So, what is Romanian cuisine? Why is it different from other unanimously praised and world famed cuisines?

The difference Romanian cuisine makes resides first of all in its local specificity. It is an extension of this country’s history and geography and stands out owing to its balance and taste.

The Romanian cuisine is extremely generous in offering its products, the materials for which come from zones with various physical features. From the plains it takes cereals, sugarbeet, green peas, beans, carrots, cabbage, pimentoes and tomatoes. The hillside supplies potatoes, maize, but then also grapes and all sorts of fruit. From the mountains, from sheepfolds and cattle herds come milk, cream, cheese, as well as meat. All over Romania hunting and fishing provide cuisine with an impressively diverse raw material.

In our corner of the world we eat well and our meals are quite variegated. Foreign travellers don’t easily forget the delicious Romanian dishes and, willingly or not, they become the messengers of the traditional Romanian hospitality.

In the course of its evolution, the Romanian language, a language that is very sensitive to meanings and nuances, has recorded in the golden stock of its vocabulary the word ospitalitate (hospitality) which is derived from oaspete (guest), a word in its turn akin to ospat (feast) and ospetie.

Zacusca is made from aubergines, bell peppers, onions and tomato juice either according to a classical recipe or according to the housewife’s taste, with other ingredients added. Sealed and sterilized in order to keep, the jars with zacusca then take their due place on the cellar’s shelves, until the time comes for them to delight the palate during winter holidays.

The slaughtering of swine for Christmas is another ritual preserved by the Romanians since ancient times. It begins with the killing of the animal and it goes on with the cutting and with a dinner for everyone who participated in this ritual. The traditional dish on this occasion is tochitura served with polenta and pickles and accompanied by plenty of wine. The moment marks the beginning of the Christmas holidays, with the string of feasts always including such dishes as sarmale (minced pork rolled in sauerkraut leaves or vine leaves), pork sausages, toba, caltabosi, chisca. For the carolling young people, the housewife always cooks walnut cakes and apple or pumpkin pie, or cozonac (traditional pound cake usually made for religious holidays).

Most Romanians are Orthodox Christians. Along the year their diet follows the religious calendar which sets periods of fasting prior to the major religious celebrations which are accompanied by bountiful feasts.

This actually amounts to restoration of good metabolism imposed by Christian moral which, applied in practice, proves its efficiency by helping to preserve not only one’s good health but also a natural balance.

After the Christmas and New Year holidays there comes the great fasting period of Lent, meant to purify both the body and the soul. As nature revives, man’s blood too must regenerate so that in spring the Romanians eat more and more greens, lettuce, green onion and garlic and other green leaves. We may say that Romanian cuisine has two seasons when its originality and specificity stand out: winter and spring.

After the so tasty and diverse pork dishes of winter, there come the lamb dishes at the end of a long and strict fasting period that makes Easter meals seem even tastier.

On March 9 the Romanian Orthodox Church celebrates All Saints’ Day, the day of the 40 martyrs of faith. In the region of Moldavia, housewives make mucenici (martyrs) from leavened dough arranged in the form of an 8-figure which after baking they brush with honey and sprinkle with crushed walnuts. In the region of Muntenia (onetime Wallachia), the mucenici come in a different form: tiny eights are made from unleavened dough and boiled in water with sugar and then crushed walnuts and cinnamon are added.

The Resurrection of Christ is celebrated after a few long weeks of fasting when the Romanian’s food consists of vegetable soups or broth with green onion, sauerkraut stew, or iahnie made from potatoes or beans and served with pickles or sauerkraut salad. Baked pumpkin or baked potatoes or onion replace cakes, meeting the need for sugar and supplying energy.

Traditional Easter dishes are all based on lamb and cottage cheese.

Moldavia

Moldavian cuisine is said to be the most refined of all. And when you think of it, you always remember the Moldavian housewife who, no matter the town where she lives, will always welcome you to her kitchen with the delicious chicken soup or scrambled eggs with pork scraps and cheese, or with the famous poale-n brau - small pies made from dough, eggs and cheese and fried in oil in a pan. The cakes made in this part of the country are so many and diverse one loses count. Weddings, baptisms, winter and spring holidays and even funerals are as many occasions for each Moldavian woman to show off her culinary art.

