My Hungarina grandmother had every winter in the cellar a large barrel with sour kraut. We did not bother with the shreaded cabbage. We put whole head cabbages and whreaded it as we needed it. The most amazing thing about the sour kraut is the sour bubly yelow juice tht the head of letuce are covered with. We always ended uup drinking up too much of it so she needed to replanish the juice with salty water and let it go sour. The hungarian polenta with cheese ils the one that my grandmother served along with pitcherfuls with juice from the sour kraut. This is a delightful diner item in the Hungarian families of Transylvania or the families that are half and half or just Romanians who are natives to Transylvania. I transylvania the polenta for the polenta with cheese is softer then in Valachia. The polenta is layered with cheese and butter, oil or rendered pork fat. The tepertu which is the dried crunchy slightly brown pieces that are left after the fat of the pork is cut in two inches cubes and melted over very low heat are delicious between the layers of polenta. The slow melting gives an excellent taste to the brown pieces of fat left after melting. Unfortunatley there was not too much to satisfy or appetite ever. More over my grandmother ground them up to make her ablsolutely delicious "tepertus pogacsa" that was tall withthin soft layer since it is a pastery made with yeast. It would be similar to thw puff dough with its many thin layers but th elayers of the puff dough are dried. The outside of the pogacsa is crunchy but the inside is soft and comes apart in layers. My grandmother made the best I ever had. Neither my mother or my mother's sister managed to egual her performance although they made it togather with her.
The Valachian polenta is just simple polenta and cheese, and butter is served along with the polenta that is cooked to a tougher consistency. If polenta is serve in the morning or as and apetizer of light meal. it is served with something like the cottage cheese but not liquid and creamy and sou cream. It is plenty delicious and consistent also. The cheese is called caw cheese or tehen turo in Hungarian and brinza de vaca in Romanian which is the exact translation of caw cheese. It is made out of clobered raw milk that is warmed up to just the right temperature and them put in a strainer llined with cheese cloth. It is easy to do at home if one got the experience to heat it up right. At temperatures that are too high the cheese looses its quality of creamyness and becomes tougher. I personally use cottage cheese. The raw milk is too expensive and the Strauss creamery in West Marin makes it at a ridiculously high price and or an inacceptable quality so I stick with the old Clove organic cottage cheese when I can splurge on this expensive item.
