Romania
Polenta instead of bread, sour soups, and cabbage rolls simmered low — hearty Carpathian cooking with plum brandy.
Arrive at a Romanian table and a small glass of țuică, fierce homemade plum brandy, is pressed into your hand before you've taken your coat off. Then comes the food that carried this country through hard Carpathian winters: sarmale, cabbage rolls packed with minced pork and rice, stewed for hours and served with a dollop of sour cream and a wedge of mămăligă, the cornmeal polenta that stands in for bread across the country.
Soup here means ciorbă, soured sharp with fermented wheat bran or lemon — the tripe version is the morning-after cure, ladled hot and thick. The pantry is pork, pickles and preserves: peppers and aubergine cooked down into zacuscă for the cellar, sausages and polenta piled into a tochitură. Transylvania leans Hungarian, heavy on paprika; the south leans Ottoman. Finish with papanași, warm cheese doughnuts under sour cream and sour-cherry jam.
- Sarmale (pork & rice cabbage rolls)
- Mămăligă (cornmeal polenta)
- Mici (grilled minced-meat rolls)
- Ciorbă de burtă (sour tripe soup)
- Zacuscă (roasted-vegetable relish)
- Papanași (fried cheese doughnuts)
- Țuică (plum brandy)
