Cozonac

"Classic Romania Christmas and Easter cake, stuffed with walnut, Turkish Delight or raisins"

One of the things that most Romanians associate closely with Christmas is ‘cozonac’, a sweet eggy cake or bread which has various fillings running through it. It somewhat resembles a brioche in texture (when made well and fresh). The filling that I’ve most commonly encountered in Romania is a cocoa-walnut paste, but you frequently find it with other things, such as raisins and ‘rahat’ (Turkish Delight/Lokum) or even candied fruits.

Ideally, I’d be baking it in my wood-burning oven in the countryside, but, due to the pandemic and social distancing, it’s really not worth my firing it up to bake 20 cozonac when there is nobody to share them with, and besides, it’s probably more useful to experiment in the regular oven as that's what most people will be using. So, fingers crossed, here goes my first ever attempt at making a Romanian cozonac!

Time: 30 minutes working time, 90 minutes proving, 45 minutes baking

Servings: two to three cakes

Ingredients:

For the dough:

500g of warm milk, as fatty as possible
200g of sugar (brown or white)
100g of melted butter
100ml sunflower/vegetable oil
5 egg yolks, beaten
2 cubes of fresh yeast (about 50g)
1kg of good plain white flour
1 vial of vanilla essence (optional)
Zest of one lemon

Walnut filling for one cozonac (dough above makes 2-3 cozonac):

250g of walnuts, ground (coarsely or finely, according to preference)
2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
3 tablespoons of icing sugar (I found it quite bitter so put more if you like a sweeter cake)

Other/additional fillings:

200g of Turkish Delight/candied fruits
200g of raisins

For glazing:

One egg yolk
A splash of milk
A little sugar
Poppy seeds (optional)

PRO TIP: make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature before starting.

Method:

1.       First of all we need to make the yeast starter. Crumble up the two cubes of fresh yeast into a small bowl, add a heaped tablespoon of the flour and a teaspoon of the sugar and pour on four or five tablespoons of the warm milk and beat into a smooth paste. Leave it in a warm place for 15-20 minutes and you should see it start to swell and bubble a little, meaning the yeast is good and has become active.

2.       Pour the rest of the warm milk into a bowl, add the 200g of sugar (can be white or brown, according to taste) and stir until dissolved. 

3.       Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl and add the yeast starter, which should have shown signs of activity by now. Add the grated lemon zest and the five beaten egg yolks. Add about half of the milk/sugar mix to the flour and start to mix them together. Continue added the milk and mixing until you get a fairly consistent but sticky mixture. The dough for cozonac should be quite a sticky one, not as firm as, for example, bread dough.

4.       Once it is well combined (only takes a couple of minutes) you can start to add the melted butter (100g) and oil (100ml). If you want a more luscious texture, you can use just 200g of melted butter, particularly if you haven’t used very fatty milk. Whatever combination you use, add a little, knead, add more, knead, and so on till it has all been combined. At this point you can sprinkle on the vanilla essence too if using it.

5.       Next comes the hard work – the kneading. Go at it hard, stretch it, punch it, pull it, throw it – really work at it. And you need to do this for 10-15 minutes until you achieve an elastic texture. You could use a machine if you don’t feel like the work out. Once done, cover with a clean towel and leave in a warm spot to prove for about an hour, or however long it takes to roughly double in volume.

6.       While it’s proving, you can prepare the fillings. Put the ground walnuts into a bowl, mix in the cocoa powder and the icing sugar, and then add a splash of milk and start to beat the mixture into a paste, something like the consistency of peanut butter – not too liquid but spreadable. Set aside. NOTE: The quantities for the walnut mix are enough for ONE of the two cozonacs. I chose to make one with walnuts, and one with raisins and Turkish delight. If you want walnut paste in both, then double the quantities.

7.       [See ‘observations’ below before starting this part] When the dough has risen sufficiently, prepare a workspace by oiling or flouring it. Cut the dough into two equal parts, take one of the halves and with your hand spread it out into a rectangle about 1cm thick. Spread some of the walnut/cocoa paste over the dough, keeping a few centimetres back from the edges, and then, if you like, you can sprinkle on some raisins and/or some Turkish delight cubes (as much or as little as you like). Repeat with the second half, using whatever filling you fancy.

8.       Roll up the dough, starting from the longest edge, and put into a long narrow loaf tin (lined with baking paper) with the join at the bottom. Leave it in a warm place to rise until level with the top of the tin or slightly proud. Once they have risen well, brush the top with a mixture of egg yolk and milk and sprinkle with sugar and/or poppy seeds if you wish.

9.       Pre-heat the oven to a medium heat, around 180 Celsius (360F) and bake the cozonac for about 40-45 minutes. Do NOT open the door for the first 20 minutes but after that you can check on it from time to time to make sure you don’t overcook it. I checked it by sliding a knife into the middle and seeing if it came out sticky – if so, then the centre is still raw and needs more time.

10.   When cooked through, remove, de-tin, and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Observations: 

This was my first time cooking cozonac although I’ve got quite a lot of experience eating it, especially home-cooked versions from the countryside. My attempt, well, it was ok for a first go, I suppose.

On the positive side, the cozonac was light, fluffy and delicate, but perhaps needed a little more sweetness, especially the one with the walnuts. The walnut paste was a little bitter (fine if you’re a black chocolate lover) but next time I think I will increase the sweetness of the walnut paste.

The one mistake I made was not using big enough loaf tins. Mine were 25cm long and two portions of dough was too much for them meaning that they puffed up too much and the extra cooking time (maybe an hour in total) left the inside perfect, but the crust was a little burnt and bitter. For the Turkish Delight one, I reduced the amount of dough and it came out a lot better – cooked inside and golden brown on the outside. So, I would recommend the above quantities for three 25cm tins or two if they are the longer ones (I’ve seen some around 35cm which would probably be ideal).

Good luck and pofta buna!!

Flavours of Romania

"Flavours of Romania"

A nine-part series covering the cuisine and culture of Romania.

