Care ghiveci vreau sā maninc?

Translation: which ghiveci should I eat?  (Ghiveci is pronounced like kvetch but with a g instead of k.)

My host mom just told me to go down to the beci (root-cellar) and choose a ghiveci for lunch.  This is always a job I love, because normally I just end up choosing my favorite.

This is a section of our basement, with all its wonderful assortment of ghiveci, compote, and every kind of fruit preserve imaginable.  Did I mention this is only a section of the basement?  And winter is more already half over at this point.

Ghiveci, by the way, is a kind of preserved and canned (and maybe fermented?) vegetable salad.  My dictionary says the English equivalent is hotchpotch, but I have absolutely no idea what that is nor have I ever heard it before.  So, per Peace Corps custom re: words/concepts we have never heard before our service, I will continue to simply call it ghiveci.  (This also goes for things that are so specifically Moldovan that the English word just seems inappropriate.  In Peace Corps lingo, the market will always be the piața, and the speeding death traps mini-buses will always be a rutiera.  English rules of pluralization and declension still apply.)

This is the ghiveci I ended up choosing.  It's my favorite, a peppery mix of eggplant, onion, and carrots.  MMM!

Giving Thanks in Moldova

So we all know how much Zachariah loves Thanksgiving.  It’s basically an entire day spent with loved ones doing one of my favorite activities: cooking.  A LOT of cooking.  Not the whipping up dinner kind, but cooking imbued with the meaning of three other themes dear to my heart.

Orange Basil turkey comes out of the oven.
Note it does not entirely fit in the pan.

1. Loved ones.
2. Coordinating entire meals, the one thing better than cooking, and the kind of complex logistical task generally left to militaries, which I nevertheless prefer to meet with at least a little improvisation.
3. Food as cultural process worthy of great respect and eating as a political act, because eating locally in today’s world inherently is an act of dissention from a powerful political economic system. In such a world, Thanksgiving is a radically ecological holiday.  It’s food is seasonal, and it is one of the few days left when many American families cook, and are thankful, for having plenty to eat.

It says something that even during my years of vegetarianism, Thanksgiving was always an exception.

This year's lesson: removing that extra something, or,
"Whoa, that's a lot of neck."

Okay, so I love Thanksgiving, digression done.  I also, however, happen to have chosen an international lifestyle, meaning I often find myself outside the States, and certainly away from home, at the holidays.  Ask any expat and this is often one of the hardest parts of the job.  Once one embraces it, however, it can also be an incredible opportunity for holidays that, if not orthodox, are certainly memorable.  I’ll never forget my first Thanksgiving abroad, crowded onto the floor of a small flat in Budapest, or learning how to finish de-feathering a turkey by hand on the spot that Christmas in Spain with Hunter and Yeshe (and then brining it in an unused wastebasket…)

The turkey team

This Thanksgiving was no less memorable.  In Moldova, volunteers come together in Chisinau to execute a giant cross-cultural Thanksgiving.  We invite the Moldovan staff, and turnout averages between 70-90 people.  This year, that required four turkeys, four kitchens, and somewhere around 15 cooks divided into four teams.  In a moment of either extreme folly or hubris, yours truly volunteered to lead the turkey team.  Yes, that turkey.  As in, that one thing you can’t screw up on Thanksgiving.  Or in this case, those four things.  Luckily, I was cooking with two incredibly talented and experienced co-chefs.

Normally, one doesn’t get to experiment much with the turkey, but since we had four, I wanted to try something a little wacky.  So we did two normal turkeys, and on the other two we used an Orange Basil rub from The Splendid Table (recipes at end of post).