main reason for learning Turkish is the variety of its cuisine and a great number of delicious recipes, especially those vegetarian. I am not a big fan of noodles (I barely eat them) but I absolutely adore pumpkin, so without any doubt I had to try balkabağı pasta.

a packet of penne (rigatone) noodles (I had about 300 gr)
1 cup (better a bit more) raw pumpkin, diced
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1 cup broth
1 medium onion
1 tablespoon sour cream

1. Cook noodles as usual

2. Stew diced pumpkin with broth until soft

3. Grind half of your pumpkin seeds and add to the pumpkin broth. Fry the rest with finely chopped onions. Add onions to pumpkin.

4. Pour pumpkin sauce over pasta. Stir. Add sour cream, salt and pepper to taste

(grounded seeds was my invention. You don't have to do it. Just take less seeds and only fry them with onion)