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.

Alivenci

“Polenta and cheese cake”

I had seen this dish on a few cookery websites and in a number of my cookbooks and was intrigued by the name, which doesn’t sound particularly Romanian. I looked up the word in the Romanian dictionary (DEX) and its origins are unknown apparently, but it seems to be considered a Moldavian dish which is commonly made on the 29^th June, St Peter’s day. It’s also the name of a type of traditional dance, but I don’t know if there is any connection there.

I saw two types of recipes for alivenci (singular: alinvanca). The more traditional cookbooks (Sanda Marin, Radu Anton Roman) made it more simple, neither very savoury nor sweet, and suggested serving it as a snack. Other culinary websites had you boiling the polenta with milk and adding sugar and lemon peel and so on, making it more of a sweet polenta cake dessert. I’ve stuck with the older recipes and haven’t included anything sweet, but you could tart it up with some sugar, vanilla essence, lemon juice/peel, and dust it with icing sugar before serving if you so wished.

Time: 90 minutes

Servings: 16 slices 

Ingredients:

1kg of fresh cow’s cheese (branza de vaci, or a mixture of branza de vaci and telemea)

6 eggs

250ml sour cream (smantana)

50g of melted butter + 25g unmelted for greasing the baking tray

1 teaspoons of salt (unless the cheese is already salty enough – especially if you’ve used telemea)

200g of cornmeal (malai – Romanian polenta mix)

150g of plain flour

100g fine breadcrumbs

Method:

1. Beat the cheese well until it is nice and creamy.

2. Separate the yolks from the whites and beat them (the yolks) into the cheese. Reserve the whites for later.

3. Pour in the sour cream, the butter, and the salt (if needed), and mix until you get a smooth paste-like texture. I ended up with some small lumps of telemea in the mix but these made nice little 'nuggets' of flavour in the end result.

4. Combine the cornmeal (polenta mix) with the flour and step by step add it to the cheese mixture . It’s important to keep mixing it continuously whilst adding the polenta/flour mix to avoid lumps and to get a good, well-combined dough. Continue to beat for a few more minutes.

5. Leave the dough to rest for ten minutes.

6. Beat the egg whites until you get hard peaks and fold these into the cheese mix.

7. Grease a large baking tray with the butter and sprinkle with the fine breadcrumbs all over.

8. Pour the mixture into the baking tray and bake in a medium oven (I guess mine was about 210C) until brown on top and firm inside (you can test it by sticking a wooden skewer into the centre and seeing if it comes out sticky). My batch took about an hour to cook.

9. When it is done, cut it into slices and serve warm with fresh sour cream.

Pasca (cu branza de vaci)

"Easter cake (with sweet cow’s cheese)"

This traditional sweet cheese-filled Easter cake is usually made either on Great Thursday (the Thursday before Easter) or, these days, on the Saturday before Easter Sunday so that it’s fresher on the day. The filling is made with fresh cow’s cheese, something like a dry cottage cheese, which is sweetened with sugar and spotted with raisins or sultanas. There are other versions that use cream or milk for the filling, which can also be flavoured with rum, walnuts, cinnamon or other spices. It’s usually eaten as a dessert with the Easter meal or, if people intend to have cozonac for dessert, as a snack during the day. Personally, I don’t think you can beat eating it straight out of the oven - ok, maybe give it a quarter of an hour to cool a little first! Pasca takes a long time to make so make sure you have plenty of time and patience. Nowadays you see many other recipes using more filling and a thinner, more easily-prepared base, but a traditional pasca is more like a stuffed bread than a flan.