Presented by Charlie Ottley, who has already produced a number of documentaries about Romania's wildlife and countryside, and who recently purchased his own farmhouse in the country of Brasov near the Piatra Craiului mountains, the series travels from region to region exploring its culinary traditions. You can find more details about the series here:

Internet Movie Database

"Flavour of Romania" Facebook page

Netflix page

I'm not sure if it's available on Netflix in all regions, so you maybe have to be creative. Let me know if you've managed to watch it in the USA, UK or other countries.

Lichiu sau Hanklich

"Saxon style bread-base and sweet dairy topping dessert" 

'Lichiu' (pronouned 'licky-oo') or 'Hanklich' in German is a dessert most Romanians from Transylvania will be familiar with. Typically attributed to the cuisine of the Saxons of Transylvania, this dessert or pie is made up of a bread base, something like a thick pizza base in a way, which is then topped with a sweet creamy mixture and baked - ideally in a wood-fired oven. It is mostly something cooked at home, particular at times of the year when there is a surplus of eggs (my countryside neighbours frequently cook it around Easter time), and the recipe varies considerably from household to household.

The picture on the left shows the lichiu made by my neighbours in the countryside, freshly removed from the wood-fired oven, out of the tins, and cooling down ready to be sliced. As you can see, when they make it, they make a lot (it's hard worth firing up the wood oven unless you plan to do a big bake). Alongside this, they also baked bread, cozonac (a kind of traditional cake) and a few other goodies. In the end I think they made 12 tins of lichiu!

I have seen it on rare occasions in restaurants - a pizza place I visited once advertised it on the menu and out of curiosity I ordered it. It was basically a pizza base with the vaguely lichiu-like topping but with plums added. So if you want to try something less commonly known from the Romanian countryside, why not put on your baking hat and try some lichiu. 

Time: A couple of hours of prep and baking, depending on the oven 

Serving: 8-10 slices 

Ingredients: 

For the base dough:

350g of white flour 

25g cube of fresh yeast (or a teaspoon of dried) 

2 egg yolks (save the whites for the topping) 

Zest of one lemon 

3 tablespoons of sugar 

50ml of oil (vegetable is fine) 

1 teaspoon of salt Warm milk (have about 

250ml to hand, but you'll add it as needed) 

For the topping: 

1 litre of milk 

1 cup of 'gris' (this is semolina flour) 

Sugar to taste 

1/2 a teaspoon of salt 

6 egg whites 

4 egg yolks 

100g of butter 

350g of heavy cream 

2 small packets of vanilla (or equivalent in essence if preferred) 

Method: 

1. First of all, you should prepare the dough. Firstly, prepare a yeast starter by mixing together the yeast, one tablespoon of the sugar, one tablespoon of the flour and about 100ml of the warm milk (make sure it's not too hot or it'll kill the yeast). Mix these together well and leave in a warm place. In about 10-15 minutes, you should see it start to froth and smell 'yeasty', this means it's activated and ready to use. 

2. Once it's ready, put the rest of the flour in a large bowl (or on a surface if so inclined) and make a well in the middle. Into the well add the prepared yeast starter and the two egg yolks and the salt. Start to combined them (eggs, starter, salt) and then add the rest of the warm milk, the rest of the sugar, the zest. Start to draw in the flour and bring it all together to make a dough, adding the oil little by little once a dough it formed. Keep keep kneading the dough until it becomes more 'elastic' and stops sticking to your hands. 

3. When you feel the dough is ready (this is something bread or pasta makers amongst you will 'feel', otherwise, just kneed it until well combined and no longer 'sticky'), rub a little oil on the ball of dough, put it in a large bowl, cover, and leave in a warm place to rise to about double its original size. 

4. Meanwhile, make a thick semolina by boiling the semolina flour in the milk. Add sugar according to taste (I've had lichiu that's very sweet and other times almost savoury, but it is a dessert and I think it tastes better on the sweeter side). Leave the mixture too cool. 

5. Beat the egg whites until they start to make peaks, then fold it in gradually into the semolina, which should be luke warm. 

6. Separately, blend the four egg yolks with the butter, add the vanilla flavouring, and then gradually mix in the heavy cream. 

7. Finally, once the dough has risen, roll it out to about 3-4mm. You can use a shallow baking tray here, or maybe even a pie dish, whatever you have to hand. Traditionally they trays are greased but unlined, but feel free to use baking paper if you prefer. Lay the rolled-out dough in the tray and adjust it to go right to the edges. Pour the semolina mixture onto the dough base, then spread the cream mixture on top of that, making sure to spread it out evenly. 

8. Bake the lichiu for about 40-45 minutes (keep an eye on it) until it is gold brown on top. If using a conventional oven, pre-heat it to about 180 Celsius. 

 Pofta buna and let me know how yours turned out!

Musaca de Cartofi

"Potato moussaka"

Moussaka is a fairly common dish over the Balkans with many different variations and using a variety of 'on-hand' ingredients. The dish is thought to have originated in the Middle East and spread throughout the region during the period of Ottoman rule. It's name suggests a dish that was continuously 'fed liquid' to keep it moist as it baked, although most common versions are more solid. Many Balkan versions spurn the eggplants so popularised by the well-known Greek version, and quite commonly have a top layer of cream solidified with egg. This version mixes the cream with the middle meat layer but its slow cooking results in a tasty and perhaps lighter-feelings dish with less stodge.

Time: 2 hours
Servings: 4 big slices or maybe 6 smaller ones.
Ingredients:

750g of potatoes, peeled and sliced
500g of minced meat (could be lamb, beef or pork or a mixture)
1 carrot, peeled and grated
2 onions, finely chopped
An egg
1/2 cup of 'smantana de gatit' (unsweetened cooking cream)
1/2 cup of white wine
1 cup of tomato bullion
1 level tablespoon of caster sugar
2 juicy ripe tomatoes
Salt, pepper and thyme
1/2 cup of soup stock (or half a beef stock cube dissolved in 1/2 cup of boiling water)
Oil for frying, butter for greasing dish, and some breadcrumbs or flour for dusting.

