Romanian food recipes

guidelines to Romanian kitchen and ingredients

I'll give you my family recipes but also other Romanian food recipes I found (or I collected) for the same dishes. You'll find them all on the same page.

Generally we use pepper, paprika (hot or sweet), coriander, horseradish and leaves of savory, tarragon, lovage, dill or parsley for seasoning our foods. And lots of sour cream.

Romanians love sour soups. These can be turned sour with tomatoes or tomatoes juice, whey, sauerkraut brine, wine or apple vinegar, "bors" (well, a kind of bran juice), sorrel or green fruits like graphs, plums, gooseberry, wax cherry or sour cherry.

Romanian traditional food use salads as side dish for the main course or the most as appetizers. Today, fallowing the diet recommendations, many Romanian people eat salads for dinner. But this will never happen in Romanian traditional cuisine, ever at the countryside.

The Romanian food recipes can differ from household to household (not much) but they can significantly differ from a province to another.

The basic differences in Romanian traditional food recipes among provinces consist in the food seasoning:

Transylvanian people

• give a thick consistency to sour soups, sauces and stews by adding roasted flour;
• generally use vinegar, whey, sauerkraut brine and rarely the others for sour soups;
• love parsley, tarragon and lovage but they use the other verdures, too;
• put onion or garlic in any kind of dish;
• often use sugar in their dishes (Hungarian influence).

Moldavian people

• generally don't bind with flour;
• generally use "bors", whey, sauerkraut brine, occasionally the others for sour soups;
• like dill, parsley and lovage.

Wallachian people

• use flour for binding but not roasted flour;
• use "bors", tomatoes, tomatoes juice and occasionally the others for sour soups;
• often use leek in place of onion;
• love dill.

Now a little bit about measurements:

• the good news is my recipes will be in cup (tea cup), table spoon and tea spoon. It's all about old recipes from the times when people didn't have balance or other measurement instruments in their kitchen but anyone did have cups and spoons, even you.
• the bad news (only for English system users) is that no family recipes will be as I received (found) them. If it's about cups and spoons it'll be OK. If no, they'll be in metric system. I'm completely out of English system and I need some time to familiarize with it and only then translate it. Thanks for your kindness.

Asking for your support...

Some of you'll be interested only to see what really these meals are, some will want to cook them. I really need the help of cookers. Why? It's possible you don't find all the necessary ingredients. I'd like to know what those ingredients are (for example I'm quite sure you don't find in your market "slanina" - pork smoked fat or "osanza" - pork unprepared belt fat). So, if I can find out the most appropriate thing to replace them, all interested people will have an alternative. Thank you!

Talking about Romanian food recipes, meaning traditional food, I'm not quite sure if English names are the most appropriate. That's why I'll give you a short explanation under each one but any feedback would be welcomed.

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