No Valentine - Just Meatballs in Romania!

No takers for Valentines again this year at my house - I would have been more surprised if there had :). However, I hope that you all had a lovely Valentines Day with your other half.

Joan of Foodalogue is going on a culinary tour around the world during the first 3 months of this year, with a new destination each week. She has invited us to come along with her, by making a dish which is native to the countries that she visits along the way, as a way to promote BloggerAid. The destinations and dates have changed a little since Joan's original invitation - if you are planning to travel with her, you can check out the current itinerary here.

I have missed a number of destinations already, but I am joining Joan in Romania. Now, I have to be honest and say that I don't know anyone who is of Romanian heritage, and I know nothing about Romanian food. However, this just made the challenge a little more interesting for me, and I had to do some research. After hitting a few blind alleys (believe me, Google translator does not work that well on converting Romanian to English), I found the website of The Other Delia, a Romanian lady now living in the UK. Thankfully, Delia had some great recipes written in English for (sadly) monolingual people like me.

I chose to make parjoale (meatballs). Delia mentioned that Romanians also love mash, so I made mashed potatoes to accompany my meatballs and, just to give things a multicultural feel, my favourite Italian twice cooked beans in spicy tomato sauce.

You can find Delia's original recipe for the meatballs here. I adjusted the recipe a little, so that I did not have any leftover vegetables, and also, I am not a fan of frying things, so I chose to bake my meatballs in tomato sauce (well, tomato soup, actually :)).

My adapted version of parjoale is as follows:

500g lean ground beef (mince)
1 onion, finely chopped
1 grated carrot
1 small capsicum, finely chopped
1 beef stock cube
1 egg
1 tablespoon plain flour
2 crushed cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon mixed dried herbs (I used herbs de provence)
salt and pepper to taste

1 x 415g can of condensed tomato soup

half a soup can of cold water

Put the carrot, onion and capsicum in a frypan with 3 tablespoons of cold water, cover the frypan,and allow the vegetables to sweat over a low heat for 10 minutes or until soft. Remove the vegetables from the heat and allow them to cool.

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Put the beef, cooled vegetables, egg, flour, garlic, herbs, salt and pepper and the crushed stock cube into a large bowl and mix well to combine. Divide the mixture into small pieces of roughly even size, and roll them in your palms to form balls. Place the balls into a medium sized lidded casserole dish, and pour the soup and the water over the top of them. Put the lid on the casserole dish, place the casserole dish in a roasting dish (to catch any boil-over) and place the meatballs in the pre-heated for approximately one hour or until the meatballs are cooked through.

For an authentic Romanian feel, serve the meatballs with creamy mashed potato.

Seguing into a different topic, I have been awarded the Sisterhood Award by Giz, who created Equal Opportunity Kitchen with her daughter, Psychgrad (who is getting married - congratulations!). Thanks Giz.

The rules of this award are:

1. Put the logo on your blog or post.

2. Nominate at least 10 blogs which show great Attitude and/or Gratitude!

3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.

4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.

5. Share the love and link to this post and to the person from whom you received your award.

Without further ado, my nominees are:

Ivy of Kopiaste

Tammy of Wee Treats by Tammy

Miranda of A Duck in Her Pond

Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella

Mary of Shazam in the Kitchen

Adele of Tales of the Basil Queen

Jesse of We All Go Poopie

Arfi of Homemades

Gretchen of Canela & Comino

Happy Cook of My Kitchen Treasures.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, y'all.