Method:

1. Pour a few millimetres of olive oil (traditionally you can use 'untura' (pig lard)) into a frying pan and brown off the potato rounds in batches on each side, removing them to a plate as the turn colour.
2. Gently fry the onion for a few minutes in the remaining oil and, once it has turned translucent and taken on a little colour, add the minced meat and the grated carrot and cook on a low-ish heat until the meat has changed colour.
3. Add the bullion, watered down a little if it seems too thick, and simmer the meat gently for about half an hour, being careful not to let it burn or stick (add a splash of water if and when needed), until a rich meat sauce, not too runny, remains. Allow to cool when done.
4. Meanwhile, grease a tray with butter or lard and sprinkle the sides and bottom with breadcrumbs ('pesmet') or flour.
5. Into the cooled meat sauce, mix in the egg and the cream and add salt, pepper and thyme to taste.
6. Place a layer of the potato slices in the bottom of the tray, then spread the meat sauce of top, followed by another layer of the remaining potato slices on top of the meat.
7. Thinly slice the ripe tomatoes and place them in a layer on top of the potatoes.
8. Pour the wine and stock over the top.
9. Put it in the oven on the relatively low heat and allow to cook for about an hour or until it starts browning off on top and most of the liquid has disappeared.

Gogosi

"Traditional Romanian doughnuts"

These little puffy balls of delight are a typical home-cooked treat. The kind of thing mothers make to feed the family, and the neighbour's family, and visitors, and anyone who happens to be in the area. While they take some time to make, the are wonderful fresh and warm and can be eaten as they are, or stuffed with jam or chocolate spread.

You sometimes see them in the markets, although they might have different names or shapes, such as their bigger, flatter cousin, the "langosi" (which are often sold with sour cream or even savoury cheese). You sometimes see shops selling them as 'gogosi infuriate', which translates as 'infuriated gogosi', I suppose because they are cooked in boiled oil.

Time:3 hours

Servings: about 60 gogosi

Ingredients:

1kg of plain white flour
1 teaspoon of salt
400ml of milk
1 egg
2 small packets of vanilla-flavoured sugar (8g each)*
1 teaspoon of grated lemon rind
200g sugar
100ml of oil (sunflower) or melted butter
Fresh yeast ('a chuck the size of a large walnut' - probably about 35g)
More oil for deep frying
Icing sugar for dusting

*This is a common ingredient in Romanian shops, but if you can't find it where you are, just add a couple more teaspoons of sugar and perhaps a few drops of vanilla essence.

Method:

1. Prepare the yeast starter by mixing 3 tablespoons of milk, the yeast, a teaspoon of sugar and 2 tablespoons of flour in a bowl (better if the milk isn't too cold) and leaving it in a warm place. You should quickly see a froth forming on the top, which lets you know the yeast is good and activated.
2. In the meantime, gently warm up the rest of the milk, add the rest of the sugar, the teaspoon of salt, the two packets of vanilla-flavoured sugar, the lemon rind, and mix until the sugar has dissolved.
3. Into a large mixing bowl, put the rest of the flour, break an egg into a well in the middle of the flour, add the yeast mixture from step 1 and the milk mixture from step 2 and incorporate the flour into the liquid slowly until a dough starts to form.
4. Knead the resulting dough until it starts to become more consistent in texture and de-sticks more easily from your hands and the bowl.
5. Step by step mix in the oil or butter and knead into the dough mixture. It should be less sticky now and easier to work.
6. Sprinkle a little flour on the dough ball and put, covered, in a warm spot and leave it to prove for a couple of hours, until it has doubled in size.
7. Put about 4cm of cooking oil in a pan and bring to a high temperature.
8. While it heats up, take a handful of the mixture, and on a floured board with a rolling pin (maybe also sprinkled with flour to prevent sticking) roll it out until it's about 3-4mm thick. Take a drinking glass, dip it in flour, and use it to cut out some rounds of the rolled out dough. Collect up the remaining parts, form into a ball, roll out again, and so on until all the dough is used up. The rest of the dough should remain in the bowl, covered, until you have fried the first batch.
9. In batches of two or three (depending on the size of the pan), fry the dough rounds for a couple of minutes, turning once if necessary or making sure the oil covers them well, until they've puffed up and turned golden. Remove them with a slotted spoon, shake off the excess oil, and drop them into large bowl in which you have put the icing sugar and shake them around to coat them well. Remove them and put them on a large serving tray.
10. Repeat step 8 and 9 with the rest of the dough, a handful at a time, leaving the rest covered in the bowl, until you've used up all the dough.
11. Eat and enjoy!

Urzici cu Usturoi

"Garlicky nettle spread"

You know spring has come around when the local markets and street-corner vendors start stocking those gorgeous spring leaves: nettles, wild garlic, red orache, patience dock and spinach. Here's a quick a simple toast topper for the spring that uses stinging nettles (urzici).

Time: 20 minutes
Servings: 3-4 servings (enough for 1-2 people)
Ingredients:

A bag of nettles. These should be the young tips, not the large older leaves.
An onion, finely chopped
Some spring garlic (2-3 stalks) or regular garlic if you can't find the young stuff
Olive oil
Salt
A little flour

Method:

1. Wash the nettles thoroughly in four or five changes of water. In the meantime, heat up a pan of water.
2. Plunge the nettles into the boiling water, simmer for about 5 minutes till soft and intensely green.
3. Leave the nettles to drain and when cool enough to handle, give them a squeeze to get rid of excess liquid.
4. Heat up a couple of glugs of olive oil in a pan and gently saute the finely-chopped onion for a few minutes. When soft, add the nettles and stir for a few more minutes. Turn off the heat and add the finely chopped garlic (a clove will do if you don't have the spring garlic to hand), add a pinch of salt to taste and a teaspoon of flour to help the consistency.
5. Serve on crackers or freshly toasted bread.

