Luxe
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Articles
    • Stories
    • Recipes
    • Events
    • Products
  • City Guides
  • About
  • Contact
Follow us!
  • Articles
  • City Guides
  • About
  • Contact
0
500
1K
FoodCrafters
Shop Now!
FoodCrafters
  • Articles
    • Stories
    • Recipes
    • Events
    • Products
  • City Guides
  • About
  • Contact
  • Stories

Foodcrafting in Romania – Part 1

  • 5 August 2013
  • No comments
  • 4 minute read
  • Vlad
Total
1
Shares
1
0
0

We’ve spent a brief vacation week in Romania in July, and had an intense amount of fun (& especially food). The foodcrafter spirit is strong there with many traditional simple, yet delicious dishes and local specialties. We realised that international awareness about Romanian cuisine is close to nil, most people thinking “yeah, greasy and heavy eastern European stuff. All the same!”.

Nothing could be further from the truth! (well… ok…. maybe the greasy part… sometimes…)

Daily milk

Being both from Romania, we decided to start a weekly series over the next 5 weeks to share some highlights from our exceptional culinary heritage. This week we’ll introduce you to the country and its traditions, and over the next weeks we’ll talk about the main pillars of Romanian food (milk & cheese, veggies, soups, meat, and deserts) so you get a feel for what goodies the country has to offer (with recipes!!).

The bulk of Romanian food is based on simple and natural products: milk, bread, meat, and veggies.

Goats On the road Maramureș

Romania is a beautiful country, packed with mountains, forests, access to the Black Sea, and the Danube Delta. Before the 1989 revolution that put an end to the communist regime, Romania used to be one of Europe’s largest producer and exporter of cereals. I remember as a child spending my summers on the country side running in huge fields of wheat and corn, and mobbing poor chickens at my uncle’s farm.

Forgotten orchard in Dej

Just like the many abandoned and rusty factories, mines, and buildings all over the country are the ruins of our glorious past, much of our fertile land is now left to rot. Or worse, to build massive and ugly houses no one can afford to live in. The sad reality is that local farmers are faced with more and more difficulties in competing with the discounted prices offered by large retailer chains. Most of the fruit orchards are now unexploited, and Romania ended up importing much of the produce we used to grow and raise.

Old lady selling massive porciniCheese dealer

Nevertheless, “farmer’s markets” (the real thing – not their trendy occidental counterparts) are still where most people would go and buy vegetables and cheese. For everything else, there is the supermarket. The tactile interaction with products that happens in a real market, where you can touch, smell, taste, and even negotiate the price of what you want to buy, has disappeared in our modern society where goods are wrapped in plastic and vacuum sealed.

Going nuts

What impressed us first is the quality of the basic products you can buy. And I’m not talking about the high-end bio jewellery that you can only find at expensive stores, quite the contrary! The quality of the cheapest vegetables you can get in any market is just outstanding. Tomatoes, onions, carrots, aubergines, all have an incredible taste – full of flavour, sweet, inviting to be eaten!

Fresh oven-cooked bread in MaraCold cuts plate (slănină, ceapă, roșii)

As such, most common meals are pretty simple and on the run; a slice of bread (pâine), a hastily salad made with some tomatoes (roșii), sliced onions (ceapă) and cucumbers (castravete), a chunk of fresh cheese (caș or telemea), and, more often than not, some lard (slănină). Simple, but so efficient and good! Family meals usually start with a veal or chicken soup or ciorbă (a more consistent soup), and then a warm main course centred around some meat (pork, beef, or chicken). Often, home made pickles are served on the side, especially with richer dishes such as tocăniță (light stews with vegetables).

Grand-ma in the garden

The best cooks in Romania are moms and grand-mothers, that draw on their mental repertoire of secular recipes to mix things together, without any need for a timer or measuring cups. On warm Sundays, fathers usually take over the barbecue, and will happily spend the day in the garden making mititei (minced meat finger-shaped wonders) or bogrács (originally a Hunagrian recipe, a thick soup with zillions of ingredients that is boiled for hours), both requiring an essential ingredient: beer!

In their hands, not in the food, mind you!

Quintessentially romanian - mititei

People rarely eat outside, and only on special occasions at restaurants, therefore street food is not very common, beyond plăcinte (a savoury thick pancake filled with cheese, potato, or cabbage), mititei, covrigi (hot pretzels covered with sesame or poppy seeds), or langoși (deep-fried pancakes with sweet or savoury filling).

Plăcintă cu brânză (cheese filled savoury pie)

The real deal remains the quintessential sarmale (cabbage leaves stuffed with meat, rice, and spices that are eaten all year long, but especially at celebrations such as Christmas), mămăligă (basically polenta), and ciorbă de burtă (tripe soup, tastes so much better than it sounds).

Romanian Food - Ciorbă de burtă (tripe soup)

To summarise, Romanian food is not for the faint of heart (and certainly not for those on a diet), but it is definitely tasty, honest, and made with great produce. Much variety and delightful surprises await those who are ready to get off the beaten tracks and delve into centuries of tradition and foodcrafting.

Next week, we will start our Romanian journey with an omnipresent ingredient: milk! And obviously everything that can be made with it, such as cheese, creams and more!

Fresh sheep milk

Spread the love

  • Pinterest
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • WhatsApp
  • Print
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • Tumblr

Comments

comments

Total
1
Shares
Share 1
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
Related Topics
  • cheese
  • eastern
  • meat
  • milk
  • romania
  • traditional
Vlad

Loves food, tech, and design.

Previous Article
  • Recipes

Our simple summer spread – ricotta, dill, and chili

  • 27 July 2013
  • Vlad
Read more...
Next Article
  • Recipes

Balmoș – Transylvanian Cheese Polenta

  • 12 August 2013
  • Vlad
Read more...
You May Also Like
Read more...
  • Stories

Crafters Q&A – Choba Choba, Chocolate Revolution, Bern, Switzerland

  • 21 January 2018
  • Flavia
Read more...
  • Stories

Crafters Q&A – Oliviers & Co.

  • 5 August 2017
  • Flavia
Read more...
  • Stories

FC’s Top Ramen Shops in Central London

  • 26 June 2017
  • Vlad
Read more...
  • Stories

Mezcal Los Siete Misterios – Oaxaca, Mexico

  • 30 November 2015
  • Vlad
Read more...
  • Stories

Crafters Q&A – Coco Chocolatier, Edinburgh, Scotland

  • 28 October 2015
  • Vlad
Read more...
  • Stories

Our Guide to Lyon – Part 2 – Restaurants

  • 31 May 2015
  • Vlad
Read more...
  • Stories

Le Chateaubriand, Paris

  • 4 May 2015
  • Flavia
Read more...
  • Stories

Our Guide to Lyon – Part 1 – Les Bouchons

  • 15 April 2015
  • Vlad

Join the conversation Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Trending now
  • Crafters Q&A – Choba Choba, Chocolate Revolution, Bern, Switzerland
    • 21 January 2018
  • Crafters Q&A – Oliviers & Co.
    • 5 August 2017
  • FC’s Top Ramen Shops in Central London
    • 26 June 2017
  • FoodCrafters’ Gift Guide 2016 – Special Switzerland
    • 12 December 2016
Follow us!
Follow us!

Subscribe

Subscribe now to our newsletter

FoodCrafters
Your guide to the best sustainable and local artisan foods.

Input your search keywords and press Enter.

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.