"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'."
--
from Bram Stoker's famous novel, "Dracula"
Pastry, Well Done!
Romanians sort of lucked out from history (as
far as pastries go), inheriting the fine pastry traditions of both
the Austrian and Turkish empires!
This is how fruit gets from the farmer to you.
This guy drove overnight to Bucharest from his farm in
County
Dolj, with a truck full of
golden melons and watermelons (pepene galben şi
pepene verde), really the only kinds of melons you'll find
in most pieţe (market plazas).
Golden, Ruby or Purple, these little plums pack
a powerful flavour and the high sugar content is valued for it's
ability to produce an equally powerful ţuică,
the traditional plum brandy.
For the average English-speaker, shopping for fruit and vegetable
produce in the local market can be an almost-amusing prospect.
Forget about finding avocados, broccolini, white asparagus, crimini
mushrooms or kiwifruit! Even the western-style big-name
supermarkets in Romania like Carrefour, Gima and Billa carry a rather
limited range of fresh fruit and vegetables, roughly a quarter to one
third of the number of lines found in a comparably sized supermarket in
your home town.
Simply Seasonal
But, you will be won over by the amazing freshness, quality and
flavour of the marvellously unadulterated fruits and vegetables you will
find! Almost everything you find at your local market is
very fresh and very traditional -- Romanians naturally eat the foods
they are familiar with for hundreds of years.
In June and July you will see vendors with plastic cups full of
fabulous raspberries, wonderful summer peaches and simply superb plums.
The carrots might look a little funny, but the flavour will stand as a
glowing testament to the rich alluvial soils of the Wallachian plain.
Cherries in particular are about one-quarter the price in season
compared with American market prices, and are completely delicious and
addictive. The sour cherry, called "vişine"
or "Morello cherry" from its Italian and English name is also a
taste-treat not to be missed!
The Tale of the Tomato
They often have little nipples, are slightly oval shaped and
smallish, and taste like heaven. But why? What has happened
to these tomatoes in the west?
Pretty much these sumptuous Romania tomatoes have been relegated to
old-variety seed packs in the west for a variety of reasons. First
of all is transport -- they are simply not designed to survive on trucks
and trains for days on end. Romanian tomatoes find their way
to markets often by way of somebody's grandmother, and not some road
train.
Tomatoes Take Pride of Place
These ruby delights were freshly picked by a
grandmother near Roşiori de Vede in County Teleorman
the morning of the lunch.
Secondly, Romanians haven't quite figured out how to maximise profit
and gas-ripen their tomatoes. They do a rather charming thing:
They grow the tomatoes with sunshine and good soil, then pick them and
sell them at the local market. Amazing.
Romanian tomatoes are eaten by local soccer hooligans and old women
alike, with understandable gusto. It is not uncommon for a
young lad to sit down to a bowl (most food in Romania is served in a
shallow wide bowl) of sliced tomatoes, with cucumbers, onion, or other
additions fairly optional. This is eaten with some fresh somewhat
crusty bread (they are not used to the sliced sponges served in the
West), bought in short bats.
Your Local Market
The Piaţă has just about everything you'd
need, and all within walking distance of your apartment block!
The sheer utility and convenience of the hundreds of markets across
any Romanian town or city is fairly stunning to Westerners accustomed to
having to use a car to go shopping.
Major markets support usually two or three smaller ones even closer
to most of the apartment buildings, and although they offer less
variety, absolutely all the essentials for a Romanian menu are available
there, from the ubiquitous mărar (a vegetable
dill used in bulk in soups, salads, pickles and meat dishes), to a wide
variety of root vegetables, leafy greens, and a small sampling of basic
fruits.
Mushrooming Interest
The residents of a small County Covasna community gathered to break
the record books. Dozens of villagers had been out collecting the
prize ingredient for days, in their hopes to enter the Guinness Book of
World Records.
The big ingredient? Gorgeous fresh chanterelle mushrooms for an
enormous cream of mushroom soup. 200kg were collected,
delicately placed in stacks of open crates, added to the jugs of cream,
butter and seasoning, including the fleshy culinary dill widely used
throughout Romania.
Presenting: The Sour Cornel
For the average north American or Australian,
Romania offers some new fruits. Below is the
Cornel, an edible fruit with an acidic flavour; it is mainly
used for making jam, but also can be eaten dried. Grown for fruit
in the Moldova region, the Cornel can bear fruit up to 2 inches
long!