Sarmale in foi de varza

"Meat-stuffed cabbage rolls"

Although I haven’t posted many recipes recently, partly because most of the ones I know or like I’ve already posted, but also due to a lack of time and other project, I’ve always felt this blog is incomplete with having at least one recipe for sarmale (and perhaps another for cozonac). So, with Christmas coming up I figured it was time to have a go at them. Why not give them a try and make that Romanian in your life extremely happy!

Sarmale form a staple part of Romanian festive cuisine. These meat-stuffed cabbage rolls will almost certainly grace any seasonal feast, be it Christmas or Easter or even other celebrations, such as weddings, baptisms or birthdays. Their origin is most likely Turkish, ‘sarmak’ is the Turkish verb for ‘roll up’ after all, but over time they’ve been adapted to Romanian tastes with the addition of pork. They are relatively easy to make, although cooking takes some time (2-3 hours), but they can be made in advance, reheated (apparently making them taste better) or even frozen (so I’m told).

Time: 30 minutes for prep, then 2-3 in the oven with occasional checking
Servings: Makes about 20-25 sarmale (depending how big or small you make them), enough for 4-5 hungry Romanians.

Ingredients:

About 600g of meat (pork, or a mixture of pork and beef, according to your preference)
Some smoked meat, such as ‘slanina afumata’ (smoked pork fat) or smoky bacon will do
About a cup of rice (any type really, I actually used pilaf as it’s what I had in the cupboard, but the short-grain stuff is more usual I believe)
2 large onions, finely chopped
Thyme, a couple of sprigs is good between the layers of sarmale, but you can use dried thyme out of season
Paprika, if you so desire. Most recipes don’t seem to use it, but I like this addition
2-3 bay leaves
A jug of tomato bullion, or a mixture of warm water and good tomato concentrate
Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Finely chop the two onions and sauté gently in a large pan with a splash of oil (of whatever type) until softened. Don’t fry them or they’ll turn bitter.
2. Add some finely chopped smoked meat to the onions at this stage too (if you like, not every recipe includes it) and continue cooking for a couple of minutes.
3. Turn the heat off, allow to cool a bit, and add the minced meat, rice and some of the spices and mix it all together well. Add a little seasoning.
4. Take the pickled cabbage leaves, cut out any hard parts of the stalk that’d make them difficult to roll, and cut (if they’re large leaves) in two.
5. Once you’ve sorted out the leaves which are good for rolling, finely chop the discarded parts and put a layer of these chopped pieces into the cooking vessel to form a barrier between the bottom of the pot and the first row of sarmale – this’ll help prevent burning.
6. Take a walnut-sized piece of the meat mixture, form it into a sausage shape, place it on the cabbage leaf, start to roll it up. About one half-rotation in, fold the sides of the leaf over and continue rolling to get a reasonably tight package. Place this in the pot on top of the chopped cabbage.
7. Continue this process until you have a complete layer, onto which you can place some more of the smoked meat, some sprigs of thyme, other spices (like the bay or paprika, if you so wish), and maybe more of the chopped cabbage to fill any large gaps.
8. Continue making layers in this way until you’re almost at the top of the pot, or you run out of ingredients, whichever comes first. Allow a little space at the top for expansion (you’ve added rice, remember, so they’ll puff up a bit).
9. Pour on the seasons tomato bullion so it soaks in between the tightly-packed sarmale and reaches the level of the top layer. You shouldn’t need too much if they’re well packed in the vessel. Finish it all off with a layer of whole cabbage leaves on top, just two of three to cap it off.
10. Put on the lid and either put it in the oven on a low heat for 3 hours or until cooked (after a couple of hours you can pull one out to test it) or cook it gently on the stove, being careful to check the bottom isn’t burning (hence the layer of chopped cabbage). If it looks like the sauce is running out, add a little more bullion or water to keep the sarmale moist.
11. Once you feel the meat and rice is well cooked, take them out and serve with mamaliga (polenta) and smantana (sour cream).

Pofta mare!

Pofta Buna Cookbook

Here's a little Christmas present for readers, especially in the USA. The Pofta Buna Cookbook is an authentic source of Romanian recipes written in English and published in the USA, which means all the measurements are in pounds and ounces!

The book was originally published in Ohio over fifty years ago by the young Romanian congregation of St. Mary's Orthodox church in Cleveland and contains many typical Romanian recipes, particularly from the Transylvanian region. Since then, its popularity has seen it go through fourteen reprints and a fifteenth is currently in progress.

If you're looking for an English-language book on Romanian cuisine, then please contact Marie Sandru at the following address to find out more:

Marie Sandru
St. Mary's Society
3097 West 230th Street,
North Olmsted,
Ohio,
44070

Transylvania and its food

An interesting documentary about the Transylvanian region of Romania, highlighting some traditional food production techniques and how these are being developed to promote the area and provide jobs.

Add caption

Click here to watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTAKVfBs-9U&feature=share

Common Romanian Fish - A Glossary

I've been a bit lazy when it comes to posting recipes lately, mostly because I've covered most of my sarmale (cabbage leaves stuffed with pork - one glaring omission from my blog I must confess), home-made sausages, slow-roasted belly of pork and other waist-expanding goodies, like most people, I've pledged to eat a little more healthily including plenty of fish.
favourites already. Now 2014 is here and after a festive season of stuffing my face with

Stolen from http://www.bogdanpitaru.ro

Fish is very popular in many areas of Romania, but particularly in the Danube Delta where fishing and cooking fish is a way of life. Bucharest has some excellent fish markets where you can get plenty of local freshwater varieties as well as fish from the Black Sea or those brought in from further afield. Back when I posted about grilled trout I included a short guide to choosing fresh fish so I thought it appropriate to publish a glossary or translation of Romanian fish (or if not indigenous to Romania, at least eaten here) so that if you are unfamiliar with the appearance of fresh fish, you can at least know what you're buying.

