Romania – food and drinks
Bon appetit!!! The Romanians love food and they can spend hours for choosing the ingredients, preparing and cooking them. Besides, they adore sharing it with their guests. A good meal is a matter of pride. It’s very important for a Romanian to be the perfect host. Even when they have so little for themselves, the Romanians make sure that their guests have enough delicious food and drink.
If you visit a Romanian house, the host will give you a small glass of tuica ( a potent plum brandy) not because he is miserly but because that thing is so strong that might “kill’ you . You have to say “thank you, be healthy!” (multumesc, sanatate!), while you are drinking it at a draught. Even though tuica , also named rachiu, palinca or horinca was distilled for 3 times in a big copper steam boiler in their backyard, you would still feel like you were on thorns. Alan Ogden, the writer, invented the term called “palincat” meaning the crazy joy you get after a few shots of tuica. The wine, which comes from numerous vineyards, flows in every house. Romania is one of the world's top-ranking producers of numerous delicious wines, because of its grape-friendly soil and climate. Archeological evidence of country-wide wine production dates back to the classical Greek and Roman eras of settlement in Romania. Today, on a list of the world's "Top 12 Wine Producers”, Romania ranks the tenth (10th) among the world's top wine producers by volume. For a traveler, interested in viniculture, a trip to Romania offers many opportunities to visit wine producing regions and to discover and sample many different wines such as: Murfatlar, Cotnari, Jidvei, Dealu Mare and Odobesti.
The Romanians love meat and this has to be greasy and tasty. In the countryside, people usually have a mini-farm with a cow, a horse, chickens, pigs and basic vegetables. There, the food is usually home made, they even cook their own bread and in the cities you can find peasants that sell their fresh products which are organic, mostly because they can’t afford fertilizers.
Along time people have debated if the Romanian cuisine actually existed, due to some of the liberal borrowings from the cultures which have traversed and occupied its land. The cold starters usually consist in a platter of cheese, olives and salami, or fresh vegetables. The hot starters include sausages, frankfurters and cabanos often fried. The most famous are “mici or mititei” (the little ones) - small spicy skinless rissoles made with a highly seasoned mixture of pork and beef, served with garlic sauce and beer. The Romanians love salads too, especially pickles during winter and “salata de vinete” (eggplant salad) during summer. The Romanian Soups come in three versions: supa, ciorba and bors. The second two are sour soups while a supa is a simple broth or cream soup. The ingredient used to give the ciorba and bors its taste, a liquid called also bors, is a mildly vinegary amber liquid obtained by fermenting wheat bran, corn flour, and a sprig of cherry tree, thyme and basil in small water vats. Ciorba is another mainstay of the Romanian cuisine, and comes often dressed with smantana (sour cream) and served with chilli peppers. If you come to Romania, don’t forget to have “sarmale” - pickled cabbage leaves stuffed with a mix of minced meats, rice and spices and this is a classic companion to mamaliga (yellow cornmeal mush, made through stirring the cornmeal in boiled water with salt, in a special pot called ceaun, resembling a very thick Italian polenta) and smantana ( sour cream). Don’t forget about dessert either: papanasi (cottage cheese donuts, topped with sour cream and fruit preserve), clatite cu branza sau dulceata (crepes filled with cottage cheese, raisins and spices or with fruit preserve), cozonac (traditional holiday sweet bread filled with walnuts, poppy seeds).
Pofta buna!! Cheers!!