Time: 5-6 hours (including preparation, proving, and baking)

Servings: 6-8 slices

Ingredients:

For the dough:

500g of plain flour

200ml of milk

A pinch of salt

1 packet of dry active yeast

200g of caster sugar

3 eggs

100g of butter, melted

3 tablespoons of vegetable oil

For the filling:

500g of fresh cow’s cheese

30g of butter, melted

2 egg, separated

120g of caster sugar

2 tablespoons of sour cream (or thick cream)

Grated zest of one lemon

2 packets of vanilla sugar powder (or use fresh vanilla and add about 15g more sugar)

1 tablespoon of semolina flour

1 tablespoon of plain flour

80g of raisins

A pinch of salt

Method:

Preparing the yeast starter

1. Warm a little milk, about 50ml, pour it into a coffee cup or glass, and dissolve the yeast in it with a couple of pinches of sugar and leave in a warm place for 15 minutes or so. If the yeast is active it’ll start to foam up on top*.

2. Bring the rest of the milk (150ml) to the simmer in a pan and just before it starts to boil stir in 3 tablespoons on the plain flour and keep stirring until the flour has dissolved.

3. Pour the milk/flour mixture into a bowl and leave the milk to cool, and once it has cooled, mix in the hopefully now frothing yeast and milk mixture. Cover the pan with a damp cloth or a loose piece of foil and leave in a warm place until it starts to rise to double its original size, probably about 45 minutes.

*If nothing happens then it might be a dud batch of yeast – just redo this step with a new packet.

Preparing the dough

4. Separate the egg whites and yolks into two bowls. Beat the yolks with a pinch of salt and step by step mix in the 200g of sugar until you get a smooth pale yellow creamy mixture. Beat the egg whites until fluffy.

5. Pour the rest of the flour into a large mixing bowl, make a well in the centre, and add the yeast starter, the yolk mixture, the egg whites, and mix well. Following this, add the oil and the melted butter and mix.

6. Knead the dough for about 20-30 minutes (this is where a spare pair of hands or a mixer comes in handy) and when you have a well-combined dough, which should be more on the soft side, put it into a bowl, cover with a damp cloth, and leave in a warm place for an hour to rise. You really need to knead it quite aggressively, apparently, beating it more than massaging it, and stretching it out and throwing it back down on the table. This seems to be the trick for getting a nice fluffy end result rather than one that’s rather stodgy in consistency.

Preparing the cake

7. Once the dough has risen to double its original size (about an hour or so) then you can prepare the pasca by buttering a round deepish cake tin; of about 4-5cm depth and of a diameter of around 20-25cm.

8. Break off about half of the dough and roll it out to the size of the cake tin and about 1cm in thickness. Lay this in the baking tray.

9. Break the remaining dough into three* equal parts and roll each one into a snake about 80cm long. These can then be braided together and arranged around the inside edge of the cake tin, on top of the previously positioned layer of dough.

10. Leave the prepared cake tin and dough covered in a warm place to rise again, for an hour or so.

*You might also break it into four parts, keeping the fourth for decorating the top of the cake (after adding the filling) with other traditional motifs, such as a cross.

Preparing the filling

11. Prepare the filling by first squeezing any excess liquid out of the cow’s cheese. If it’s not completely dry, you might end up with a soggy filling which won’t stick to the bread casing. Then, mix the cow’s cheese together with the egg yolks, melted butter, cream, icing sugar, vanilla sugar, lemon zest and a pinch of salt.

12. Once these are well combined, beat the egg whites until fluffy and add them, along with the two types of flour. Stir in the raisins but keep a few to one side for sprinkling on top.

13. Put the filling into the centre of the dough-lined cake tin (after it has finished proving) and spread it out to the side in an even layer. Sprinkle the rest of the raisins on top.

Cooking the cake

14. You can beat another egg together and brush the pasty with this, pouring the remaining egg over the top of the cheese mixture to give it some colour.

15. Put the assembled cake into a preheated over (moderate heat – 180-190C/350-360F) and cook until the dough has puffed up nicely and turned a golden brown colour, approximately 50-60 minutes, depending on the oven. Check it regularly so as not to let it burn.

16. Leave the cake to cool for 10 minutes and then remove it from the cake tin and serve warm or keep well wrapped up for the next day.