Hungry for some forest treats?
During the summer months, Romanians will just pull off the
mountain forest road and go hunting for their favourite berries!
You'll delight in a little forest feed of bilberry and
cowberry bushes, wild grapes, maces, gooseberry bushes and more!
Just pull the car over and look around.
Romania definitely offers quite a few taste treats for anyone from
an English-speaking country!
Whilst the widespread use of pork as the primary meat will delight
many, it is the fabulous array of side-dishes and extras you can order
which will keep you happy throughout your travels in Romania.
Westerners may get a slightly creepy feeling after about a week in
Romania as they eat in one restaurant after another. The menus are
surprisingly similar, and any chef would encounter few surprises moving
jobs between restaurants.
One of the more curious phrases in use across Romania is the
"Specific Româneşte" tag, meaning that the
restaurant specialises in traditional Românian
cuisine. The reason this is curious, is because roughly
two-thirds of the menu would be very much the same at a restaurant up
the road which advertises itself as "Italian".
This is largely due perhaps to years of isolation since the 1940s,
as well as the obvious issues of availability of other exogenous
ingredients throughout the decades prior and hence.
It should be considered that rarely does one travel abroad and find
an "Australian restaurant" or an "American restaurant", so that fact
that at least there is such a thing as a "Romanian restaurant" probably
points to the fact the it is a "whole" cuisine, not a fractured mish-mash
as in most English-speaking countries.
The terrace cafe is an adjunct to most street-side restaurants,
where the summer hours can be enjoyed late into the night.
After harsh winters with sweeping cold winds, the summer months are
savoured with vigour.
Popular with students in the university districts, the terasa offers
the perfect spot for a beer, a coffee or all-too-often in Romania, a
cigarette.
A Standard Romanian-"Italian" Menu
Schnitzel, Livers, Salads, Fried potatoes and more!
The Romanian Table
At the Hotel EcoTur in
Ceahlău in the Moldova Region
Table service is not markedly different from most English-speaking
restaurants in either the top-end or low-end of the restaurant market.
There is not the American style conglomeration of condiments on the
table, although if you need a fix, you can always duck into McDonald's
for a few ketchup sachets.
Wine and water are many times served by the bottle rather than the
glass, so ask ahead of time. Bottles of wine are also sold at most
small terrace cafes which may or may not have table service.
Do note that Romanian coffee is a legacy from it's days as a
Turkish protectorate, and is still made with the grounds in the bottom.
This is sometimes the "narghilea" coffee, or made in an "ibric" (pot),
and all instant coffee is called "ness", named after a leading brand
from Nescafe.
Also, you should ask about pricing before you order. Many main
course meats and fish are served and priced per gram, and not as a
single menu item, so specify how much you want exactly before the wait
staff leaves the table! We've all been caught in this one --
including the infamous trout served to an unsuspecting American which
turned out to be a rather enormous fish, and at a high price per 100g,
the bill was too!
How Romanians Eat
In the height of summer, this typical Romanian
family savours what else? Some hot tripe soup! The
Ciorbă de Burta is relished with a mouthful
of bread and a few bites of a sharp pepper.
The Cheeky Way!
It is customary (amongst 80% of Romanians at least) to feed
bread or other solids into the dominant cheek whilst eating, a habit which is
especially pronounced with wet foods such as the perennial soups.
Romanians have no idea this eating style is not used in
English-speaking countries, and see nothing odd about it.
This Cora hypermarket centre offers the
ever-present and inimitable parking garage for its' Bucharest
facility
Major Supermarkets in Romania
miniMAX Discount (3 discount supermarkets)
Carrefour (6 hypermarkets nationwide)
Cora (2 hypermarkets in Bucharest)
Kaufland (12 hypermarkets nationwide)
Tengelmann - Plus super discount markets
La Fourmi (6 supermarkets in Bucharest)
Angst (19 supermarkets)
REWE International
Billa (19 hypermarkets)
XXL (5 hypermarkets) Penny Market (18 supermarkets)
Selgros (12 cash and carry stores)
Nic
Vox Maris
Altex
G'market (4 hypermarkets)
Mega Image
Metro Cash and Carry (23 cash and carry stores)
Real
Praktiker
Profi
Plus
Univers'all
The supermarket game started in earnest in Romania after the 1989
Revolution with foreign players rushing into the market, each battling
for their share of the newly opened market. Major cities are
now ringed with hypermarket centres, with more going up each month, from
Carrefour and Cora to Metro, Praktiker, Kaufland, and more.
