Did I say I don’t like restaurants? The true purpose of restaurants has been completely lost. They suppose to be fun and entertaining places when it comes to food experience, unlike what they turned into: chicken wings nights, beer, potato chips, peanuts and watching sports. Restaurants use to make food that is novel, tasty, imaginative and complex; outside of reach of average home cook. That is at the time when to be a home cook was a widespread, common family trait. Instead today’s average restaurant for the most part turned into binge drinking halls with cheap, salty, sweet and fatty food that anybody could make. But given a choice why anyone would want to make something like that? That is perhaps a team for a lengthily separate post on its own.
Instead why not have something like this, a wonderful sauce that meets all criteria anyone would ever want from good food? It is heavenly tasty, made from common and easy accessible ingredients, healthy, inexpensive and easy to make. The taste and quality that is unlike anything you will find in restaurants these days. The only caveat is the same as with most of other outstandingly good dishes: it takes time to make. Everything takes time. Whether healthy, well prepared and tasty meal matters is up to us. The choice is ours.
Moldavian Braised Vegetable Sauce is a refined sauce that is perfect with pasta, rice, mash potatoes or eggplants. It lands itself particularly well when combined with Parmesan cheese.
Moldavia is a rural, rich agricultural land, sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine. It is one of the poorest countries in Europe. As it is often the case with many other poor world regions, peasant dishes are at the core of their national cuisine. Next common trait of these dishes that they usually consist of simple, inexpensive and easy accessible fresh ingredients but cooking is labor intensive. It takes time to extract every bit of that flavor from ingredients.
The main process feature is a long vegetable braising time taking about 4 hours during which wonderful smell permeates the kitchen.
I had the sauce with pasta that I feature in this post and with eggplants that I will write about in my following blog. The sauce is truly amazingly tasty, it is vegetarian but with strong flavor that is reminiscent of meat!
Cook linguine pasta to about 90% of doneness and then finish it off in the Moldavian Braised Vegetable Sauce. Serve topped up with freshly grated Parmesan cheese. I used about 80 g of linguine pasta and 125 ml (1/2 cup) of sauce per serving.
The recipe is adapted from chef Greg Easter and his channel “CookinginRussia“.
| Prep Time | 45 minutes |
| Cook Time | 4.25 hours |
| Servings |
servings
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- 750 g fresh tomatoes blanched, pealed and cored
- 200 g celery root cut first into slices and then into thin strips, both about 5 mm ( 1/4") thick
- 200 g onions cut in rough strips
- 90 g Red bell pepper cut in rough strips
- 1 red chilli pepper stem off, roughly chopped
- 4 garlic cloves coarsely chopped
- 22 g Italian parsley fresh
- 2 tsp sea salt
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1-2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 250 g Italian tomato purée (passata)
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1/2 tsp granulated sugar
- 1 tsp paprika
- braised vegetables
- tomato sauce reduction
- 1/4 cup fresh basil leaves chiffonade
- 120 ml red wine dry and strong
- 30 ml cognac preferably from Moldova
Ingredients
Braising Vegetables
Tomato Sauce Reduction
Moldavian Braised Vegetable Sauce Assembly
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- Blanch tomatoes in boiling water for about 1 minute. Transfer to ice-water bath and let cool down for few minutes. Peel the skin off and core each tomato.
- Cut celery root in slices and then each slice in strips.
- Slice onion in strips, coarsely cut the garlic cloves.
- Cut off stem from red chili pepper, cut chili in rough pieces.
- Cut red bell pepper in rough strips; roughly chop Italian flat leaf parsley.
- Transfer celery root, onions, garlic, chili pepper, bell pepper and parsley to a food processor. Using food processor cut the mixture to small pieces but do not go too far and puree it!
- Quarter tomatoes and cover the bottom of braising dish (please see recipe notes).
- Distribute cut vegetables on top of the tomatoes forming an even leveled bed, Do not Stir! Sprinkle the salt on top of the bed and drizzle with 1/4 cup of olive oil.
- Put the lid on and braise in the prewarmed oven changing the temperature as per following schedule: - 1.5 hours @ 130 ºC (265 ºF) - 1.5 hours @ 180 ºC (350 ºF) - 45 minutes @ 200 ºC (400 ºF)
- Take braising dish out of oven and let cool down.
- Over medium heat (5 out of 10) warm up a medium size pan. When hot add enough olive oil to coat the bottom.
- Add about 1/4 of tomato sauce volume, pouring slowly to cover the pan bottom. Do not Stir! Sprinkle on salt and sugar, and without stirring cook for about 3 minutes.
- Slowly add in the rest of the tomato sauce, pouring it in a circular motion and trying to coat the pan bottom. Do not Stir! Cook for another 2 minutes and then stir the sauce scraping the fond that may have formed on the bottom. Keep cooking and stirring for few more minutes until sauce gets thicker.
- Stir in paprika and then add to the pan all the braised vegetables. Mix it all together and cook for 2-3 minutes. Take off heat and let cool off for a few minutes.
- Transfer everything to a blender adding to it fresh basil and red wine. Run blender for a few minutes until pureed.
- Transfer pureed sauce back to a medium size pot, cover and over medium low heat (3 out of 10) simmer for about 30 minutes.
- Uncover the pan, reduce heat to low (2 out of 10), stir in the cognac and cook for another 15 minutes uncovered.
- Cool the sauce in an ice bath. Store in a sealed container, refrigerated.
- braising dish has to be made out of: glass, ceramic or non reactive metal.
- braising dish has to be proper size and have a lid that seals well. When filled with all the ingredients it has to be at least half full.
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