The slaughtering of the pig in winter is followed by another ritual, directed by the housewife who cooks scores of dishes: from racituri (meat jelly made with pig’s trotters) to sausages and chisca.

Vegetables, too, are turned into appetizing dishes in the Moldavian cuisine. Bean soup, stewed sauerkraut, or iahnie are the Moldavians’ favourite dishes. Standing out among their soups and broths in the ciorba de potroace. It is made with chicken entrails boiled with carrot, onion, parsley, and a spoonful or two of rice and seasoned with bors (a homemade fermentation liquid obtained from bran and water). This specific soup is said to be a remedy for hangover.

Moldavian tochitura differs from the same dish made elsewhere in Romania. It is made from pig’s liver and kidneys chopped finely, mixed with pieces of lard and fried. When this mixture is fried, a glass of wine, pepper and garlic are added and the whole is simmered for a few minutes. This dish is never served without polenta.

Polenta also accompanies Moldavian sarmale (meat rolls in sauerkraut leaves), a famous dish served in Romanian restaurants around the world.

These meatballs rolled in sauerkraut or vine leaves are made from minced pork mixed with rice, salt, pepper, chopped dill and parsley as well as chopped onion; small portions of this mixture are then rolled in sauerkraut or vine leaves and boiled.

The province that stretches along the Danube, over the Romanian Plain up to the Carpathian Mountains used to be famed for the banquets thrown by the Wallachian voivodes in honour of their foreign guests. This region’s cuisine is influenced by the French gastronomy. Thus, besides the traditional dishes based on vegetables and meat, well known and appreciated are the borsch made from sorrel, from nettles, beans, mushrooms or chicken. Fried or broiled Danube mackerel is a dainty dish appreciated both by locals and their neighbours in the other provinces of Romania. In Muntenia people also like dried prune stew or prune and meat stew. Cheese or pumpkin pie is often eaten here, notably in winter. Puddings, salads - a la russe or boeuf salad, pasta and the delicious sweet doughnuts made from dough fried in oil combine very well with the pilaf, moussaka or chulama of Mid-Eastern origin.

The chicken stew with quinces or apricots or the duck with olives can honourably compete for a top place among people’s favourites.

Rooster or goose jelly is favoured by the people of Muntenia although in winter they also enjoy pork jelly.

But the everyday meals of Muntenian Romanians are made up of beef or meatball borsch or else vegetable broth and omelette with onions or poached eggs with polenta and cheese.

The province of Oltenia is known for its upright, industrious but fierce people. These usually hurried people are very attached to their specific dishes and are especially fond of spicy, peppery meals. The usually simple Oltenian cuisine is always lavishly seasoned with horse radish, pepper, and chilli pepper.

Oltenian sausages are famous. They are made from equal amounts of beef and pork chopped finely with a knife and mixed with garlic, pepper and salt, the paste being then stuffed into sheep guts. Then the sausages are smoked for two hours. To anyone who has a sound gallbladder the Oltenian sausages are a genuine delight.

Lying in the West of Romania, this province whose seat is the city of Timisoara, is influenced by Serbian cuisine but still the cookery here has its own personality. The dishes favoured by the people of Banat are very spicy and the combinations are quite refined. In Banat hors d’oeuvres are given pride of place so that the term has made its way into the Banat dialect.Should Shekherazade have to speak about the dishes of Banat, she would need at least 2000 nights.

For a foreigner to realize what the typical Transylvanian likes to eat, he should think of the taste of a piece of smoked lard or bacon eaten with an onion and bread fresh from the oven, together with a glass of palinca (strong prune brandy). Such food would do good even to someone exploring the North Pole.

The people living in Transylvania, a province inside the arch of the Carpathian Mountains like a citadel surrounded by its walls, are real gourmets, though they are quite moderate in their eating habits.

Tall and upright, with slow gestures but with deep feelings, Transylvanians are renowned for their very clean households and their meals always ending with a dessert picked from an impressive list of cakes.

The Transylvanian soup, famous throughout Romania, is prepared with green peas, small slices of white ham, green garlic, tomatoes and parsley. This soup is twice tastier when eaten with a wooden spoon.

Borsch, which is widespread in Muntenia, does not meet with favour in Transylvania. Here people prefer soups - pork, beef or lamb soups sometimes seasoned with vinegar or tartaric acid and spiced with tarragon, or smoked bacon and sausage.