Freshwater Fish:

Salau (/sha-low/) - Zander - whitish flesh, often breaded and fried
Stiuca (/shtew-ka/) - Pike - quite boney but tasty when breaded
Pastrav (/pas-trav/) - Trout - commonly farmed in the mountainous areas
Pastrav somonat (/pas-trav so-mo-nat/) - Rainbow trout - great grilled
Crap (/crap/) - Carp - large fish, often sold as steak fillets
Biban (/bee-ban) - Perch - smallish fish, excellent skinned and fried
Caras (/ca-ras/) - Prussian carp - small-medium boney fish, sometimes used in soups
Somn (/somn/) - Wels catfish  - big and thick-skinned, fries and bakes well
Novac (/no-vak/) - Bighead carp - Haven't tried this one yet
Scrumbie (/skoom-bee-ye/) - Pontic Shad - a bit boney and quite fatty

Saltwater fish:

Calcan (/kal-kan/) - Turbot - A lovely tasty but pricey flat fish
Dorada (/do-rah-da/) - Gilt-head bream - Very tasty grilled on the BBQ
Macrou (/ma-crow/) - Mackerel - Oily sea fish good for grilling
Somon (/so-mon/) - Salmon - extremely versitile
Sardine (/sar-dee-ne/) - Sardines - gutted, dredged and fried - unbeatable!
Ton (/ton/) - Tuna - mostly found canned but occasionally I've seen fresh ones
Hamsie (/ham-see-ye/) - Anchovy - small fish good for frying

Seafood:

Creveti (/kre-vetz/) - Prawns/shrimps - You know what to do with these
Midii (/me-dee/) - Mussels - used in stews or sautéed with garlic and polenta
Raci (/rach/) - Crayfish - boiled or grilled, simlar to prawns
Homar (/ho-marr/) - Lobster - mostly found in restaurant or upmarket supermarkets
Caracatita (/kara-ka-titza/) - Octopus - you often see the small ones in markets
Sepie (/se-pee-e/) - Squid - mostly simply grilled

Those are the main types I regularly see in the fish markets and shops. There are other fish very you see from time to time but I haven't listed them all. The others are often fairly easy to work out (I'm sure you can guess which fish 'hering' is) or occasionally the imported ones bring their foreign name along with them, like levrek (the Turkish word for sea bass) even though it has a Romanian name (biban de mare).

Are there any very traditionally-used fish I've missed? What are your favourite traditional fish recipes?

Chiftele cu sos rosu

"Meatballs in tomato sauce"

This meatball recipe was given to me by the grandmother of a friend. The sauce is a simple tomato sauce made from ‘bulion’, which in the countryside the village cooks make in large quantities late in the summer to

provide them with tomato pasta throughout the winter. Meatballs, or ‘chiftele’, are quite common in Romania and I suspect the word, which is pronounced ‘kif-te-le’ is related to the Turkish ‘kofte’. It can be served with a variety of things, such as mashed potato (cartofi piure), polenta (mamaliga) or homemade pasta (taitei de casa).

Time: 30 mins (if you multi-task)

Servings: For two people

Ingredients:

For the meatballs:

250g pork shoulder, minced

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 tbs of oil plus more for shallow frying

1 tbs of water, cold

1 egg

Salt, pepper and any other fresh herbs you have handy, parsley or dill if you have it.

For the sauce:

2-3 tbs of oil

4-5 heaped tbs of concentrate tomato paste

½ cup of water (more can be added later if the sauce needs thinning out)

1 tbs flour

3-4 cloves of garlic (or more if you like it like that), thinly sliced

1 bay leaf

Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Warm the oil in a saucepan and mix in the tomato paste very well and stir for a couple of minutes until well incorporated.

2. Add the water and blend in. Then leave to simmer gently for 7 minutes, stirring from time to time.

3. Next, add the tablespoon of flour and mix well, and the seasoning, fresh herbs, the bay leaf, and the chopped garlic, and simmer for about another 10 minutes, stirring from time to time.

4. You know that the sauce is ready when you get a kind of slightly denser layer on the top of the sauce. As this layer thickens (through further reduction) so the flavour intensifies. It’s up to you how wet/sticky/intense/diluted you want it.

5. Thoroughly mix the minced meat, onion, herbs and spices, and the egg together in a bowl.

6. If the meat isn’t particularly fatty, add the oil. If it has its own fat, you can skip the oil.

7. Add the water (if needed – it might be that the egg was enough, depending on its size), knead, and form into balls (with wet hands) about the size of a large walnut, and put to one side.

8. Heat some more oil in a pan (about 1cm of oil) and brown the meatballs all over. Remove to a dish with a slotted spoon to drain.

9. Pour the hot sauce over the meatball (or add the meatballs to the sauce), leave on the warm stove for ten minutes while you prepare the accompanying dishes and plate, then serve. You can garnish the sauce with fresh chopped parsley or mint (or a combination).

Paine de casa - in cuptor cu lemn

"Homemade Bread in a wood-fired oven"

What could be better than homemade bread fresh from the oven? Perhaps homemade bread fresh from a wood oven! This is a simple recipe for ‘paine de casa’ that I found somewhere on the net and noted down. I forgot to save the original Romanian link so apologies to the original poster/blogger. It’s a pretty standard bread recipe though and produces a nice light inside and a crunchy crust. A lot of villagers produce larger softer loaves than these (based on what I’ve tried at people’s houses where they’ve baked their own bread) and also sometimes mix the flour with potato – something I’ll try at a future date. These turned out pretty well for my first effort at cooking bread in a wood-fired oven so I was quite chuffed.

Ingredients:

3 bags of strong white bread flour (3kg)
Three packets of yeast (I used to ‘fresh’ squares rather than the dried stuff)
3 tbs of sugar
about 180ml of sunflower or vegetable oil
3 tsp of salt
Warm water (I needed about 1.5 litres in total)

Method:

1. First of all I got a fire going in the oven. I made a stack of small dry wood with some screwed up paper at the bottom and got a good blaze going at the front of the oven. The door should be left open as well as the vent to the chimney to allow plenty of oxygen to get to the fire and for the smoke to escape.

Fire started in the bread oven.