My first attempt turned out pretty well. It was a lot of hard work, but the bread mixture (I was told) was very authentic, light, and fluffy, but maybe could have done with an extra five minutes in the oven. Perhaps the braiding was a little too large and the base a little thin, next time I might try using about two-thirds of the dough for the base and making the braiding more delicate as by the time it had proved and puffed up in the oven it had virtually covered the filling. The filling was tasty and light, but because I had forgotten to squeeze the cheese thoroughly before making the filling, there was a little too much moisture in there with meant it didn't bond to the bread casing completely. It tasted good though!

Boti (galuste cu branza de vaca)

"Cow’s cheese dumplings"

These boti (/botz/) are from Ardeal, particularly the mountainous Apuseni region. I guess they are something like a Romanian scotch egg, but without the meat, and with cheese instead, and without the egg being whole inside, and with some cornmeal (the stuff used to make polenta/mamaliga) added to it, and not fried. So actually not at all like a scotch egg despite a passing resemblance from the outside. If you can’t find cornmeal (malai in Romanian, but for sure you’ll find it if you’re reading this in Romania) you can substitute finely ground bread crumbs. It can be eaten as a snack or as a starter, and I like to serve it with some finely sliced mild red onion and a simple dip made of chopped skinless tomatoes (out of the tin is fine) combined with some paprika, salt, and pepper. They’d also go well with some smantana (sour cream) or mayonnaise or any other sauce or dip really. A little crispy bacon would be a welcome garnish too.

Time: 30-40 minutes

Servings: 15 balls (enough for 4-5 starters)

Ingredients:

500g of fresh cow’s cheese

2-3 eggs (depending on size)

1 cup of cornmeal (malai)

Oil of some kind (pork dripping is traditional, but it works with butter or even olive oil too)

Salt

Paprika (optional)

Red onion and parsley to garnish (optional)

Method:

1. Put a large pan full of salted water on the stove and bring to the boil

2. Melt a tablespoon of oil/dripping in a wide saucepan and when it is warm, pour in the cup of cornmeal. You want to cook it on low-medium until the cornmeal has taken on a brownish tone (about 5 minutes or more). At this point you can add a pinch or two of salt and some paprika if you wish.

3. Meanwhile, beat the eggs in a bowl.

4. Empty the fresh cow’s cheese into another bowl and mash it up with a fork.

5. Start adding the beaten eggs to the cheese and combine until it makes a reasonably thick dough. Don’t add all the egg at once because you don’t want the dough too runny or you won’t be able to form balls.

6. Add half of the browned cornmeal and a teaspoon of salt to the cheese/egg mixture and mix in. Now you should be approaching a stiff batter, almost a dough. It should be able to retain its shape. If it is too stiff, add a little more egg. If you’ve over-egged it and it’s too runny, stiffen it up with a tablespoon or two of flour. It’s hard to get it just right as it depends on the size of the eggs and the moisture of the cheese, so it’ll almost certainly need a little adjusting.

7. When the water comes to the boil, start forming the dough into balls. Take a golf ball-sized piece of the dough and roll it between your palms and drop it into the boiling water. Repeat until you have enough balls in the water. Don’t over-crowd it: remember, the balls will swell as they cook. Do it in two batches if needs be (and unless you’re using a monster of a stock pot, needs will be!)

8. Boil the balls for about 10-12 minutes until they are floating and swollen and have hardened up a little. When they are done, remove them with a slotted spoon and let steam for a minute in a dish.

9. Finally, roll the balls in the remaining browned cornmeal and arrange on plates to serve.

Telemea de vaca

"Home-made cows milk white cheese"

I have always loved cheese but never really considered making it at home. I first tried it a few months ago using some milk from the supermarket and some lemon juice, to make a basic fresh curd cheese. Recently I found that Obor market has a machine that dispenses fresh raw milk from a dairy farm in Pantelimon. The milk costs 3 lei for a litre (that’s about 60p or US$0.90) and they also supply the bottles if you don’t want to take your own. I decided to have a go at making some telemea, a Romanian fresh white cheese which is quite similar to Greek feta cheese. It really isn’t too difficult to make your own and I recommend you give it a go. Considering the final yields and the cost of the raw milk, it actually doesn’t work out any cheaper than buying telemea from the market, but you do at least get the satisfaction of having done it yourself.