Typical of this region are the sauces made with pimento, onion and roasted flour, which are used instead of ketch-up. Instead of oil, Transylvanians use fat.

Pork is by far the favourite meat in Transylvanian cuisine. Locals don’t usually eat fish, since the province is crossed by quick rivers where fishing is not possible. In exchange, vegetables are enjoyed as much as meat is.

Cabbage a la Cluj is a dish as famous as the Moldavian sarmale or the Oltenian sausages. Chopped cabbage is alternated with mince in a dish and baked in the oven, after which it is served with sour cream.

Another celebrated dish is the outlaw’s stew a la Mures, often served in the villages in the area of the river Mures. Here is the recipe: two equal pieces of beef and pork are fried in fat with chopped onions. Water is added and the whole is allowed to simmer. When the meat is cooked, one or two chopped kidneys are added, as well as pepper, and the dish is simmered for another 20 minutes. Separately, a few slices of bacon and a few mushrooms are fried until soft and then added to the meat. Serve with polenta and sour cream. There cannot be a greater feast for a healthy stomach.

This is the region stretching between the Danube and the Black Sea, where the gourmet is tempted by a cavalcade of flavours and tastes belonging to the Romanian cuisine with Greek, Turkish, Tartar and Bulgarian influences.

The flocks of sheep and herds of cattle grazing on the rich pastures of Dobrogea, the fish from the many waters surrounding the region, the game of the forests, as well as the grains, vegetables and fruit offered by this fertile land to its inhabitants provide a variegated raw material for the imaginative cooks of Dobrogea.

Tourists coming to this region, and especially those who spend some time on the Black Sea coast, will long remember the delicious tripe soup, noted for its nutritional value as well as for the fact that it is said to be a remedy after bacchic excesses.

For this very tasty soup the main ingredient is beef tripe, well cleaned and boiled in salted water. When it is tender, carrots and onions, as well as pepper and garlic are added. The soup is further boiled and then allowed to cool. Then the tripe is cut into narrow strips, the soup is strained and the liquid is again simmered with the strips of tripe. It is served seasoned with vinegar or sour cream.

Finally, other dainty dishes from Dobrogea’s cuisine that might tempt the traveller are plachia de crap (carp cooked with onions and oil), spitted lamb and various sorts of shellfish prepared in a very simple manner and served with garlic sauce.

Turkish coffee has long been liked for its flavour, and the inhabitants of Dobrogea are good at making it, just as they make excellent cakes with walnuts and syrup called baclava and sarailie.

The Danube Delta is a heaven of birds and fish. It is famed not only for its beauty, which is unique in Europe and in the world, but also for the fish dishes prepared here. Certain sorts of fish, that exist only in the delta or that migrate from the Black Sea into the delta at certain moments of the year, are known for their fine taste, and this is also due to the skill with which the locals prepare them.

Many foreigners who visited the Danube Delta were amazed by the many types of fish here as well by the craftsmanship of the fishermen and by their exotic boats, but especially by the sheer size of the sturgeon (sometimes weighing as much as 300 kg) and by the Romanian caviar which is even bigger than the Russian one and exists in large amounts.

Thus in the locality of Sfantu Gheorghe in the Delta, in the last century the caviar production has reached 12-14,000 kg annually. The fish oil extracted from the liver of sturgeons fished at Chilia is highly valued in the pharmaceutical industry. Yet what the traveller will undoubtedly remember, and something that accounts largely for the fame of this region, is the extraordinary taste of the celebrated fisherman’s soup, no match of which can be prepared elsewhere.

In a big cast-iron kettle supported by a trivet over a fire, water is brought to the boil with vegetables and then small fish from some 10 to 15 species are boiled in it. Then the liquid is strained and the small fish are thrown away. Big chunks of sturgeon, carp or pike are then boiled in the broth. Meanwhile fish saramura is being prepared from fish roasted on the stove or over live coals and brine.

The fish soup is eaten separately: first one eats the broth with a wooden spoon and then come the big chunks of fish on a plate over which chilli pepper or garlic is sprinkled. Finally, the saramura prepared from big chunks of carp broiled on the stove or in a spit, is served with polenta and garlic sauce.