Plăcintă

Ingredients

• Flour500 g
• Warm water260 ml
• Vegetable oil100 ml
• Brined white cheese400 g
• Egg1
• Dill30 g
• Pumpkin — for the second filling400 g
• Sugar3 tbsp
• Salt1 tsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Knead a soft dough from the flour, warm water, a spoon of oil and salt, and work it ten minutes.

   14 min

2. 2

   Divide it into six balls, oil them generously and leave them under film for forty minutes.

   45 min

3. 3

   Mash the cheese with the egg and dill. Grate the pumpkin and mix it with sugar for the second filling.

   12 min

4. 4

   Stretch a ball by hand on an oiled table into a thin round, until it turns translucent.

   15 min

5. 5

   Put the filling in the middle and fold the edges to the centre, into a parcel or a round.

   12 min

6. 6

   Flatten it with your palm to a centimetre and a half.

   4 min

7. 7

   Cook in a hot dry pan four minutes a side, to a mottled crust.

   26 min

About the dish

The dough is stretched by hand until translucent, as for strudel. Everything depends on that thinness: a thick plăcintă is bread with a filling rather than a pie.

It cooks in a dry hot pan, with little or no fat. Steam from inside lifts the layers, and the crust comes out mottled rather than even.

The fillings have names Moldovans distinguish between: cu brânză with cheese, cu dovleac with pumpkin, cu varză with cabbage. The pumpkin one is autumn's and the commonest.

Worth knowing

• — Squeeze the pumpkin before assembling. Raw grated pumpkin gives out enough juice to leak into the pan.
• — Patch holes with dough from the edges. Filling escapes through them and burns.
• — Stack the finished plăcinte and cover them with a cloth. They stay soft that way; in the open air the crust goes leathery.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

440 kcal

Protein

14 g

Fat

22 g

Carbs

46 g

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• Zeamă — Chicken soup with home-made noodles, soured with bran borș. The Moldovan remedy for everything.