No Garlic Planted And Chicken Gizzard Balls Result

It was back in the village farmhouse after a two-week absence. The plan was to sow 1,000 garlic sets for early green garlic for salads early in the spring. All was fine travelling the 37 kilometres in the pitch-black countryside knowing that there was a wood burner waiting to get started when we get there alongside a salad and the new batch of rakia that was brought along. Today was the start of winter weather and was the first day of frost overnight as the supply of fresh daily peppers form the factory farm took their last bow.

We needed this short break this weekend, as it is an extra working day next week working Saturday to make up for one of the non-public holidays in the four-day break at Christmas. We don’t get paid for any public holidays either, that is how it is here with many Bulgarian firms.

Effectively we lose four days pay over the holiday period due. Initially I thought we have been hard done by, but thinking about it again, this makes complete sense, why should you get paid for not working? I had it too easy in the UK it seems getting full pay for a total of around 12 weeks year in year out on holidays when the schools are shut. Having said that, most professionals, including teachers here do get paid during holidays as well, but they are the exception to the working class rule.

Back to the village farmhouse it is a cold house we met, but that was short lived as the fire was started and the thaw began. Within the hour it was a warm lived in home again and the long evening was a treat knowing that a 6:30 start wasn’t due the next day.

I woke at 6:30 the next morning as my body alarm hasn’t a switch off function. It was snowing and my initial smile dropped as I realised that the garlic sowing was going to be difficult if not impossible with the amount of the snow lying and still falling. It became an impossible task by midday as the fall continued throughout the day and evening up to the point of typing at 8:00 this evening!

Garlic on hold it was now anti-freeze in the lada radiator, a load of straw stuffed in sacks and squeezed in the water shaft to prevent freezing up when we are away and rose bushes pruned. Funny, only two days ago I was sunbathing outside during my lunchtime break in a short-sleeved shirt.

Back in the farmhouse it was a wondering mind thinking about what I could do with chicken gizzards that we had got out of the freezer. Galia was keen to cook, but I love doing the same on my home patch and got the nod to use my imagination on the gizzards. Gizzards are a quite tasteless and tough so the would need a lot of boiling and other ingredients to make them tender and a have more taste respectively. I ended up with a very complimentary result, which had full praise from Galia who is very honest in her opinions of whether she likes the food she tries. I noted all the ingredients and the process and give the recipe here:

Chicken Gizzard Balls

Ingredients
500 gm Chicken gizzards
1 medium onion finely chopped
2-3 garlic cloves finely chopped
6 chestnuts (boiled and skinned)
100 gm sirene (goats cheese)
1 egg
Brown breadcrumbs (two slices worth)
Salt and freshly ground pepper
200 ml red wine
¼ chicken stock cube
1 teaspoon paprika pepper
Sunflower oil for shallow frying

For the batter
200 gm plain flour
1 egg
3 tablespoons plain yoghurt
150 ml dark beer

Method
Tidy up and wash the gizzards. Put in a pan, cover with water and bring to the boil,. Take the scum off with a ladle and simmer for at least 4 hours. (This is where a cooking space on our wood burners come in useful in.)

Prepare the batter by mixing all the ingredients together really well and putting in the fridge whilst working on the gizzard ball preparations.

Drain and rinse the gizzards with cold water. When cool, chop the gizzards up finely with a knife or use a food processor. With a little oil fry the onions and garlic until soft. Add the gizzards, chicken stock, a little salt, pepper, paprika pepper and raise the heat stirring continuously for 2-3 minutes. Add the wine and leave to simmer with a stir every so often until the wine has totally evaporated. Add the sirene and chestnuts and stir in well until the mixture is well blended.

Place the mixture into another bowl and leave to cool for 20 minutes. Add the egg and breadcrumbs and mix. Using your clean hands mould the mixture into balls the size of golf ball and lay on a plate ready for batter dipping.

Bring the batter out of the fridge (it should have been in there for at least an hour.) Heat the oil in a pan and test the right heat by place a drop of the batter in the oil, which should sizzle and turn brown after a few seconds. When ready, submerge the gizzard balls in the batter and gently place in the hot oil. You can probably get them all in one go, if not just stagger the frying.