Mainline supermarket chains like La Fourmi, Angst, Gima and Billa
dot the Bucharest neighbourhoods, offering home items and product ranges
the local neighbourhood open-air markets don't quite get.
You'll find a complete range of supermarkets in most major cities,
from smaller Alimentara neighbourhood supermarkets, to the mid-sized
Billa and Gima types, up to the larger Carrefour and Cora
everything-under-one-roof types.
What's In the Aisles
Many of the brand names will be familiar to Westerners, and some
only to Europeans.
Certainly the Knorr soup mixes will be a familiar brand, although
the Knorr Instant Tripe Sour Soup flavour may not be!
Smallgoods (deli meats like hams and salami) probably garner three
or four times the relative shelf space compared with American and
Australian supermarkets, and the produce (fruit and veg) sections in a
typical inner city supermarket is surprisingly small.
Even at larger hypermarket type operations, only 40 or 50 different
varieties fruit and vegetables will be presented.
The cheese counter will be quite large, although filled with mostly
Romanian sharp white cheese brânza varieties,
along with a few other hard cheese types.
The Caviar Counter of course is a rather wonderful addition to the
larger stores, with Romania's proximity to the Black Sea meaning prices
about one-fifth to one-quarter the North American prices.
Romanian cuisine is diverse, blending the dishes of several
traditions which it came into contact with, as well as maintaining its
own character. It was greatly influenced by the Balkan cuisine,
especially during the short Turkish invasions, but also includes
influences of the cuisines of other neighbours, such as Germans,
Serbians or Hungarians.
Due to some fairly rigid isolationist policies during the
Communist years, and only minor exposures to the broader world in the
late 1800s and pre WWII period, Romanian cuisine has remained cohesive.
What is striking -- and almost freaky for the first-time Romanian
traveller -- is that menus across the country are staggeringly similar,
with only minor regional differences appearing.
On the surface, English-speakers will pick the cuisine as
sort of Northern Italian (polenta and pastas), and sort of German
(schnitzel of veal and chicken), Slavic (borsch-like soups and cabbage
dishes) and sort of Turkish too (grilled kefti meats spiced with juniper
berries and rosemary).
Meats and Cheese
Beef, Pork, Bird Livers, Sausage and deep-fried cheese balls.
What more protein could a person need?
Made from ground meat and some rather wonderful
spices usually including cumin, rosemary and ground dried juniper
berries, along black pepper and sea salt, the traditional mici can
be found alongside neighbourhood public pools, in the park and
anywhere a smoke-filled wood grill can be set up!
Garlic Anyone?
Ask for some garlic, and you'll get garlic.
Great when brushed on the bread with your mici, or jus sometimes
eaten! Picutred here with some Stella and the ever-wonderful
vişine juice (sour cherry)
We eat to live, or live to eat?
Romanians love to eat, and they eat a lot with a great
diversity. A great number of proverbs and sayings have developed
around the activity of eating:
Sărut-mâna pentru masă,
c-a fost bună şi gustoasă,
şi bucătăreasa frumoasă
Thank you for the meal,
it was good and tasty,
and the cook was beautiful
Mulţumescu-ţi ţie Doamne,
c-am mâncat şi iar mi-e foame
Thank you Lord,
for I have eaten and I am hungry again
Dragostea trece prin stomac
Love passes through the stomach
Pofta vine mâncând
Appetite comes while eating
Porcul mănâncă orice, dar se-ngraşă pentru alţii
The pig eats anything, but it gets fat for others
Mâncat bine, băut bine, dimineaţa sculat mort
Ate well, drank well, in the morning woke up dead
Many traditional dishes and recipes in Romania bear the same influences
as those of other Latin cultures.
From the Roman occupation of Dacia (which lasted about 150 years) is
the simple pie called plăcintă in
Romanian, in keeping with the initial meaning of the Latin word placenta.
