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Romanian cuisine is diverse. It blends different dishes from several traditions with which it has come into contact, but it also maintains its own character. It has been greatly influenced by Balkan cuisine while it also includes influences from the cuisines of other neighbours, such as Germans, Serbians, and Hungarians. An study of Romanian cuisine is very hard to make because products that are hardly of the same category are sometimes included under the same generic food dish. For example, the category ciorba includes foods classified otherwise as iskembe, sour soup, borsh and even some soups. The category tuica is a generic name here, while in other countries every flavour has a different name, and sometimes there are even different names inside the same category. That happened, mainly, because of a lack of research in this field.citation needed
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- "I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was "mamaliga", and egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call "impletata"." —Bram Stoker, Dracula, Chapter 1
An existential Romanian question is: Do we eat to live, or live to eat? A great number of proverbs and sayings have developed around the activity of eating. From the innocent child's saying of thanks:
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- Sărut mâna pentru masă,
- c-a fost bună şi gustoasă,
- şi bucătăreasa frumoasă
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- Thank you for the meal
- it was good and tasty
- and the cook lady was beautiful
to the more philosophical:
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- Mulţumescu-ţi ţie Doamne
- c-am mâncat şi iar mi-e foame
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- Thank you Lord
- for I have eaten and I am hungry again
and Dragostea trece prin stomac (Love passes through the stomach); or the simple Pofta vine mâncănd (Appetite comes while eating); or the sarcastic Porcul mănâncă orice, dar se-ngraşă pentru alţii (The pig eats anything, but it gets fat for others); or a total fulfillment saying Mâncat bine, băut bine, dimineaţa sculat mort (Ate well, drank well, in the morning woke up dead).
Recipes bear the same influences as the rest of Romanian culture. The Turks have brought meatballs (perişoare in a meatball soup), from the Greeks there is musaca, from the Bulgarians there are a wide variety of vegetable dishes like zacuscă, from the Austrians there is the şniţel and the list could continue.
One of the most common dishes is mămăliga, a cornmeal mush, long-considered the poor man's dish (N-are nici o mămăligă pe masă - He hasn't even a mămăliga on the table), but it has become more appreciated in recent times.citation needed Pork is the preferred meat in Romanian cuisine (Peştele cel mai bun, tot porcul rămâne - The best fish will always be the pork or Cea mai bună legumă e carnea de pui şi cea mai buna carne de pui e carnea de porc - The best vegetable is chicken meat and the best chicken meat is pork), but beef is also consumed, and a good lamb or fish dish is never to be refused. Romanian pancakes are thin and filled with jam, called clătită. Different recipes are prepared depending on the season or for special events. For Christmas, a pig is traditionally "sacrificed" by every rural family, and a wide variety of recipes are prepared, including: cârnaţi (or cărnaţi) - a kind of long sausages with meat, caltaboşi (or cartaboşi) – sausages made with liver and other intestines, piftie – made with difficulty to use parts like pig's feet, head and/or ears, suspended in aspic, and also tocătură (a kind of stew) that is served along with mămăligă and wine (so that the pork can swim) and of course the Christmas meal is sweetened with the traditional cozonac (sweet bread with nuts, or lokum - rahat in Romanian) for dessert. At Easter, lamb or mutton is served: the main dishes are roast lamb and drob - a cooked mix of intestines, meat and fresh vegetables, mainly green onion, while for dessert pască (pie made with sweetened cottage cheese filling) as a sweet dish.
Wine is the preferred drink, and it has a tradition of over two millennia.citation needed Romania is currently the world's 9th largest wine producer, and recently the export market has started to grow. A wide variety of domestic (Fetească, Grasă, Tamâioasă) and worldwide (Italian Riesling, Merlot, Sauvignon blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Muscat Ottonel) varieties are produced. Beer is also highly regarded, generally blonde pilsener beer, made with German influences. There are also Romanian breweries with a long tradition.
Romania is the world's 2nd largest plum producer and almost the entire plum production becomes the famous ţuică (a plum brandy obtained through one or more distillation steps).citation needed
List of dishes
- ardei umpluţi (stuffed bell pepper)
- caltaboşi (a sort of rice pudding with chitterlings)
- chiftele (a type of large meatballs covered with a flour crust or breadcrumb crust)
- chifteluţe de ciuperci (chiftele made of mushrooms rather than meat)
- ciorbă (soup)
- ciulama (white sauce stew)
- dovlecei umpluţi (stuffed summer squash)
- drob (a sort of lamb tripe mix cooked with several types of green herbs like dock, bunch onion etc.)
- fasole verde (green beans)
- frigărui (skewered meat)
- iahnie (beans stew)
- piftie (meat jelly)
- plăcinte (pies)
- pilaf
- slănina (bacon)
- pârjoale (burger)
- ostropel (method of cooking duck)
- limbă cu măsline (cow tongue with olives)
- mămăligă (cornmeal mush, Polenta)
- mâncare de mazăre (pea stew)
- musaca (moussaka)
- mititei (grilled minced-meat rolls)
- mâncare de praz
- papricaş
- peşte marinat (marinated fish)
- plachie din peste (river fish with vegetables)
- rasol (with garlic or horseradish)
- saramură (pickled fish)
- sarmale (stuffed cabbage)
- soté de morcovi (sauteed carrots)
- şniţel (chicken cutlet)
- stufat de miel (lamb, onion & garlic stew)
- supă de găluşte (dumpling soup)
- tobă (sausage stuffed with pork jelly, liver, and skin)
- tocăniţă vânătorească
- tocană, or dim. tocaniţă (stew)
- tochitură moldovenească (moldavian stew)
- tochitură ardelenească (transylvanian stew)
- varză călită (steamed cabbage with pork ribs or duck or sausages, etc.)
- zacuscă
List of spices and salads
- ardei copţi (roasted peppers)
- borş
- murături
- mujdei
- salată de boeuf
- salată de vinete (eggplant salad)
- salată de cartofi
- salată de macaroane
- salată de ţelină
- sfeclă murată
- salată de sfeclă
- salată de roşii (tomatoes salad)
List of cheese types
The generic name for cheese in Romania is brânză and it is considered to be of Dacian origin. Most of the cheese is made of cow or sheep milk, goat milk being rarely used.
- brânză de burduf
- brânză de vaci (sweet cow milk cheese)
- brânză topită
- brânză în coajă de brad
- caş
- caşcaval
- telemea
- urdă
List of Desserts
- Baclava (very sweet pastry)
- Covrigi (pretzels)
- Gogoşi (donuts)
- Halva (khalva)
- Rahat (Turkish delight)
- Plăcintă (pastry)
- Colivă
- Cozonac
- Pandişpan (sponge cake)
- Orez cu lapte (rice pudding)
- Griş cu lapte (cream of wheat)
- Lapte de pasăre ("bird's milk")
- Cremă de zahăr ars (Crème caramel)
- Clătite (crêpes)
- Turtă dulce (gingerbread)
- Chec (cake)
- Papanaşi
- Şarlotă
- Prăjituri
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- Savarine
- Amandine
- Joffre cake (invented at Casa Capşa)
List of drinks
- socată
- bere (beer)
- palincă
- rachiu (fruit brandy)
- secărică (caraway seed brandy)
- turţ
- ţuică (plum brandy)(pronounced tzuy-kah)
- horincă
- afinată
- zmeurată
- vişinată (a type of cherry liqueur)(pronounced vi-she-na-ta)
- vin (wine)
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