Vivid Food and Drink May 2004

This month, I'm going to tell you about Letitia. About the pleasure with which she receives you into a tall, proud house with a wooden porch and the perfume of flowering plants. About her love for people, which she expresses so beautifully, generously and sincerely, through the dishes which she chooses to array upon her table.

I arrived on her doorstep for the first time on the eve of Easter, on a fasting day, after a bright and peaceful visit to several of the monasteries of Bucovina. She awaited us behind high gates, which had a greased roof with linseed oil and oxen carved into its wooden posts.

She brought us fresh spring water, for us to wash black thoughts from ourselves ìin order to eat clean Lent food in peace,î and she sat us both down at a long table with wooden benches and clean blankets of rough wool.

We waited patiently and at a certain moment began a swirl of aromas, smells I had forgotten, but I knew that, way back, they were all known to everyone: beetroot ciorba from home-made bors, a fresh garden bean paste, whipped up with sunflower oil, green garlic and onion and water and paprika, smooth zacusca with peppers, mushrooms from the woods, onions and plenty of herbs, aubergines and peppers from the hosts' garden which had been grilled on a wooden fire in the courtyard and frozen through the winter, sharp pickles from a wooden barrel which cut the sweetness of the other delicacies, lenten sarmale in cabbage and vine lives and bread. What bread! Tall and crusty with a light centre of dough kneaded with love by Letitia and baked in her oven.

If I've made you hungry, forgive me. But there's no point rushing to the kitchen or to any city restaurant and ordering dishes with similar names from the fancy menus. You won't taste the delicacies of Bucovina. You won't taste the same ambrosia, the same sweetness, the same aromas.

They are far away and almost impossible to recover in busy Bucharest.

Increasing numbers of people have gone in search of this paradise and have returned with a faddish couple of words to explain a journey so full of flavour: organic food. Why not real food? Or authentic food? Or, better stillÖ food like at grandmother's. Peasant food? Pure food? Food from the earth?

Whatever you call it, one thing is certain. In an age when we rush down food, eating with our eyes on the clock, many of us would again like to taste the flavours from our childhoods, or the youth of our parents and grandparents. We're tired of semi-prepared foods and want, once again, a revolution to turn back the clock, to return to the flavoursomeness of times past.

If you enter Google and type in ìorganic foodî the result is surprising: 5,310,000 sites telling the curious all they need to know about real food, without additives, colourings or chemicals. So we're talking here about a real trend!

Since this movement established itself, many theoreticians have sought to define the term ìorganic food.î The basic concept is ìfood produced naturally, without chemical fertilisers and without being genetically modified.î But the definition has been modified, added to, argued over and updated with the passage of time.

Right at the beginning, in 1972, Robert Rodale, the editor of Organic Gardening and Farming gave this definition: ìFood grown without pesticides; grown without artificial fertilisers; grown in soil whose humus content is increased by the addition of organic matter, grown in soil whose mineral content is increased by the application of natural mineral fertilisers; which has not been treated with preservatives, hormones and antibioticsî.

Later, in the early 1980s, a group of scientists decided that there could not be a universally applicable definition of ìorganic.î But attempts are still made. In 1997, some rules were set out to determine whether a foodstuff can be called ìorganicî or not. Together with these rules, a definition of ìorganic farmingî was established: ìA system that is designed and managed to produce agricultural products by the use of methods and substances that maintain the integrity of organic agricultural products until they reach the consumer. This is accomplished by using, where possible, cultural, biological, and mechanical methods, as opposed to using substances, to fulfil any specific function within the system so as to: maintain long-term soil fertility; increase the soil's biological activity; ensure effective pest management; recycle waste to return nutrients to the land; provide attentive care for farm animals; and handle agricultural products without the use of extraneous synthetic additives or processing in accordance with the Act and the regulations in this part.î

And the debate continues. There's so much controversy about every aspect of organic food. However, 100 per cent natural foods are very nutritious, and some specialists claim that this can help in the prevention of cancer (particularly that of the breast) and Alzheimer's. Others say such claims are unfounded.

Sociologists who have conducted studies on people who choose to eat organic say that these people are primarily motivated by the conditions in which animals are raised on organic farms.

In Romania, the phenomenon has still to make itself felt. However, it's true that there are many mothers who every Saturday seek out clean and glowing country people from whom to buy eggs with orange yolks from country hens, chicken raised in farmyards only on grain, or cheese and milk from cows fed on fresh meadow grass.

But I'm not suggesting that soon we won't be looking in the shop windows for organic produce for our weekly shopping basket. I recently met the first businessman in Romania to attempt to transplant the organic craze into this country. His name is Radu Panait and after talking with him for about an hour I learned many new things. For example, if you wish to start eating organic and don't have time make a weekly visit to the country to find farmers from whom to buy pork from a naturally raised animal or vegetables grown in naturally fertilised soil, you can look in the supermarket for Cortina chicken and eggs, organic bread, cereals, tea, coffee, cane sugar, soya milk and Eco chocolate.

More information on what Radu Panait is doing can be learnt by visiting his website, www.naturaland.ro, and if you want to know what I understand by ìorganic foodî (or real food, authentic food, country food, natural food or food from the earth) I recommend you visit Letitia's guesthouse in Sucevita, in the heart of Bucovina.

If you want to understand the food I've been talking about, time is needed. Time that flows peacefully, and as sweetly as honey. Clean mountain air is needed. It needs the talent, love and tenderness of a woman like Letitia.

Alice Ignatiadis also writes the Cool Hunters column for Cosmopolitan.

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May 2004

FOOD AND DRINK
Letitia and organic food

by Alice Ignatiadis
May 2004
>>Read also TASTES OF ROMANIA

TASTES OF ROMANIA
Bucovina nettle soup

by Alice Ignatiadis
May 2004

The story of Letitia continues. I learned the following recipe from her. Try it and you'll understand the meaning of a genuine Romanian woman from Bucovina, and about the warmth and hospitality of a lovely woman who is industrious and cheerful every day.

You need: 500 grams of potatoes, 200 grams of cheese from cow's milk, olive oil, dill, parsley, spring onions, garlic, two eggs, 150 grams of flour, salt

NETTLE SOUP

1.5 kg young nettles
1 litre of bors (home made, from wheat bran)
2 eggs
1 spoon of flour
Salt
1 cup of milk
3 spoons of oil
Onion, carrot, celeriac root, parsley

Wash the nettles, pull the stalks from the leaves and boil in a litre of water for 10 minutes. Chop up the onion, carrot, celeriac and parsley and fry in oil. Add the fried vegetables to the pot of nettles. Boil the bors seperately. Beat the eggs in the milk. In the oil remaining from the frying off the vegetables, add the flour and then the milk.

Add the bors, milk and flour to the nettles, and bring to the boil. Add freshly chopped lovage. Add salt to taste

Serve with a dollop of thick sour cream.

A note on bors, which may be helpful: Bors ñ nothing to do with the Russian beetroot soup of the same name ñ is the souring agent which gives Romanian soups their distinctive tang and is of ancient Moldovan origin. Bran bors is amber in colour and is supposed to be as clear as possible. It is made by fermenting the protein contained in the outer (bran) layer of wheat in small oak vats. Bors - unlike vinegar and lemon, which can be substituted ñ is only mildly acid and preserves the flavour of the grain, and therefore can constitute up to half the liquid volume of the soup. Home made bors is often seen sold in Bucharest markets, but in recent years brand-name bors has also appeared in the shops.

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