Pofta Mare!

I'm getting the hang of Romanian FOOD by now and have even improved my soup making abilities SIGNIFICANTLY since coming here. 

Romanian food is generally hearty. Having a good knowledge of Austrian cuisine, I can definitely see the resemblances to the meat-heavy foods of the Germanic countries... However, there is a distinct Greek and Turkish influence as well, rather distorted into a Romanian interpretation.

There's the first course of salads and a cold cuts platter. Salads are a far cry from massive, green and colorful platters of the American staple. Cabbage plays a big role, and a typical offering on the salad menu is the cucumber, tomato, onion salad. Greek salads are often listed as well, but they tend to be heavy on the cheese and olives (which are NOT like Greek olives- Romanian olives ALWAYS taste like gross canned olives that are sliced and served on take out pizza) and tomatoes and not much else... Any other type of salad listed on a menu is not going to be anything that an American would be used to- tuna salad= can of crumbly, wet tuna dumped on small amount of green lettuce, tomatoes, and probably telemea (feta-ish) cheese. In the winters, salad= sauerkraut. Like the Austrians until very recently, there doesn't seem to be a real preference for FRESH vegetables; something preserved is often substituted in. Pickled cucumbers and cabbage are a staple here. Cold cuts can be good, there's a similarity to Austrian cold cuts (please excuse the constant Austrian references- I guess aside from American, it's my best frame of reference, and sometimes the similarities are worth pointing out to show that Romania isn't totally foreign.. to me, anyways...). You can definitely find some sort of gross over-processed ham, but there's also quite good quality of cold cuts, mainly pork based, that are dried or smoked hams. Pork is big. I sort of miss roast beef and nice turkey cold cuts. 

Also on the cold cuts platter are cheeses, including sheep's cheese, which has a very strong, salty taste; and pork lard, which is smoked and eaten just like that (this is quite shocking for non-saturated fat health obsessed Americans [though I acknowledge that the processed food obsession is probably far unhealthier]).

After the salads and cold cuts comes the SOUP. Soup here is DELICIOUS. The basics are bean soup and vegetable soup that are generally made with a beef broth; and ciorba taraneasca or country soup, which is a beef soup with vegetables. I LOVE the cream based broths here- creamy soup in the US means heavy duty, thick New England clam chowder type broths. Cream broths here are still very watery, but have SMATANA, nectar of the gods, added to it. SMATANA (note, there are accents on it that I don't know how to type, so it's pronounce 'smUH- tUH- nEH') is  sour cream, but it plays a STAPLE role in the Romanian kitchen. Soups made with this type of broth are Greek soup, which is a chicken soup with a bit of a lemony flavor; ciorba de burta or, beef stomach soup. Haven't had the guts to try that yet, but I definitely will- over Easter weekend I had lamb soup that I learned after eating was actually made out of the lamb's head. I learned this by discovered a jaw bone in my soup. The palate and tongue were also in my bowl. Teo's bowl had an eye. The brain was not there, because Teo's father ate it earlier that day. I'm not even flinching while writing this, because it was an extremely tasty soup. So, what's a little bit of stomach after some delicious head soup?

After soup, I have often been served a dish of gelatinized beef and vegetables. I will eat soup with eye balls in it, but I CANNOT eat this stuff. It looks like it's totally artificial, but I realized that the gelatin is like, REAL gelatin, made out of boiled down bones and hooves. It's poured into a dish over chunks of beef and boiled carrots and it makes this quivering, jiggling thing. uughhhhhhh! But people seem to like it. 

Ok, now the meal. Everything up to this was just an appetizer. The trick is to drink shots of plum brandy to help with digestion (it is apparently medicinal, as it is all natural- how about that...). Now is a meat course. Roasted chicken, roasted lamb, or roasted pork are pretty typical. There's also sarmale the Romanian version of stuffed grape leaves- Pickled cabbage leaves wrapped around meat and rice mix. REALLY good. 

Dessert is rather disappointing, though . I'm just too used to overly-sweet American desserts, and the rather dry and not very sweet Romanian prajitura, or cakes, are often packaged things that are more wafer-ish than I'd like. I miss a ridiculously gooey chocolate cake or chewy cookies. 

Other food items typical here are the ubiquitous pastry sellers that sell flaky, cheesy baked cakes that are goooooodddd. Sausages here are really not.... tasty. They're either too fatty and chewy and sort of processed looking, or they are like the Salam de Sibiu which is extremely dry and sort of gritty.... The only exception are the MICI sausages- spiced pork and sheep meat sausages that are reallllly greasy and delicious and will inspire disdain for hotdogs ever again. With some bread and mustard, they are a reallly good Romanian indulgence.