If you can get hold of raw milk, it will give you the best results. I personally don't have a problem with raw milk, but many people have health concerns about it. I know in the US that it's illegal to sell cheese made with unpasteurized milk. In Australia, I'm told, you can sell raw milk for human consumption, but this problem is circumnavigated by people selling it as a bath milk. If you have concerns about using raw milk, you can pasteurize it first by keeping it at 66C (150F) for half an hour. Alternatively, you can buy pasteurized milk from the supermarket and use that. I wouldn't recommend making cheese with UHT milk - you'll get very poor yields.

So here’s the process:

1. Take a large stock pot and pour in your raw milk. Slowly heat the milk up to just over 37C (100F). Turn the heat off.

2. Add some rennet (it comes in powdered, liquid or even tablet form – if you are in Romania, you want to ask for ‘cheag’ /key-ag/ and you will probably find it in some markets or in the ‘plafar’ (a kind of chemist selling herbal and natural remedies, teas, and so on). Just mix up the rennet according to the instructions and add it to the hot milk, stirring well to ensure an even distribution. I always find I have to use more than the stated amount to get the cheese to curdle.



You can see that the cheese comes cleanly away
from the sides, indicating that it has curdled.



3. Put a lid on the pot and leave in a warm place. In winter, you can try wrapping it up in blankets to keep the warmth in. Check back on it after an hour to see if it has set. It’s important not to disturb it too much during this period so don’t stir it or slosh it around too much. You know when it’s done because a knife will create a ‘clean break’ when you slide it into the curd. In the picture you can see that it has an almost yogurt-like consistency. It normally takes about an hour to set, but it could be more, anything up to 5 or 6 hours. If it shows no sign of coagulation after a couple of hours, then you might have a dud batch of rennet or need to put in more, as rennet does degrade with age.

Curd cut into squares

4. Using a long knife, cut the curd into squares and very gently stir them. This increases the surface area and allow more coagulation. After stirring, leave it for half an hour or so.

5.Prepare a colander but putting it over a large pot or bowl (you can reserve the whey for making ricotta or for storing the cheese in) and then lining it with a large cheesecloth (called ‘tifon’ in Romanian – you should be able to get them at old-fashioned markets or even in some supermarkets). Then carefully pour the curds and whey on top of the cheesecloth. Lift the corners of the cheesecloth and tie them together.



The curds draining over a pot



6. Hang the cheese in the cheesecloth over a bowl (I use a wooden spoon to hang them off as in the picture) and let it drain for 2 or 3 hours until it stops dripping. You can give it a bit of a squeeze at the beginning to help it on it’s way.

7. Unwrap the cheese, which should be solid enough to handle carefully by now, and then rewrap them in new cheesecloth (or wash the old ones). This is to clean the cheese out of the holes in the cheesecloth to allow easier draining.

Drained cheese rewrapped and ready
for pressing.

8. Now it’s time to press them. I have two methods, as can be seen in the photographs. The first just involves it being places between two chopping boards with a water-filled pan on top. Notice how there is a spoon under the lower board to create an angle so the liquid drains off the board. The second technique involves using a large yogurt pot in which I have punched holes (you must punch them from the inside). I have another identical pot which is filled with water and goes on top to act as the press, and a bowl of water on top of that for extra weight. Press the cheese for 3-4 hours, turning them over halfway through.




Chopping boards and pans of water



Yogurt pot pressing method



The pressed cheeses ready for brining

9. Unwrap the cheese blocks and put them in a container with a lid. At this stage we can say that we have made ‘cas’. To make telemea, it needs to be matured in brine for a few days. Using a measuring jug fill the cheese-filled container with water, making a note of how much water was needed to cover the cheese. Pour the water back into the measure jug and add about 10-15% sea salt (so if you used a litre of water, and about 100-150g of sea salt. Dissolve the salt and pour the brine back into the container with the cheese. Store the cheese for a couple of days in this brine to ‘mature’ it.

