{"id":2846,"date":"2026-07-12T12:35:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T19:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=2846"},"modified":"2026-07-18T13:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T20:30:09","slug":"international-meals-moldova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=2846","title":{"rendered":"International Meals – Moldova"},"content":{"rendered":"

Astute readers may notice that “Moldova” comes\u00a0before\u00a0<\/em>“Monaco” in the alphabet.<\/p>\n

One of the issues with this project is determining “what is a country?” Is Taiwan a country? Is Disneyland? Is the United States? Who knows?<\/p>\n

Since we have to draw a line somewhere, we’re using United Nations member states, and we are approximately following the order on their list.\u00a0 Except that we did Timor-Leste under “E”, while doing “Ivory Coast” as “C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire”. For some reason, the United Nations uses the local spelling for “Cabo Verde,” but not “Deutscheland” for Germany. And while MANY countries officially start with honorifics, like The People’s Republic of China, or The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, or The Happiest Place On Earth, the UN is not at all consistent about how they are listed.<\/p>\n

So to the UN, China is “China (The People’s Republic Of,)”, but The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is just “Saudi Arabia.”<\/p>\n

And we’re just as eccentric as they are – the UN lists the two Koreas under “D” for “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” and “R” for “Republic of Korea.”\u00a0 But we did them both under “K”, because of course we did. Fun fact – despite there being literally dozens of countries with “Republic” in their official name, only two are listed under “R” in the UN list.\u00a0 One is South Korea, and the other is Moldova.<\/p>\n

Which is why we missed it.<\/p>\n

OK, slam on the brakes, back up the truck, let’s make some Moldovan food.\u00a0 Where is Moldova, anyway?\u00a0 It turns out Moldova is right between Ukraine and Romania. Ethnically it’s closer to Romanian, but it was gobbled up by the USSR after WWII, and formed its own SSR until the breakup of the Soviet Union when it declared independence.\u00a0 Except for Transnistria, which is its own whole thing, but is not on the UN list, so we’re not going to worry about it.<\/p>\n

Politics is COMPLICATED.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the food of Moldova is not<\/em> particularly complicated.\u00a0 Every ingredient in our dishes for today was easily acquired at our local Save On… with one exception.<\/p>\n

For our main dish, we’re going to be making Zeama, a sour chicken noodle soup.\u00a0 Chicken – easy. Noodles – lots of options. Sour?<\/p>\n

You’re gonna need Bor\u0219.<\/p>\n

Bor\u0219 is a souring agent made of fermented wheat bran, and is “available” in either liquid or powdered form.<\/p>\n

If you’re in the US, you can get it on Amazon, no problem.\u00a0 And if\u00a0 you’re in Canada, well, there’s one store in Montreal that will ship it to you for six times the cost of the actual product.\u00a0 So instead, I started hitting up eastern European grocery stores.\u00a0 What I should<\/em> have done was called them, but instead I kept taking the time to go an LOOK, which is why it took me a month to find the stuff.\u00a0 The Ukrainian, Russian, and Serbian stores didn’t have it, but I finally located a specifically Romanian store which did.<\/p>\n

\"Bors<\/a><\/p>\n

I do love living in a proper city, I tell you.<\/p>\n

OK, sour powder in hand, it was time to cook.\u00a0 Zeama is a chicken noodle soup.\u00a0 You make it like chicken noodle soup.\u00a0 Start with a chicken. [1]<\/a> (Shocking, I know.)<\/p>\n

\"Chicken\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Cook the chicken with some whole veggies like carrot, onion, bell pepper, celery root, and parsnip for an hour so so to make a nice flavourful broth.<\/p>\n

\"Veggies\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Stacking the veggies in a bowl that is much too small for them is optional but fun.)<\/p>\n

Once the chicken is cooked, remove the whole veggies and thank them for their service. Then chuck in some other veggies chopped small enough to eat in a soup, such as potatoes, onion, and carrot.<\/p>\n

\"Soup<\/a><\/p>\n

When the potatoes are close to done, toss in some noodles.\u00a0 Homemade egg noodles are recommended, but we didn’t do that. Instead, here are some Serbian egg noodles that we bought at the Polish grocery store that LOOK sort of like the Romanian ones in the Moldovan recipe.<\/p>\n

We are nothing<\/em> if not authentic.<\/p>\n

\"Noodles\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is also where you add the Bor\u0219. And after a few minutes the noodles are done, the soup is thickened, you put in some raw onion and it’s ready to eat!<\/p>\n

To go with the soup, we attempted to make a reasonable contender for Moldova’s national dish, a form of polenta called M\u0103m\u0103lig\u0103.\u00a0 (Aren’t all these diacriticals fun?)\u00a0 It’s pretty straightforward – corn meal, water, salt, heat, stir.\u00a0 It’s supposed to turn out in a nice dome shape from the pot, but it kinda didn’t.<\/p>\n

\"M\u0103m\u0103lig\u0103\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Still, it was a perfectly serviceable side.\u00a0 In Moldova, this would be topped with pork cracklings, farmers’ cheese, scrambled eggs, sour cream, or any of a number of other things.\u00a0 It’s versatile.\u00a0 We topped it with a Romanian version of ajvar (roasted eggplant spread) called Zacusc\u0103.<\/p>\n

\"Zacusc\u0103\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Put it all together, and here’s the final meal:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Verdict: The soup was great! Hearty, noodly, and the sourness from the Bor\u0219 was present and added a great tang.\u00a0 The cornmeal was – cornmeal.\u00a0 It was fine. The eggplant spread wasn’t our favorite – the smokiness was quite overpowering.\u00a0 But that may just be this particular brand – we’ve definitely had ajvars that we’ve liked more.<\/p>\n

The soup was definitely a winner, though, and I’ll look for a way to use the other half of that Bor\u0219 packet.<\/p>\n

Oh, and we even had dessert:<\/p>\n

\"Cookies\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Next up – Mongolia!!<\/p>\n

Recipes:
\nZeama (Sour Chicken Noodle Soup)<\/a>
\nM\u0103m\u0103lig\u0103 (Corn Meal Cake)<\/a><\/p>\n

[1] Zongker, Doug (2006), “Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken”, Annals of Improbable Research 12 (5): 16\u201321<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Astute readers may notice that “Moldova” comes\u00a0before\u00a0“Monaco” in the alphabet. One of the issues with this project is determining “what is a country?” Is Taiwan a country? Is Disneyland? Is the United States? Who knows? Since we have to draw … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-meals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2856,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2846\/revisions\/2856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}