Romanians have the peculiar habit of, on occasion, eating food. This is talk of such food. So without further ado, let’s get to the heart of the matter – sometimes literally. Romanians consume offal, we eat nose to tail, like most not that prosperous countries, waste not and all that. As a note, I will not be covering fresh blood, as this is a touchy subject for outsiders. I will just mention that the best quality is from subjects 16 to 25 and their virginity is unimportant.
I will not attempt to cover what are authentic, traditional Romanian dishes. I have no idea and doubt anyone does. There is no way of knowing where a particular dish comes from, and Romanians generally share a lot of dishes with other countries around them. There are plenty of Slavic, Turkish, Greek and German/Hungarian influences. While Romania’s version of a stuffed leafs dish may derive from Greek, they may be independent. I will not go into the food available to relatively well-off urbanites such as yours truly (the sushi isn’t bad), but what is the generally the food of the common folk (such as you glibertarians might consume were you residents of this fine country).
Romanians do eat a lot of ciorbă, but how typical it is, I dunno. Here is a example of a pork one, with a large bone with some meat covered by broth, a small glass of tuica and the requisite hot pepper. Please also notice the typical Eastern European plastic table covering for the kitchen table – which as you can see also graces my kitchen. Eating such ciorbăcan be an unaesthetic affair and a bit savage if you are not used to it, as it implies taking the bone in your hands, ripping meat off it with you teeth and then loudly slurping the bone marrow.
Some claim mujdei de usturoi is Romanian, which is basically crushed garlic with salt, oil and water. I dunno, but several countries have garlic dips, although most are creamy and mayo-like. Mujdei is more watery and has small slivers of garlic in it, unincorporated in a paste. We also have mămăligă – basically corn meal, salt and water – similar to polenta, with various degrees of softness, depending on taste. It can range from quite solid to porridge like.
Now an ehm… burning question is: is Romanian food hot or spicy? No it is not, or very rarely so. The local habit is to have a hot pepper on the side of the dish and occasionally bite it. This is raw in summer or pickled in winter. Generally Romanian farmers are not careful about grouping their peppers by heat or cultivar, so a particular pepper is usually a gamble on how hot. Romanians are not particular about cultivars so you always buy/request peppers. And in the same batch some may be hot, some not. Ciorbă is always accompanied by a hot pepper. For cabbage dishes some people – me included in some cases where the smell factor is not important – bite out of cloves of raw garlic as they eat.
As for other spices, Romanian kitchens are not spice rich. Besides the ever present salt and pepper, garlic is used a lot, alongside thyme, paprika, parsley, dill. Bay leaves on occasion. Some other dried spices in small quantities.
For oil, Romanians most often use sunflower. It is cheaper and readily available, and made the locals feel good because it is mostly of local production, Romania is an important grower of sunflowers in Europe. Similar to sugar coming from locally grown sugar beets rather than imported cane sugar, although olive oil and cane sugar are rapidly growing in quantity consumed. Vinegar is most often white wine vinegar, followed by apple vinegar.
Cheese is a big part of Romanian diet. Brânză is, as a random factoid, one of the words still considered to be left in Romanian from the Dacian language. In Romania, it is actually split into several categories: white cheese called brânză and yellow cheese called Caşcaval (etymology apparently from Sicilian Caciocavallo cheese). Brânză can be telemea (somewhat feta like) either fresh or aged, caş (soft with very little salt), urdă (made from whey) or using the diminutive branzica for cottage cheese. Caşcaval is often eaten breaded and deep fried, unlike the white stuff.
The main meats the Romanians eat are pork and chicken. Those are by far the most consumed, with beef, mutton and waterfowl as second tier, “whatever else” is third.
The main fish freshwater eaten are crap (European carp), caras (crucian carp) which is the main pan fish, somn (wells catfish), biban (perch), pastrav (trout), ştiuca (pike), şalau (zander), Scrumbie (Pontic Shad), with some other minor fish.
Traditionally more freshwater fish is eaten than salt water. Stuff like tuna and salmon and sea bream are now eaten in the cities, but I will not include them. The main saltwater fish are chefal (golden grey mullet), guvid (Pinchuk’s goby), Hamsie (anchovy) served whole deep fried, zargan (garfish, Belone belone, or sea needle). Of the pricier traditional fish, the delicacies so to say, are calcan (turbot), rechin (shark) and various sturgeons. Fish is most often eaten grilled or fried (usually dragged through corn flower before frying). Grilled fish is often eaten as Saramura (briened). Basically you heat some water, add salt, pepper, slice chile peppers in it and pour hot water on top. When you take the fish from the grill you place it in the brine, also besides on the grill sometimes bell pepper and tomatoes are added, and after grilled themselves, they are peeled cut into chunks and placed into the brine. Grilled chicken thighs are also sometimes eaten in Saramura.
Romanians, at least ones I know, usually have a side salad with dishes. Unlike other people who have the salad as a separate course, salad in Romania is on the side of the main for lunch/dinner, or as a side to breakfast. It is most often lettuce or chopped cabbage (with sunflower oil and vinegar, not ugh mayo). In summer it is tomato salad – tomatoes, salt, pepper, sunflower oil and chopped raw onion. Another local favorite is ardei copt (baked bell pepper) which is as it sounds – you put a dry pan on a fire and add peppers in it until the skin turns blackish and can be easily removed. Take them off, peel the skin; add a bit of salt, a bit of oil and a bit of vinegar, and that is it. In winter, side salads are replaced by pickles – Romanians eat a lot of pickles.
On pickles, Romanians have The Big Four pickles with a bunch of minor additions. The Big Four being cabbage, cucumbers, gogosari (a cultivar of ball pepper) and gogonele (unripe tomatoes). There are two ways of pickling: brine and vinegar. Cabbage and tomatoes are always brined, gogosar is always vinegar, cucumbers can be either the right way (brine) or the wrong way (vinegar). Cucumbers are also the only ones pickled in summer, with a different taste due to much faster pickling at a much higher temperature (often left in direct sunlight as they pickle). Autumn pickles are low temp long time.
While these are the main pickles, many other things are added, usually in smaller quantities mixed in. For example when pickling gogosari, the core is taken out and the inside filled with, in general, cauliflower, grapes and slices of carrot. Among the green tomatoes we get cauliflower, cabbage, and some green bell pepper, sometimes small unripe watermelons and sometime red beet, mostly to give it colour. Cucumbers (if you ignore some dill which is added) and cabbage are pickled alone. In general horseradish is added to most pickles as a preservative (don’t know if it actually works as one but is used as one nonetheless.)