The cheese in the brine

Now the telemea is ready to eat! You can eat it straight away, if you wish, but telemea is usually brined for a few days first. In terms of yield, the best you can probably expect to get is about 250g of telemea for each litre of milk used. Depending on how much you press them, how good the rennet is, and the quality of the milk, you may end up with less. In my attempt above I got about 700g of telemea from 4 litres of milk. With the leftover whey, you can make some ricotta. Just bring the whey almost to the boil, about 95C, cover, and leave until it returned to room tempurature. Then carefully pour it into a cheesecloth-lined colander over a pot and leave it for a couple of hours until the liquid has drained out. The remain soft cream-like ricotta can be used just like shop-bought ricotta.

Placinta Dobrogeana

“Cheese pie Dobrogea style”

Dobrogea is the area in the south-east of Romania comprising the Danube delta and the cities of Constanta and Tulcea. Historically, it has been somewhat prone to invasion and colonization and as a result has many varied influences in its cuisine. One period of foreign control was during the Ottoman period when many settlers from the Ottoman Empire moved to the region, introducing Turkish culinary habits to the area. As a result you find many good pies and pastries in the region, as well as other sweet and savoury delights.

Placinta Dobrogreana (pronounced /pla-chin-ta do-bro-gee-ana/) is probably one of the most famous pies or pastries in Romania – its popularity meaning that it can easily be found in good pastry shops all around the country. Whilst researching the recipe I notice that there do seem to be variations. Some make it as a pie with the cheese filling between layers of thinly rolled-out pastry. Other recipes have the filling rolled up in the pastry like a sausage and then arranged around the baking tray. Some recipes combine the cheese with sour cream, others with eggs. I’ve tried to incorporate elements and options of all these methods, but how you ultimately make it is up to you depending on your preference for ingredients and look.

This version is the savoury version of the pie, but a sweet version also exists, using sweetened cheeses and sometimes mixed with raisins. If you can’t be bothered to make your own dough (really, it’s an easy dough to make, so don’t be afraid!) you can use shop-bought phyllo pastry.

Servings: 8 slices
Time: 90 minutes

Ingredients:

For the dough:

300g flour

160ml water

1 small egg

1 tablespoon of oil (sunflower or olive)

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of vinegar (not malt)

For the filling:

500g of soft fresh cheese (see method)

Smantana (sour cream) and/or eggs (probably no more than 3 – see method)

For cooking:

100g melted butter or oil (sunflower/vegetable)

1 large egg

3 good tablespoons of yogurt or sour cream (smantana)

Method:

1. Pour the flour into a mixing bowl, make a well in the centre, and add the egg, oil, water, salt and vinegar.

2. Combine the ingredients in the well and slowly draw in the flour, mixing well with your fingers, until a dough starts to form.

3. Form the dough into a ball and turn out onto a floured work surface. Knead the dough until you achieve a soft, elastic dough which is no longer sticky.

4. Put the dough back in the bowl and cover with a damp tea towel and rest on the sideboard for 30 minutes. Alternatively, flour the ball a little, and drop it into a plastic freezer bag, give it a twist to eliminate the air, and rest for 30 minutes.

5. While the dough is resting, preheat the oven to about 200-210C (medium heat).

6. Now it’s time to start to make the cheese filling. You should use about 500g of cheese but you can add more if you like a thicker layer of cheese in your pie (or indeed less, if you like it less cheesy). I used a mixture of telemea de oaie (ewe’s milk cheese, something like a feta), branza proaspata de vaca (a soft fresh cow’s milk cheese) and branza de burduf (a soft but slightly mature tasting sheep’s milk cheese) but you can use any good fresh or semi-fresh cheeses (such as chevre, feta, Neuchâtel, paneer, queso fresco). Combine the cheeses well, and break up the harder ones with a fork, and then add either smantana (sour cream) or eggs, little by little, until you reach a nice sloppy consistency. I recommend adding the eggs/cream gradually – the amount you need will depend on the initial consistency of the cheese and the size of the eggs. The consistency you want is quite thick, certainly not ‘pourable’, but something like a thick cake batter or bricklaying mortar (if that helps you at all!). Taste it when you’ve done combining it and add salt if necessary.

