The Slavic east and the Balkans · Volume 30, The Living Culture, the Roman Vein and the Rose Valley
Ciorbă Rădăuțeană
Northern Moldavia, Romania
Illustration
- Time
- 1 hour
Romania, a precisely dated 1979 invention that has become one of the country's best-loved soups.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 1 hour.
Ingredients
- 2, about 500g chicken breast
- 200ml sour cream
- 2 egg yolk
- 1 to 2 tbsp, to taste vinegar
- a small bunch, chopped fresh dill
Method
- Poach the chicken breast and shred it into strips.
- Enrich the soup with sour cream and egg yolk.
- Sour with vinegar.
- Finish with fresh dill.
Notes
Invented in 1979 by the chef Cornelia Dumitrescu at Restaurantul Nord in Rădăuți, northern Moldavia, explicitly as a lighter, cheaper, faster alternative to the older ciorbă de burtă, its shredded chicken echoing tripe soup's own texture.
What a modern chef changes
A sous vide poach and a proper fermented borș, per rung three
Rung 3
Method
- Poach the chicken breast sous vide at a precise low temperature for a genuinely silkier texture than a rolling poach gives.
- Build a proper borș, fermented from wheat bran and cornmeal over two to three days, per rung three, as the souring agent in place of a straight vinegar addition.
- Clarify the finished broth with a gentle egg-white raft for real clarity rather than the traditional soup's characteristic cloudiness.
- Finish with a dill oil rather than chopped dill stirred through, for colour and aroma without vegetal bulk.