The Ottoman Turks, who ruled Dobrogea for 450 years and under which
Romanian Principalities were governed, brought to the ethnic Romanians
the mititei or "mici" - grilled long logs of
minced meat and spcies or perişoare in
a meatballs soup).
With a more Greek influcence, Romanians greedily enjoy a good musaca, from the
Bulgarians there are a wide variety of vegetable dishes like zacuscă,
and from the Austrians, there is the inverterate şniţel.
One of the most common dishes is the mămăliga, a cornmeal mush, for
a long time considered the poor man's dish (N-are nici o mămăligă pe masă
- He hasn't even a mămăliga on the table), but it has became
very much
appreciated in recent times.
Pork is the main meat used in Romanian
cuisine (Peştele cel mai bun, tot porcul rămâne - The best fish will
always be the pork), but also beef is consumed and a good lamb or fish
dish is rarely refused. Unlike Australians, lamb can be a little
dicey for some Romanians not used to it.
In conjunction with special events or
periods, different recipes are prepared. During Christmas traditionally
a pork is cut and prepared by every family in a wide variety of
traditional recipies like: cârnaţi (or cărnaţi) - a kind of long
sausages with meat, caltaboşi (or cartaboşi) - sausages made with liver
and other intestines, piftie a gelly thing made with difficult to use
parts like the feet or the head and ears and also tochitură (a kind of
stew) is served along with mămăligă and wine (so that the pork can swim)
and of course sweetened with the traditional cozonac (sweet bread with
nuts or lokum - rahat in Romanian).
At Easter lamb is served and the
main dishes are roast lamb and drob - a cooked mix of intestines, meat
and fresh vegetables, mainly green onion, seved with pască (pie made
with cottage cheese) as a sweetener.
Wine is the main drink and has a tradition of over two millennia.
Romania is the world's ninth-largest wine producer, and recently the
exports have started to grow.
A wide variety of domestic (Fetească,
Grasă, Tamâioasă) and worldwide (Italian Riesling, Merlot, Sauvignon
blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Muscat Ottonel) varieties are
produced.
Whether white or red is your fancy, Romania
has an astonishing array of quality vineyards, many planted
in the 1600s and later by French monks. Cheers!
Cabernet Sauvignon
is a red wine that has a deep, astringent flavour. A fine wine, its
taste gets better with time, adding in firmness and intensity.
Merlot
is a red wine, which offers a wide variety of taste: from light and
simple to full-bodied and complex wines. Merlots are often less tannic
and more voluptuous than Cabernets, though still full-bodied, deep in
colour and fairly high in alcohol.
Babeasca neagră is a
deep-coloured, full-bodied wine that ages well. The colour is the red of
ripe watermelon. Aged, it keeps its complexity adding a fruity sensation
and a delicate touch.
Pinot Noir
is a ruby-red to purple wine that reminds of black cherries sweetness and
flavour. The aroma is velvety, rich in depth and elegant, one of the
finest in the world. Its personality is amplified with time.
Italian Riesling
is a dry white wine. It has a subtle, refined peach or apricot flavour.
Floral and fruity, this delicate wine pairs with the greatest cuisine.
The
Sarica-Niculitel Riesling contributes to Romanian wines
acknowledgement on foreign markets.
Sauvignon
is a dry or medium dry wine recognizable for its grassy, herbaceous
colour and aroma. Sauvignon has a crisp jasmine or freshly cut yellow
peppers flavour. It can be drunk young or aged several years.
Feteasca Regală
is a dry white wine. Its colour varies from yellow - lemon green to
golden. Its soft taste often shows a scent of wild flowers.
Feteasca
Albă is a gold to green-gold wine
which through development and time turns to a straw golden yellow.
Always, the wine retains the aroma and the floral bouquet of the local
vines. Feteasca Albă is a wine whose
reputation is owed in equal measures to the variety and viticultural
traditions of the region.
Aligoté
is found in Moldova and Dobrogea, with a honey-lemon-yellow and
sometimes a straw yellow colour, and is great when young, with fresh
clean notes. It's produced as a strong dry white with moderate
acid and full taste.
Pinot Gris
has a pleasant yellow - green to yellow - golden colour. Pinot Gris
wines can range from light and delicate to fairly full-bodied. It can be
rather subtle in flavour and aroma, the best examples being reminiscent
aromas of cherries, almonds and apples.
