Romanian & Bulgarian · Side
Mămăligă cu Brânză și Smântână
- Easy
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- 1 litre water
- 12 g salt
- 300 g coarse maize meal (malai)
- 30 g butter
- 150 g branza de burduf or telemea, crumbled
- 150 g smantana
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Bring the water and salt to a rolling boil in a heavy pot, then rain in a fistful of the maize meal and whisk once; the water should never stop boiling.
- Pour in the rest in a thin steady stream, whisking hard, until no dry meal floats on top, then swap the whisk for a wooden spoon as it thickens.
- Cook at a lazy blup, stirring and scraping the corners every couple of minutes for 25 to 30 minutes, until the mass pulls away from the pot side in one piece and a spoon stands upright in it. 30 min
- Taste for chalk; the grains should be soft and sweet. Beat in the butter, then leave the pot covered off the heat for 5 minutes so a crust sets against the metal. 5 min
- Invert onto a wooden board, cut with a taut thread rather than a knife, and serve with the crumbled cheese and cold smantana.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Salted water & the float test 188 recipes
- The water was salted before anything went in, and tasting it confirms it: seasoned on the tongue, with the salt dissolved rather than sitting on the pot floor.
- There is enough water, hot enough, that the pot returns to its boil quickly after the food goes in and never stops moving.
- Where the dish uses the float as its signal, the signal is obeyed: the pieces rise and they come out then, not several minutes later once something else was finished.
- Nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pot or welded to itself, and the water has not thickened into a cloudy sludge.
- Drained on a bite rather than on the clock: resistance at the centre, with no chalky raw core.
Where it goes wrong The pot was too small and the water unsalted, so it never recovered its boil: the food sat in slack water, went gummy at the surface, and comes out bland in a way that no sauce afterwards can fix.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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