Romanian cuisine

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Romanian cuisine is diverse. It blends different dishes from several traditions with which it has come into contact, but it also maintains its own character. It has been greatly influenced by Ottoman cuisine while it also includes influences from the cuisines of other neighbours, such as Germans, Serbians, and Hungarians. Quite different types of dishes are sometimes included under a generic term ; for example, the category ciorbă includes a wide range of soups with a characteristic sour taste. These may be meat and vegetable soups, tripe and calf foot soups (shkembe chorba or iskembe), or fish soups, all of which are soured by lemon juice, sauerkraut juice, vinegar, or traditionally borş (fermented wheat bran). The category ţuică is a generic name for a strong alcoholic spirit in Romania, while in other countries every flavour has a different name.

Description

"I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was "mamaliga", and egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call "impletata"." —Bram Stoker, Dracula, Chapter 1

A plate of sărmăluţe cu mămăligă, a popular Romanian dish of stuffed cabbage rolls (sarmale) accompanied by sauerkraut and mamaliga. The cabbage rolls are usually garnished with sour cream, not lemon and olive.

Romanian recipes bear the same influences as the rest of Romanian culture. The Turks have brought meatballs (perişoare in a meatball soup), from the Greeks there is musaca, from the Bulgarians there are a wide variety of vegetable dishes like ghiveci and zacuscă, from the Austrians there is the şniţel and the list could continue.

One of the most common dishes is mămăliga, a cornmeal mush served on its own or as an accompaniment. Pork is the preferred meat, but beef, lamb, and fish are also popular.

Before Christmas, on December 20 (Ignat's Day or Ignatul in Romanian),^[1] a pig is traditionally slaughtered by every rural family.^[2] A wide variety of foods for Christmas are prepared from the slaughtered pig, including cârnaţi (or cărnaţi) – spicy sausages, caltaboşi (or cartaboşi) – sausages made with liver and other offal, tobă and piftie – dishes using pig's feet, head and ears suspended in aspic, and also tocătură or tochitură – pan-fried pork served with mămăligă and wine ("so that the pork can swim"). The Christmas meal is sweetened with the traditional cozonac (sweet bread with nuts) or rahat (Turkish delight) for dessert. At Easter, lamb is served: the main dishes are roast lamb and drob de miel – a Romanian lamb haggis made of minced organs (heart, liver, lungs) wrapped and roasted in a caul.^[3][4] The traditional Easter cake is pască – a pie made of yeast dough with a sweet cottage cheese filling at the center.^[5][6]

Romanian pancakes, called clătită, are thin (like French crêpes) and can be prepared with savory or sweet fillings: ground meat, white cheese, or jam. Different recipes are prepared depending on the season or the occasion.

Wine is the preferred drink, and Romanian wines have a tradition of over three millennia.^{[citation needed]}Romania is currently the world's 9th largest wine producer, and recently the export market has started to grow.^{[citation needed]} Romania produces a wide selection of domestic varieties (Fetească, Grasă, Tamâioasă) as well as varieties from across the world (Italian Riesling, Merlot, Sauvignon blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Muscat Ottonel). Beer is also highly regarded, generally blonde pilsener beer, made with German influences. There are also Romanian breweries with a long tradition.

Romania is the world's second largest plum producer (after United States)^[7] and as much as 75% of Romania's plum production is processed into the famous ţuică (a plum brandy obtained through one or more distillation steps).^[8]

List of dishes

Soups

• ciorbă (soup with characteristic sour taste)
  • ciorbă de burtă (tripe soup)
  • ciorbă de perişoare (meatball soup)
  • ciorbă ţărănească de văcuţă (peasant beef soup)
  • ciorbă de fasole cu afumătură (bean and smoked meat soup)
  • ciorbă de peşte "ca-n Deltă" (fish soup prepared in the style of the Danube Delta)
• supă de găluşte (halušky, dumpling soup)

