HELLO TO ALL FOOD LOVERS

Hi everyone. My name is Paula. If you are a food lover, than you came to the right blog.

I want to write about Romanian, American, French, Italian, Greek, Mexican, and Croatian cuisine, as these I know best to cook.

I hope you, my readers will like, or use my blog for your recipes needs and/or ideas of what you want to cook.

I don't know if any of you heard about Romania, so I am going to tell you a little about my country and it's food. Of course, I had to copy and paste some of this info from Internet, but as I will start into my blog, I will add my unique flavors, as Romanian food is all about love, passion, and flavors.

I LOVE COOKING, so I am not afraid to make some twists from the original recipes.

Originally I am from Iași, located in the northern side of Romania, where the foods, and the sweets are known throughout the country. Whomever hears me saying that I am from Iași, asks me about our food, and I am proud to say that I love to cook it or to teach others about our recipes.

Did you know that Romania is a country known for Dracula? LOL...I just love this story!!!


Anyway, located halfway between the Equator and the North Pole, Romania is the 12th largest country in Europe.
Romania’s terrain is almost evenly divided between mountains, hills and plains.

Romanian (limba română) is the official language of Romania. The name Romania, and its derivatives, come from the Latin word 'Romanus', a legacy of Roman rulers who took control of ancient Dacia in 106 A.D. Romanian retains a number of features of old Latin and also contains many words taken from the surrounding Slavic languages, as well as from French, Old Church Slavonic, German, Greek and Turkish.
Romanian is actually easier for English speakers to understand than it is assumed. If you’ve studied other Romance language, such as Italian, Spanish, French or Portuguese, you may feel at home sooner than you think. Romanian is a phonetic language, so words are pronounced as they are spelled.
A foreigner trying to learn or speak Romanian can expect positive reactions from native speakers. Most Romanian will certainly appreciate the fact that you are making an effort to speak their language.
Interesting fact:

• Romanian holds the intriguing status of being the only member of the Romance language family spoken in Eastern Europe.

Romanian cuisine is a diverse blend of 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 Ottoman cuisine, while it also includes influences from the cuisines of other neighbours, such as Germans, Serbs, Bulgarians and Hungarians.
Quite different types of dishes are sometimes included under a generic term; for example, the category ciorbă includes a wide range of soups with a characteristic sour taste. These may be meat and vegetable soups, tripe (ciorbă de burtă), and calf foot soups, or fish soups, all of which are soured by lemon juice, sauerkraut juice, vinegar, or traditionally borş. The category ţuică (plum brandy) is a generic name for a strong alcoholic spirit in Romania, while in other countries, every flavour has a different name
Romanian 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 Austrians there is the şniţel, and the list could continue. The Romanians share many foods with the Balkan area (in which Turkey was the cultural vehicle), with Central Europe (mostly in the form of German-Austrian dishes introduced through Hungary or by the Saxons in Transylvania) and Eastern Europe. Some others are original or can be traced to the Roman or other ancient civilizations. The lack of written sources in Eastern Europe makes impossible to determine today the punctual origin for most of them.
One of the most common meals is the mămăliga, a type of polenta, served on its own or as an accompaniment. Pork is the main meat used in Romanian cuisine, but also beef is consumed and a good lamb or fish dish is never to be refused.
Before Christmas, on December 20 (Ignat's Day or Ignatul in Romanian),^[4] a pig is traditionally sacrificed by every rural family.^[5] A variety of foods for Christmas prepared from the slaughtered pig consist of the following:

• Cărnaţi — sausages
• Caltaboş — sausages made with liver
• Tobă and piftie — dishes using pig's feet, head and ears suspended in aspic
• Tochitură — pan-fried pork served with mămăligă and wine ("so that the pork can swim").
• Piftie - inferior parts of the pig, mainly the tail, feet and ears, are cooked refinely and served in a form of gelatin
• Jumari - small pieces of pig meat are fried and tumbled through various spices

The Christmas meal is sweetened with the traditional cozonac, a sweet bread with nuts and rahat for dessert.
At Easter, lamb is served: the main dishes are roast lamb and drob de miel – a Romanian-style lamb haggis made of minced organs (heart, liver, lungs) wrapped and roasted in a caul.^[6][7] The traditional Easter cake is pască, a pie made of yeast dough with a sweet cottage cheese filling at the center.^[8][9]
Romanian pancakes, called clătită, are thin (like the French crêpe) and can be prepared with savory or sweet fillings: ground meat, white cheese, or jam. Different recipes are prepared depending on the season or the occasion.^[10]
Wine is the preferred drink, and Romanian wine has a tradition of over three millennia.^[10] Romania is currently the world's 9th largest wine producer, and recently the export market has started to grow.^[10] Romania produces a wide selection of domestic varieties (Fetească, Grasă, Tamâioasă, and Busuioacă), as well as varieties from across the world (Italian Riesling, Merlot, Sauvignon blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, and Muscat Ottonel). Beer is also highly regarded, generally blonde pilsener beer, made with German influences. There are also Romanian breweries with a long tradition.
According to the 2009 data of FAOSTAT, Romania is the world's second largest plum producer (after the United States),^[11] and as much as 75% of Romania's plum production is processed into the famous ţuică, a plum brandy obtained through one or more distillation steps.^[12]