My issue with trying to find Romanian recipes is that it's hard to weed out the traditional recipes from recipes that just happen to be written in Romanian. I have given up on pre-translated recipes; I have thus far found them all to be either (a) poorly translated or (b) Americanized, or both. With the exception of Roxy's Kitchen - hers is the one English language Romanian blog that I go back to. Now, it's easy to weed through some of the recipes, like when I find recipes on a "Traditional Romanian Foods" blog for things like "Pui Kung Pao" ... um, no. Not traditional Romanian food. Or recipes that call for margarine or prepackaged things, because back in the day (or even now), I know A's mother would NEVER be using those ingredients (and they're not something I would be using either).
So it's a consistent problem for me. I look through recipes and see what I can find that *looks* like it would be a traditional recipe, and then I make it and A has never had it or even heard of it. But at least we're trying some good new foods!
Last night's recipe was for porc cu sos de mustar cu mamaliga. I finally got the mamaliga part down pat - you'd think that boiling water, corn meal and salt would be easy. Apparently not - it would either be too runny, it would burn, etc. A told me his trick the last time we had it and I tried that this time and viola! Now I can cook mamaliga like a pro :P
I made the pork first and separated some out for the kids. They don't like sour cream, so I made K some honey mustard (which she deemed just as good as the honey mustard from TGIFridays, lol) and H dipped his in ranch dressing (one of the only things I still buy premade; note to self: need to start making ranch dressing for the kids asap!). And every time we have mamaliga, I put a teeny tiny dab of it on each of their plates and they look at it sideways and leave it there, but this time, H ate his and said his mouth must not be working because he really couldn't taste anything.
The recipe I used is here - Porc cu sos de mustar
Up next, I'm trying my hand at zacusca - now, THAT I know is traditional!
So it's a consistent problem for me. I look through recipes and see what I can find that *looks* like it would be a traditional recipe, and then I make it and A has never had it or even heard of it. But at least we're trying some good new foods!
Last night's recipe was for porc cu sos de mustar cu mamaliga. I finally got the mamaliga part down pat - you'd think that boiling water, corn meal and salt would be easy. Apparently not - it would either be too runny, it would burn, etc. A told me his trick the last time we had it and I tried that this time and viola! Now I can cook mamaliga like a pro :P
I made the pork first and separated some out for the kids. They don't like sour cream, so I made K some honey mustard (which she deemed just as good as the honey mustard from TGIFridays, lol) and H dipped his in ranch dressing (one of the only things I still buy premade; note to self: need to start making ranch dressing for the kids asap!). And every time we have mamaliga, I put a teeny tiny dab of it on each of their plates and they look at it sideways and leave it there, but this time, H ate his and said his mouth must not be working because he really couldn't taste anything.
The recipe I used is here - Porc cu sos de mustar
Up next, I'm trying my hand at zacusca - now, THAT I know is traditional!
If you don't mind me shamelessly plugging my blog on your site, you might like to take a look at it. I've been posting traditional Romanian recipes on it for a couple of months now, all in English. I try my hardest to make sure that they are all traditional recipes (some more common, some more rarely eaten these days) and that they use commonly available local Romanian ingredients, preferably in season. Anyway, take a look and I hope it might give you some ideas that you can try out.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the other problem with traditional Romanian food is that every region, every country, and even every family have their own idea of what is 'correct' for a particular recipes (you say you are Italian, so I'm sure you know what I mean). So no matter how hard you try, someone will always say "nu nu nu, you never make recipe X with ingredient y".
Pofta buna!
I just looked up your blog and am now following it - thank you! I am always up for all the help that I can get :P
ReplyDeleteI am learning what my fiance's family uses for traditional spices, etc. for different types of dishes (pork dishes have certain amounts of certain spices, chicken dishes have other amounts of other spices, etc.) so I am doing a lot of substituting now when it comes to the recipes I find, to make the traditional recipes more traditional for our family. Thankfully I love to cook, lol.