Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Romanian Table
Romanian dishes have a delightful, homemade character to them, incorporating the fertile
land's fresh, organic produce into relatively uncomplicated but delicious meals. Many
dishes use pork in some form, paired with a staple like polenta, potatoes or cooked cab-
bage. The recipes derive from peasant cooking going back hundreds of years, with a liberal
dose of borrowings from neighbouring (and occasionally occupying) cultures like Turkish,
Hungarian, German and Slav.
Comfort Food
Romanian food wasn't bred so much to dazzle as to satisfy.
Mămăligă
, a corn-meal mush
(often translated as 'polenta' on English menus), seemingly was designed to warm and fill
the stomach. You'll find it at restaurants, inns and family homes around the country - it can
be disappointingly bland or stodgy in restaurants, but when homemade and served with
fresh
smântână
(sour cream), it certainly hits the spot.
Mămăligă
pairs beautifully with
sarmale
, the
country's de facto national dish (though it's ac-
tually an import from the days of Ottoman rule)
and comfort-food extraordinaire.
Sarmale
are
cabbage or vine leaves that are stuffed with
spiced meat and rice; the
mămăligă
here
provides an excellent backstop for soaking up
If you want to make your own
mămăligă,
a couple
of good books include Galia Sperber's
The Art of
Romanian Cooking
and Nicolae Klepper's
Taste of
Romania
.
the juices.
Soups & Stews
Romanian meals always begin with soup, usually a 'sour' soup called
ciorbă
. The sour
taste derives from lemon, vinegar, cabbage juice or fermented wheat bran added during
preparation. Sour soups come in several varieties - the local favourite is
ciorbă de burtă
, a
light garlicky tripe soup. Others worth looking for include
ciorbă de perişoare
(spicy soup
with meatballs and vegetables) and
ciorbă de legume
(vegetable soup cooked with meat
stock).