Meat

• caltaboşi (also chişcǎ, a cooked sausage made of minced pork and rice, stuffed in a pig casing)
• chiftele (a type of large meatballs covered with a flour crust or breadcrumb crust)
• drob de miel (a lamb haggis made of minced organs wrapped in a caul and roasted like a meatloaf; a traditional Easter dish)
• frigărui (skewered meat)
• mititei (grilled minced-meat rolls)
• piftie (meat jelly)
• slănină (pork fat often smoked)
• pârjoale (burger)
• ostropel (method of cooking chicken or duck)
• limbă cu măsline (cow tongue with olives)
• papricaş (Goulash)
• musaca (an eggplant/potato and meat pie)
• rasol (boiled meat with garlic or horseradish)
• şniţel (a breaded pork, veal, or beef cutlet, a variety of Viennese schnitzel)
  • Cordon bleu șnițel (breaded pork tenderloin stuffed with cheese and ham)
  • mosaic șnițel (a specialty of Western Romania, two thin layers of different meats with mushroom or other vegetable filling)
  • şniţel de pui (breaded chicken breast cutlet)
• stufat de miel (lamb, onion & garlic stew)
• tobă (sausage stuffed with pork jelly, liver, and skin)
• tocană, or diminutive tocaniţă (stew)
• tocăniţă vânătorească (venison stew))
• tochitură moldovenească (Moldavian stew)
• tochitură ardelenească (Transylvanian stew)
• varză călită (steamed cabbage with pork ribs, duck or sausages)
• ciulama (white roux sauce used in a variety of meat dishes)
  • ciulama de viţel (veal ciulama)
  • ciulama de pui (chicken ciulama)

Fish

• plachie din peşte (ragout of river fish with vegetables)
• saramură de crap (carp in brine)
• chiftele de peşte (fish cakes)
• papricaş de peşte (fish paprikash)
• crap pane (breaded carp fillets)
• ghiveci cu peşte (vegetable stew with fish)

Vegetables

• ardei umpluţi (stuffed bell peppers)
• dovlecei umpluţi (stuffed zucchini)
• vinete umplute (stuffed eggplant)
• sarmale (stuffed cabbage rolls, also made with vine or dock leaves)
• ghiveci (vegetable stew or cooked vegetable salad similar to the Bulgarian gjuvec and the Hungarian lecso)^[9][10]
  • ghiveci calugaresc (vegetable stew prepared by the nuns in the monasteries)
• iahnie (beans stew)
• mâncare de mazăre (pea stew)
• mâncare de praz (leek stew)
• pilaf (rice, vegetables and sometimes pieces of meat, served as a side dish)
• mămăligă (cornmeal mush, polenta)
• chifteluţe de ciuperci (chiftele made of mushrooms instead of meat)
• şniţel de ciuperci (mushroom fritters - şniţel is the Romanian spelling of the German word schnitzel – breaded boneless cutlet – but it may be used to mean any sort of fritter)
• zacuscă (vegetable spread, made mainly with roasted eggplant and roasted red peppers)

Pies

• plăcinte (pies)

List of spices and salads

• ardei copţi (roasted peppers)
• borş (fermented wheat bran, a souring agent for ciorbă)
• murături (pickled vegetables)
• mujdei (garlic mayonnaise)
• salată de boeuf (minced boiled vegetables and meat)
• salată de vinete (eggplant salad)
• salată de cartofi (potato salad)
• salată de macaroane (pasta salad)
• salată de ţelină (parsnip salad)
• sfeclă murată (pickled beets)
• salată de sfeclă (beet salad)
• salată de roşii (tomato salad)

List of cheese types

The generic name for cheese in Romania is brânză and it is considered to be of Dacian origin. Most of the cheeses are made of cow's or sheep's milk, with goat's milk rarely used.