2. Once I had a good fire going, I start on the yeast. I mixed the 3 cubes of yeast into a beer glass with the sugar and a glass of warm water (not too hot or it’ll kill the yeast – about 25-27C at most). This glass I left till the yeast had clearly activated and come to life. If it doesn’t froth up, the yeast is knackered.

Yeast frothing up nicely.

3. In a large (20 litre) bowl, I mixed the flour, oil and salt. I then poured in the frothy yeast and started mixing, adding warm water as and when need, mixing it all together with a large wooden spoon at first, and then once I had enough water, with my hand.

4. Meanwhile, keep an eye on the fire all the time, keep it blazing, gradually added larger pieces of wood. As the fire grows, push it back towards the centre of the oven and put the new wood in front. Keep building it until you have a nice blaze.

5. Give the flour mixture a good kneading with your hands, at least 5 minutes, more if you can bear it. I made the mixture a lot sloppier than I had done with bread I’ve made in a conventional gas oven. The wood-fired oven will be a lot hotter and I had read that a moister mixture was advantageous. I eventually kneaded to a consistency that was elastic in the hands (you could stretch it out without it breaking) but was still quite sticky to the touch.

6. Cover the bowl with some teacloths and leave in a warm place until it has approximately doubled in size.

7. Keep stoking the fire, adding more and more wood. By this point the fire had been going for about 45 minutes and I was starting to add logs about 25cm long.

Fire out, only hot embers remain, spread oven the oven base.

8. Once the dough had risen to twice its original size, around 45-60 in my case, I knocked it back to get the air out and left it for about another 20 minutes to rest.

9. Around this time you really want to pile the wood it to get it up to the next level of heat. It’s good to build up the heat gradually like this rather than starting a massive fire right from the start in order to heat up the bricks slowly to prevent damage. This is especially important if the oven hasn’t been used for a while or the weather is cold. At this point I was putting in larger logs, about 40-50cm in length, and really getting a flame roaring to the roof of the oven. At first, the bricks on the roof of the oven will go black from the soot of the smoke, at a certain point, they’ll start to turn white – this is what you are looking for. Once the roof of the oven is white hot, stop adding wood and let the remaining logs burn down to embers.

Don't waste the hot embers you rake out!

10. After resting the dough I divided it into six equal portions (plus one half portion). I only had three bread tins, so I put three of the portions in tins, and the rest I left in the bowl formed roughly into rounds (trickier with the sticky dough). Leave them to rise some more, again about double, which took about 30-40 minutes.

11. Once the fire has burnt down and there are no more flames, only red/white hot embers, rake the embers around the floor of the oven to evenly heat it and leave them there for about 10-15 minutes. At this point, with no more smoke being produced, you can close the vent to the chimney to help retain the heat, and also keep the door of the oven closed, for the same reason. This helps to even out the heat of the walls and floor.

embers raked to the sides and a white-hot roof.

12. After about 15 minutes, you can rake the embers out of the oven, or move them to the edges, depending on how quickly or slowly you want to cool the oven down. If you intend to do more cooking in the oven than one batch, rake the embers to the sides. I raked some out into a pan and the rest I raked to the sides, but mostly because I didn’t have anything handy to rake them into! The pan with the hot embers needn’t go to waste: it makes an excellent BBQ for an impromptu ‘baker’s breakfast’ (or lunch, depending on the time of day). After clearing a space in the centre of the oven, give it a quite wipe with a damp mop (don’t use one with a plastic handle...) to clean away the ashes from the baking area. Close the door and leave for another 10-15 minutes for the base of the oven to cool a little so you don’t burn the bottom before the bread is done.

Bread in just placed in the oven on the hot base.

13. By now the bread in the tins (or in the bowl) should have puffed up again and be ready to be put in the oven. The tins are easy to put in – just place them near the entrance and push them in with a metal stick. It’s handy to have a long metal rod with a hook in the end for dragging the tins back again or turning them around. The more traditional round loaves need to be thrown in with the help of a wooden peel; flour the end of it, drop the dough on and with a quick sharp movement, push the peel into the oven and either whip it out from under the dough or tip the dough over the side. It’s handy to have two people for that part. Close the oven door and wait.

Bread starting to look done, just a few more minutes.

14. Cooking time depends on the temperature of the oven so check on the bread from time to time. Mine took about an hour in total, but it could be a lot less if the oven is very hot. I occasionally turned the loaves around or moved them from place to place to either a hotter or colder area (judged by how quickly things were cooking in those areas). When they look done (or sound done based on a hollow sound when tapping the crust of the loaf) take them out and cool them on a metal grill or, if you don’t have one, on a couple of strips of wood.

The finished product, cooling off a little.

15. And that’s it. You probably want to resist the temptation of cut one open straight away – give them 30 minutes to cool and finish cooking first, otherwise you might make the centre soggy. Store the extra loaves in a cotton bag or wrapped in a teacloth to maximize their lifespan. If kept in the fridge or in a plastic bag, they tend to sweat and go mouldy more quickly.

16. Pofta buna!

Placinta cu spanac si branza

"Spinach and cheese pie"

At this time of year spinach is king. The markets are full of the stuff – the large-leafed Romanian variety tied together in bundles you can barely get your arms around and all for less than a Euro. The bundle I bought was probably enough for about 6 servings of spinach once wilted down, although I used two-thirds of it for this pie. The rest I kept to go with some ‘caras’ in the evening. Compare that to the flaccid bag of baby spinach from who-knows-where you get in the supermarkets which costs about 2 Euro and wilts down to a spoonful.

A placinta is a pie, usually pastry-based and served in portions. The word comes from the Latin for a kind of flat bread pie or cake and a spinach-based pastry pie is a common thing in neighbouring cuisines in the region, such as Turkish and Greek, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the habit was picked up from them. Many of the patiserie sell spinach-based pastries and some form of white cheese is a natural companion as Romania abounds both in good spinach (in season) and excellent white cheeses (telemea).