7. You’ll need to brush the sheets of dough with a little butter or oil. If you intend to use butter, now is the time to melt it in a pan over a very low heat.

8. Once the dough is sufficiently rested, it’s time to roll it out. First of all, roll the dough into a sausage and cut into six equal parts. Form each sixth into a ball and then roll it out until it is the size and shape of the baking tray you intend to use (mine was a 25cm diameter circular tray, about 3cm deep).

9. Butter or oil the bottom of the tray well, then put in the first sheet of dough, brush it with butter/oil, then put in the second sheet, then half the cheese, spreading it out to about 1cm from the edge of the tray, then another two sheets of dough (the first, again, brushed with butter/oil). Now add the rest of the cheese, again spreading it out until it’s about 1cm shy of the edge of the tray. Finally, add the last two sheets of dough, brush each with butter/oil.

10. What I do now is to gently run the back of a knife over the top to mark the portions, dividing it into eight wedges (as I use a circular tray). I don’t actually cut through the dough, I just depress it so that the cutting point will more clearly defined at the end of the baking process.

11. Now, put the pie into the preheated oven and cook for about 20-30 minutes until the top has started to brown. At this point, make a mixture of one egg and three tablespoons of smantana (sour cream) or yogurt, according to preference. Spread this mixture over the top of the pie and return it to the oven for another 15-20 minutes, or until once again brown.

12. Once it’s nice and brown all over (but not burnt!) take it out of the oven, let it cool down for a few minutes, and then cut it into portions using the lines you scored in it earlier. Then...eat!

Romanian Cheeses

This post is more for foreigners living in Romania and I hope to be able to explain a little about Romanian cheeses. Sometimes when we live abroad we want to make a specific recipe from back home and, of course, we sometimes have to look at replacing ingredients with suitable alternatives. There are, of course, a lot of foreign cheeses available on the market but often you can get excellent results with local cheeses, with the added advantage that a good local cheese will probably cost no more than an average imported one.

Telemea
This is probably the most common cheese found in Romania, alongside cascaval. Telemea is generally quite a fresh cheese, moderately soft and crumbly, white in colour, and can be made from the milk of different animals, typically sheep (telemea de oaie) and cows (telemea de vaca), but also goats milk (telemea de capra). It is stored in brine and is an excellent replacement for feta in salads and other recipes. Learn to make your own telemea at home here.

Cascaval
A smooth yellow hard cheese usually made from sheeps or cows milk. Varies in maturity and quality from the plasticky commercial brands to harder vintage varieties. Often comes in a smoked form (afumat). Melts melt, grates easily, and is a fine substitute for chedder.

Cas
A very fresh curd cheese using made in the evening and left overnight to curdle and lightly salted. It has a smooth almost 'squeaky' texture. It's often eaten for breakfast with eggs, shredded into salad, or used in pies (it can be sweetened).

Branza proaspata (de vaca)
A fresh cheese which is usually made of cows milk. It is soft, spreadable, and a little sour. It is used in pies or mixed with herbs (parsley, dill) and spread on toast or as a sandwich filling.

Branza de burduf
A traditional Romanian shepherds' cheese produced from sheeps milk. It is matured in some areas in a sheep's stomach but more commonly it is wrapped in tree bark and left to mature. Burduf is often used in mamaliga (polenta) dishes and it has a aromatic, dry but fatty texture that holds its form. I recently found a very tasty goats cheese burduf in the local market, see here.

Urda
A soft, moist, fresh cheese made from whey. It is low in fat and an ideal substitute for ricotta.

Nasal
A geographically-unique cheese, it is mold-ripened in a cave in a location of the same name. I haven't had the chance to taste it yet but when I do I'll get back here and edit this.