Wine for Everyone! No, Really!
It should be noted that wine in Romania is not always enjoyed in
the same way that wine is treated in English-speaking countries.
Wine is often used as a mixer to make a şpriţ (spritz).
After a soccer game, you'll find players sitting at a local terasa
(outdoor beer garden with food) pouring a cola into their Premiat wine.
Clubs in particular have the habit of serving a bottle of chilled rose
with some cola or lemonade mixers rather grandly on a tray.
Try Club Manele in Bucharest for such fine banquette-side service.
Yes, we're being sarcastic now.
Also Romania is the number two plum grower on the planet, and almost all
plum production becomes the famous ţuică (a one time refined plum
or grape
brandy, up to 50 proof) or palincă (2 or more times refined plum brandy,
to 90 or 100 proof).
Quite surprisingly, many of the local wines are MADE for mixing,
and go very well as a spritz with soft drinks, here at a
terasă after a football game in the park
Seriously, don't miss this stuff. It is
ruby-red and fabulous, and stains horribly if you spill it.
The Remarkable Vişine
This truly fabulous little sour cherry grows all
across the Wallachian plains, the perfect balance of sweet and sour,
and a popular flavour for soft drinks (Fanta Vişine
is a good choice) and juices (the Prigat
and Cappy brands are best).
The type of plums used however are not entirely familiar
to Westerners, having a large stone and a relatively small flesh around
it, coming in three main colours, a greenish gold, a light red and a
dark claret colour. They are called "corcoduşi" and despite
being perfectly sweet and tasty, you will find village trees laden,
waiting for use as ţuică.
Other popular brandy type drinks include
rachiu (fruit brandy),
secărică (caraway seed brandy), and
vişinată (a type of sour cherry liqueur).
Beers North and South
Also beer is
highly appreciated, generally blonde pilsener beer, made with German
influences. It is not far off most of the beers brewed in the Czech
Republic for example, although beers differ widely in taste, flavours
and overall quality. Almost are beers are regional
creations, with no single brand claiming the national market
effectively.
While price is sometimes a good guide to your beer
quality, some cheaper brands such as Timişoareana
(Miss from Timişoara in the west), can be more
similar to American beers such as Budweiser and Coors.
Braşov's Ursus (Bear Beer) has a somewhat stouter
character, reminiscent more of Australia's Carlton Gold or Toohey's New.
Ciuc is slightly more hoppy. None really rise to a Heinekin or
Corona type levity of flavour, so you'll have to try several before you
find your favourite!
List of dishes
ardei umpluţi (stuffed bell pepper)
caltaboşi
chiftele (a type of large meatballs covered with a flour crust or
breadcrumb crust)
chifteluţe de ciuperci (chiftele made of mushrooms rather than meat)
ciorbă de burtă (tripe soup)
ciorbă de perişoare (meatball soup)
ciulama (white sauce stew)
dovlecei umpluţi (stuffed vegetable marrow)
drob (baked lamb intestines)
fasole verde (green bean)
frigărui
iahnie (beans stew)
piftie (meat jelly)
plăcinte (pies)
pilaf (pilaff)
pârjoale
ostropel
limbă cu măsline (cow tongue with olives)
mămăligă (cornmeal mush)
mâncare de mazăre (peas meal)
musaca (moussaka)
mititei (a kind of meatball in cylindrical shape)
peşte marinat (marinated fish)
plachie
rasol (with garlic or horseradish)
saramură (pickled fish)
sarmale (stuffed cabbage)
soté de morcovi (carrots sotč)
şniţel
stufat de miel
supă de găluşte (dumpling soup)
tocană, dim. tocaniţă (stew)
tochitură moldovenească (moldavian stew)
varză călită (steamed cabbage with pork ribs or duck or sausages, etc.)
zacuscă
List of Condiments and Side Dishes
ardei copţi
borş
murături (pickled items)
mujdei (a garlic compote for meats)
salată de boeuf (beef salad)
The Mighty Meatball Lives!
And well it lives in this rather fetching
meatball sour soup called ciorbă de perişoare,
presented here at the delightful terasă at Bâlea
Lake one cold summer's day at the top of the Făgăraş
mountains near Sibiu
The photo immediately preceding this notice is Copyright (c)2005 - 2008 Rest
Romania SRL, All rights reserved.
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