Servings: 6-8 slices
Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

1 packets of phyllo pastry (foi de placinta)

Enough fresh spinach, trimmed and destalked, to fill a mixing bowl twice

2-300g of telemea (a feta-style white cheese)

1 medium onion finely chopped

1 egg

100g of melted butter

Method:

1. Make sure any hard stalks have been trimmed off the spinach and any dodgy-looking leaves discarded. Wash and rinse them to remove any grit or soil, and then plunge into boiling water for a minute or two until it has wilted down. Remove with a slotted spoon into a colander and leave to drain. You’ll probably have to do this in two batches.

2. Once the spinach has had a chance to drain, roughly chop it up and return to the mixing bowl. Add the finely-chopped onion and the crumbled white cheese and mix well. Taste the mixture at this point – depending how salty the cheese is you may or may not need to season it. You can also add dill if you like as it goes quite well with this mixture. Once you’re satisfied with the level of seasoning, break in the egg and mix that into the mixture.

3. Take a large baking tray, line it with baking paper, and start layering the pastry sheets, brushing each one with the melted butter. Lay about 5-6 sheets down as the base, then add the spinach and cheese mixture, levelling it over the whole tray, and then another 5-6 sheets of pastry, again brushing each with butter, giving the top coat a really good drenching.

4. Put the tray into an oven preheated to about 200C and bake until the top is golden brown, probably about 20-25 minutes. Remove from the oven, allow to cool, remove from the tray, and cut into slices.

Branza de burduf de capra cu salata verde de primavera

“Goats cheese ‘burduf’ with a spring green salad”

At last the spring has come, the sun is shining and the farmers’ markets are full of seasonal produce after a long winter of mostly root vegetables and expensive imported fruit and veg. Prices are starting to drop as local produce finds its way to the stalls and the hotter weather calls for fresher dishes and crisper textures.

Burduf cheese gets its name from its traditional method of production and is a typical shepherds cheese produced by storing the curds in a bark cylinder and then, after a period of maturation, mincing, salting, and storing in a sack made from the skin of a sheep or goat. It’s a rich, soft cheese that can be easily spread on bread or served in slices and compliments salads of a stronger nature.

I’ve served this one with a fresh green spring salad made up of leurda (wild garlic leaves), ceapa verde (spring onions – both the stems and the leaves), ridichie (radish) and untisor (lesser celandine – or sometimes known as pilewort) mixed with a little low-fat yogurt and a boiled egg.

Splina de porc cu arpagic si ciuperci

“Pig spleen with pearl onions and mushrooms”

Pig offal is tasty and cheap in Romania and often overlooked in western cuisine despite being quite low in calories and containing lots of goodies like vitamin C, selenium (a good antioxidant), iron, protein and vitamin B-12. If you've never tasted spleen, it has a similar flavour and texture to liver, perhaps a little ‘springier’ in texture.

This recipe was given to me by a neighbour who, being on a budget, regular makes offal dishes. I've used arpagic onions, small onions that are readily available in the local markets this time of year, but you can use regular onions, shallots or spring onion.

The dish works well as a lunch or a starter.

Time: 15 minutes
Servings: 2

Ingredients:
1 pig spleen

A handful of small onions (or one medium sized regular onion)

A handful of button mushrooms

A good-sized knob of butter

100ml of water

Chopped herbs (parsley, dill or spring onion leaves)

A pinch of chilli flakes (optional)

Toasted bread for serving

Method:

1. Trim any white fat off the spleen and give it a good rinse, then chop it into largish chunks.

2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over a medium heat and sauté the onions for about 7-8 minutes until soft and a little browned.

3. Add the mushrooms to the onions and fry for another 2-3 minutes.

4. Add the spleen to the pan along with the water and turn the flame up to high. Continue to cook for about 5-6 minutes until the spleen is no longer bloody in the middle (take a piece out and cut it in half). It can be a little pink and you don’t want to overcook it or it’ll go tough. Add a splash more water if it all evaporates but you want to time it so that it’s all gone by the time the spleen is ready so everything is left with a nice reduced glossy sticky coating.

5. Season with salt, pepper, a pinch of chilli if desired and the chopped herbs.

6. Serve hot on some toasted buttered bread.

Fasole batuta/facaluita

“Mashed beans”

I'm not sure if there is a difference between fasole batuta and fasole facaluita or whether the difference is simply a regionalism, but either way, mashed beans topped with paprika-flavoured caramelized onion is a staple of the Romanian table. It goes wonderfully with smoked meats, spicy sausages, and slices of dry-cured ham but is, in my opinion, at its best as a spread for a thick-cut piece of crusty country loaf.

Dried beans are cheap, easy to grow, easy to store and are very filling. Back in the UK the majority of beans consumed are tinned beans in tomato sauce (à la Heinz) and while these are certainly tasty and cheap, I dread to think of the amount of salt and sugar contained in one can. Bean dishes, such as these mashed beans or something like a cassoulette, are simple to do but often considered time consuming. As a general rule, the dried beans have to be soaked overnight and then boiled for several hours in order for them to regain their softness.

I forgot to put my beans in water to soak last night, so I've ‘fast-soaked’ them. This involves covering them with about three times their volume of cold water, bringing it to the boil, taking it off the heat, and leaving to cool for at least an hour. You can then discard the water and proceed as normal. I've read around on the net – some swear by the cold-soak method, other say the fast-soak method makes no difference to the taste. Anyway, we’ll see...

