Zeamă

Ingredients

• Chicken — free-range, in pieces1.2 kg
• Flour — for the noodles250 g
• Eggs2
• Bran borș — or juice of 2 lemons400 ml
• Carrots2
• Onion1
• Bell pepper1
• Potatoes3
• Lovage30 g
• Parsley30 g
• Salt and pepperto taste

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

   Cover the chicken with three litres of cold water, bring it up and skim.

   15 min

2. 2

   Simmer forty minutes on a low heat with a whole onion.

   42 min

3. 3

   Knead a stiff dough from the flour and eggs, roll it thin, let it dry and cut it into fine noodles.

   25 min

4. 4

   Lift out the chicken and joint it, and add the carrot, pepper and potato to the broth.

   18 min

5. 5

   After fifteen minutes add the noodles and cook five minutes.

   20 min

6. 6

   Boil the borș separately, strain it and pour it into the soup. Cook five minutes.

   8 min

7. 7

   Return the meat, season and stir in the lovage and parsley. Let it stand ten minutes.

   12 min

About the dish

The sourness comes from borș, a fermented liquid made from wheat bran, rather than from beetroot or vinegar. It is mild and faintly bready, and lemon replaces it only approximately.

The borș goes in at the end and is not boiled long — the acidity fades and the flavour flattens. Five minutes is enough.

Zeamă is cooked for a cold, for a hangover and simply on Sundays. Plenty of lovage goes into it; that is the smell by which the soup is recognised from the doorway.

Worth knowing

• — Boil the borș separately and strain it. Poured straight in, it clouds the soup and leaves bran sediment.
• — Lovage can be replaced with celery leaf, but the smell changes. In Moldova that substitution is acknowledged as a compromise.
• — Cook the noodles separately if the soup is to be kept: left in the pot overnight they swell and drink the whole broth.

Nutrition

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

Calories

380 kcal

Protein

30 g

Fat

12 g

Carbs

40 g

More from Moldova

• Plăcintă — A flat pie of stretched dough with cheese, pumpkin or apple, cooked in a dry pan.