Luiza's Mamaliga Cu Brinza -- Polenta With Sheep Cheese

Luiza -- Severing Ties with Romania Forever

This is part of an ongoing series of the life of Detroit resident Luiza Grigorescu and other legal aliens in the USA.

Luiza tells me Romanians eat polenta every day, especially for lunch, which is the main meal of the day. They cook their stable food afresh daily from cornmeal, salt, and water. She says that people who eat lots of polenta will have healthy children. Here is her recipe: 

We need for 4 servings:

• about 1 cup of cornmeal
  
• about 3 cups of water
  
• about 200g sheep feta cheese
  
• some Kashkaval pure sheep cheese (a Bulgarian cheese found in a East European food store)
  
• 4 eggs
  
• some herb or garlic butter
  

And this is what we do with the ingredients:

1. Fill a medium-sized pot half with cold water. Then add a few big spoonfuls of cornmeal, stirring it into the water until it dissolves. Add a little bit of salt if you want (but be careful, the sheep cheese will add plenty of salt to the whole dish). Heat the mixture. Constant stirring is very important so that the mixture does not stick to the bottom of the pot and burn.

2. Put the heat on high. Add more cornmeal if the mixture is too watery. As it heats the cornmeal particles take in the water and swell. You can make the mixture as thick as you want.

3. Stir a lot until it becomes a thick mass and the mass starts bubbling but be careful it might jump out of the pot. Stir very fast. 

4. After the mass is very thick but sticks together very well as one, almost so that you could cut it with a threat, Luiza says. Them dump the mass onto a plate and distribute on as four plates.

By the way, Luiza recommends putting milk into the empty polenta pot with the remainder of the dough to boil the milk with the corn mass and drink it.

5. Add a lump of feta sheep cheese into the polenta on each plate and cover the cheese with the polenta as much as possible so that the warmth of the mass can melt the cheese wrapped in it. Add a little bit of garlic or herb butter  on top of the polenta. Luiza says it will go down the polenta mountain like lava.

6. Grate some of the firm kashkaval sheep cheese over each polenta mountain.

7. Poach an egg for every person. This means to drop a raw egg into a pot of boiling water. Let the egg cook until the egg white and yolk are firm. Then carefully take out the naked boiled egg with a big spoon and arrange it aside the polenta pile. Grate some kashkaval on each egg.

Enjoy your "mamaliga cu brinza"!

PS: “Listen to me,” says Luiza, “I tell you a secret. Take a little bit of cornmeal in the shower and rub your face with it two times a week. It will make your skin like velvet.” 

How did you come to the USA? With which red tape do you have to deal as a legal alien? Are you on the path to U.S. citizenship? What is special about your home country? Please share your stories, questions, and comments!