Time: 1-3 hours plus overnight soaking
Servings:  Makes a large bowl of mashed beans

Ingredients:
500g of dried beans (white ones are usually used but I had a mixed bag of different types from the garden and so I used those)
2-3 onions
1 teaspoon of paprika (hot or mild, whichever you prefer)
A couple of cloves of garlic, minced (optional)
100g of vegetable oil
Salt to taste

Method:

1. Drain off the water that you soaked the beans in and add fresh cold water. Bring to the boil and allow it to boil for a few minutes. Discard the water and replenish, bring to the boil again, leave it to boil for a few minutes again, discard again, and so on, two or three times in total. The idea is that this extracts the chemicals from the beans that cause their well-document effect.
2. After discarding the water at least twice, bring the beans to the boil again in fresh water, add a teaspoon of salt, and leave to boil until the beans are soft. The time this takes depends on how fresh the dried beans are. If they've been sitting around in the shed (or the supermarket) for a couple of years, then this could take a few hours, but If they are really fresh, maybe less than an hour. Check on them frequently, topping up the pan with hot water if it’s evaporating too quickly, and testing the beans for softness. Make sure you test several beans and it’s quite possible that they come from different batches and whilst one might soften in 60 minutes, others might take double that.
3. At some point during the cooking process, you can prepare the onions. Slice them julienne, heat a few tablespoons of the oil in a frying pan, and gently fry them until they are soft and caramelized. Don’t fry them at too high a temperature; you want them soft and sweet and rich, not bitter and crispy. Once they’re done (I leave mine sautéing for about 20-25 minutes, stirring frequently), add the paprika and a little salt to taste and put to one side.
4. When you are satisfied that the beans are thoroughly cooked, drain them and mash them up. You can do this with a fork, a potato ricer (maybe, haven’t tried it), or in the blender. How chunky or smooth you like it is up to you but at this point you can add the rest of the oil (sometimes helps to add this before mashing) and salt to taste. At this point you can also add the garlic if it’s too your taste.
5. Arrange the mashed and seasoned beans in a bowl and spread the onion mixture on top and serve.

Mucenici moldovenesti

“Walnut-coated pastries”

Every year on the 9^th of March, Romanians celebrate a tradition that evolved from the story of the forty martyrs of Sebaste, which is now in present-day Turkey. The forty were Roman soldiers in the year 320 who were openly Christian and they were left out in the cold to freeze to death or recant their Christianity. The celebration of the forty martyrs commonly kick-starts the agricultural year and is a day when traditional Romanian smallholders clean up with households and courtyards and burn all the rubbish.

These sweet pastries, typically in the form of a figure eight (said to represent the human body), are made and eaten around the country on the 9^th of March, although their form differs from region to region. Moldavian ‘mucenici’ are larger and coated in nuts and honey, whilst their Dobrogean counterparts are smaller and boiled in water, sugar, walnuts and cinnamon.

I had only eaten them once before, and those were ones from a shop and a bit bready and dry, but I was very pleased with how these ones turned out – soft and fluffy inside, with a slight crispiness to the exterior, and of course the crunch of the nuts and sticky goodness of the syrup.

Time: 4 hours including proving periods
Servings: 20 pastries (normally you would make 40, one for each martyr, but depends on how many of you there are, or how greedy you are!)

Ingredients:

For the dough:
550g of plain white flour
125ml of warm water
125ml of warm milk
150g caster sugar
1 egg
90g of butter, softened and cubed
20g of fresh yeast, or one instant yeast packet
1 level teaspoon of salt

For finishing:
100g of shelled walnuts
150g caster sugar
300ml water
1 packet of vanilla sugar or a few drops of vanilla essence (optional)
2ml of rum essence (optional)
The zest of one lemon (optional)
One egg yolk
50ml of milk

Method:

1. Make a yeast starter by dissolving the yeast in the warm water with a teaspoon of the sugar. Mix well and leave for about 10 minutes still it starts to froth up. This basically kick starts the proving process and also lets you know the yeast isn't a dud.
2. In a large mixing bowl, weigh out the flour, sugar and salt and stir to combine. Make a well in the middle and add the egg, warm milk, butter, and the yeast starter. Beat the liquid ingredients to combine and start drawing in the flour. Once it gets less gooey, use your hands to mix it into a dough ball. Knead this dough for a few more minutes and if it feels very sticky, add a little more flour. Sometimes at the beginning it will seem dry until the ingredients are well combined, so avoid the temptation to add more liquid until you've been mixing it for a good five minutes. Mine went from dry to very sticky over the first couple of minutes, so I added another handful of flour to get it to a nice silky, slightly tacky consistency after about 10 minutes of kneading. You can, of course, do all this in a bread mixture if you have one of those.
3. Once it has been well kneaded, is smooth and silky, and doesn't leave your hands sticky any more  cover the bowl and leave in a warm place for about an hour to prove. In the meantime, you can get on with the next three steps.
4. Crush the walnuts with a pestle and mortar until you get a course breadcrumby mixture. You can use a blender for this, but make sure you don’t over-blitz it and end up with a powder.
5. In a saucepan, bring 300ml of water to the boil, add 150g sugar and the essences and boil until you get a syrupy consistency (not too stiff, but something like olive oil). Once you've got a syrup, leave to cool a bit and add the lemon zest if using. I read some older recipes and they use neither the essences nor the lemon zest, so I’ll leave it up to you to decide what you want to add. I added the essences, but not the lemon, but only because what I thought was a lemon when I briefly glanced in the fridge before going shopping actually turned out to be a very yellow and lemon-shaped quince!
6. Finally mix together one egg yolk and 50ml of milk and set to one side. You’ll use this for brushing the buns before baking them.
7. Once the dough has had its hour of proving, knock it back into a ball and divide it into 20 equally-sized balls. Take a ball, roll it into a snake about 50cm long, fold it in half and plait it. Then form this plaited length of dough into a figure-eight shape by joining the ends and twisting. Then place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Repeat for the other 19 balls. You might need to bake them in two batches depending on the size of your oven. Anyway, leave a little space between them as you arrange them on the tray.
8. Leave the tray of uncooked mucenici in a warm place for an hour to rise.
9. Brush the mucenici with the egg yolk and milk mixture and put them into a pre-heated oven (180-190C) until golden (mine took about 35 minutes).
10. Once they’re done, take them out and brush them with the syrup you prepared earlier (or you can dunk them instead of brushing them) and then sprinkle the crushed walnuts on top. Some people also drizzle or brush them with honey before sprinkling on the nuts.
11. Eat warm or cold. They keep well for a couple of days in the fridge.