The balls will need turning after 2-3 minutes or if the underside is lightly browned off. The same process once turned will lead to the balls being ready for placing on a plate with a kitchen towel to take up the excess oil. Leave to stand for ten minutes before serving alongside a salad, fresh bread and your favourite wine or beer.

Hot and cold they taste great and puts chicken gizzard in a new culinary light. They will last for a few days in the fridge if stored in a sealed container.

Having just digested a few just over an hour ago, my thoughts turn to eating some reheated for lunch two days later at work. Somehow though I don’t think they will last that long as Baba is due to try some out tomorrow and Galia and I will no doubt dip into them again to keep her in dining company you understand. No garlic planted, but the sliver lining is chicken gizzard balls which wouldn't have come about otherwise.

Failed Crops, But No Worries

It has been the busiest week so far this year trying to get everything planted out on the two plots of land in the village and town and trying to keep on top with blogging. Well the blogging has had the foot off the accelerator recently and I apologise to fellow blogging friends for not paying visits recently. There just aren’t enough hours in the day and the candle has been burnt at both ends recently.

It is a time where everyone here in Bulgaria is out tending to crops. Not only do they need planting right now they need watering, sometime two or three times a day with temperatures soaring to over 30 degrees and we are not in the hot season yet. When the seedling are put in the have to be treated like babies, tended to every moment until they are established. They are at their most sensitive and the slightest neglect at this stage can ruin a whole crop. This has happened to me already as I left the town farm for 6 days as it was a six-day weekend holiday and the factory had closed for that period. A crop of beans had failed when I got back from lack of water. In the village the strawberries newly planted in the autumn had hardly any fruits on as they needed watering every two days – I am not there for five days at a time. Strawberries were not a good idea with the time I spend there. The melons both the watermelon and the honey melon both failed to germinate because of the 5-day absence and neglect.

On another front the two patches of sweet corn that was sown were almost another complete failure. I have to transplant half the seedlings from one patch to the other as over half had died due to not being tended to on a daily basis. I have now put more melons in their place and a massive reservoir channel dug out with advise from locals. I won’t find out whether this has survived until this coming weekend and it will be 6 days without water as we are not due until Saturday this weekend.

It was my own fault. I knew these types of crops would not be a success, but I went ahead regardless with a little hope tucked away. Hope was all that was there as I had to rethink and be realistic about what can and can ‘t work without water for 5 days. The garlic, onions and potatoes are thriving, these were my original plan and they all worked. The grapes look after themselves so no worries there. The biggest job however is the field, some 6000 square metres of meadow that needed to be cut. This had to be done with a scythe; everyone uses this tool in Bulgaria and last weekend it was out with the sharpening stone and a weekend of haymaking.

It is really quite a sense of pointlessness as I started getting stuck in to this massive field when I was asked where my horse was from one of my neighbours who were doing exactly the same thing in a field adjacent to mine. He of course knew full well I didn’t have a horse and my donkey was long gone salami to gypsies a couple of years ago. I said that Galia son Ivo has a rabbit in Yambol and this was rabbit feed for next winter. We both laughed as the joking went on. In all seriousness, I was cutting hay for my neighbour’s horse although he didn’t know it yet. If the hay isn’t cut and left to seed next year’s crop would be poor so it was also for that reason as well.

It was a long haul, but I loved it, no Galia there as she was working her Saturday in lieu of the 6-day weekend so it was make your own dinner in the evening. I couldn’t wait with a couple of lettuce and radish for the town farm brought o the village and onion and green garlic with sirene, olives and sunflower oil, red vinegar and salt as dressing. A glass of my own homemade sliva (plum) rakia and ice cold Ayran alongside. All on a table under the grapevine trellises looking at the field that had just had its hay cut and now drying out in the warm evening air. It wasn’t the same without Galia though and as I sat down on my own I really couldn’t see the point of preparing all this without someone to share it with and a reminder of lonely times before I met Galia working on the farm – Another story altogether.

Things are looking great here, both in the town and village – Yes we have had crop failures, but that’ down to my bad planning and faint hope that I should have dispelled from the start. There is still plenty of time to replant and that’s what I have been doing over the last few days. Exciting times here.