• brânză de burduf (sheep's milk cheese with a strong taste and semi-soft texture)
• brânză de vaci (farmer cheese or quark)
• brânză topită (cheese for melting; a generic name for processed cheese)
• brânză în coajă de brad (specialty cheese kept in a fir's tree bark)
• caşcaval (semi-hard cheese made with sheep's or cow's milk, a traditional Romanian dairy product)
• caş (semi-soft fresh white cheese, lightly salted and preserved in brine, similar to bryndza or feta cheese, a base for telemea and brânză de burduf)
• telemea (semi-soft white cheese with a creamy texture and a tangy taste, matured in brine; a mature variety of caş, similar to bryndza or feta cheese)
• urdă (soft whey cheese, similar to ricotta but made from boiling the whey drained from cow's or ewe's milk caş, so its bland taste is reminiscent of evaporated milk)^{[citation needed]}

List of desserts

Baklava is prepared on large trays and cut into a variety of shapes

• Baclava (phyllo pastry filled with nuts and sweetened with honey or sugar syrup)
• Covrigi (pretzels)^[11]
• Gogoşi (doughnuts)^[12]
• Halva
• Rahat (Turkish delight)
• Plăcintă (pie)
• Colivă (boiled wheat, mixed with sugar and walnuts, decorated with candy and icing sugar, made into a cake and handed out at funerals)
• Cozonac (a kind of pound cake made with leavened dough, into which milk, eggs, sugar, butter, and other ingredients are mixed; called kozunak in Bulgaria)
• Pandişpan (sponge cake)
• Orez cu lapte (rice pudding)
• Griş cu lapte (cream of wheat)
• Lapte de pasăre (literally "bird's milk", vanilla custard garnished with "floating islands" of whipped egg whites)
• Cremă de zahăr ars (crème caramel or crème brûlée)
• Clătită (pancake)
• Turtă dulce (gingerbread)
• Chec (a sort of coffee cake)
• Papanaşi (a kind of doughnut made from a mixture of sweet cheese, eggs, and semolina, boiled or fried and served with fruit syrup or jam)
• Şarlotă (a custard made with milk, eggs, sugar, whipped cream, gelatin, fruits, and lady fingers; from the French charlotte)
• Prăjituri (assorted pastries)

• Savarine (savarina^[13])
• Amandine (chocolate sponge cake filled with almond cream)
• Joffre cake (invented at the Casa Capşa restaurant in Bucharest)

• Mucenici (sweet cookies shaped like the figure 8, made of boiled or baked dough, garnished with walnuts, sugar or honey, eaten on a single day of the year, the Sunday before the Easter fast)^[14]

List of drinks

• socată (Elderflower Champagne)
• bere (beer)
• ţuică (plum brandy, pronounced tzuy-kah)
• horincă (less sophisticated plum brandy, produced near the border with Ukraine)
• şliboviţa (similar to horincă, produced near the border with Serbia)
• palincă (plum brandy distilled three times more than ţuică)
• rachiu (fruit brandy)
• secărică (caraway seed brandy)
• turţ (alcoholic drink)
• afinată (blueberry liqueur)
• zmeurată (raspberry liqueur)
• vişinată (a type of cherry liqueur)(pronounced vi-she-na-ta)
• vin (wine)

Aphorisms

An existential Romanian question is: Do we eat to live, or live to eat? A great number of proverbs and sayings have developed around the activity of eating. They range from the innocent child's saying of thanks:

Thank you for the meal

it was good and tasty

and the cook lady was beautiful^[15]

to the more philosophical:

Thank you Lord

for I have eaten and I am hungry again^[16]

and

Love passes through the stomach^[17]

or the simple:

Appetite comes while eating^[18]

or the sarcastic:

The pig eats anything, but it gets fat for others^[19]

or a total fulfillment saying:

Ate well, drank well, in the morning woke up dead^[20]

Mămăligă has long been considered the poor man's dish:

He hasn't even a mămăliga on the table^[21]

Pork is the preferred meat in Romanian cuisine:

The best fish will always be the pork^[22], or

The best vegetable is chicken meat and the best chicken meat is pork^[23]

Personalities

• Radu Anton Roman (author of Romanian cookbooks)
• Pastorel Teodoreanu (Romanian writer between the two World Wars, connoisseur of wines and food)

Notes and references

Other sources

• Nicolae Klepper, Taste of Romania, Hippocrene, New York, 1999, ISBN 978-0-7818-0766-1, ISBN 0-7818-0766-2

External links

• List of dishes served in a Romanian restaurant (Romanian)
• A Romanian cookbook on line
• Romanian Cuisine