Gourmet Articles

Romanians as a people love to eat all kinds of appetizing food. Romanian cuisine is therefore full of mouth watering recipes. You can take your pick from preparations of the everyday sort as well as delicacies, which are cooked only on special occasions. Just take a look at two preparations: traditional cheese balls and cabbage rolls.

Well, Romanians do not like wasting time when they decide on a nice meal; so let us start off without delay. The first preparation we are going to choose is the cheese ball, which finds its place in every Romanian cookbook. It takes nearly an hour to cook.

The basic ingredients for this dish are corn flour sauce and the stuffing. For the sauce, you will need 350 grams of corn flour, half a teaspoon of salt, a litre and a half of water. For the stuffing, you will need 4 eggs, 50 grams of butter, and 300 grams of cheese. The cheese should ideally be of two types, and the most suitable types are bellows cheese ("branza de burduf") and "telemea", a salty cheese.

The first step involves boiling the eggs and cooking the soft corn flour sauce. You have to use an earthen pot, a symbol of authentic Romanian cuisine, to get the original flavor. But first, you need to immerse the pot in water for about 15 minutes and butter up the inside of the pot adequately. This will ensure that the cheese balls do not stick to the pot when you cook them.

Once the corn flour sauce has been prepared, flake the bellows cheese with a fork. Next, pour one third of the sauce into the pot and put in the bellows cheese, a teaspoon of butter and two halved boiled eggs. The next step is to cover it with another third of the corn flour sauce, and putting the salty cheese and two boiled eggs upon it. Top it up with the final third of the sauce and the authentic Romanian cheese ball is ready to serve.

The next recipe we are going to share with you is the cabbage roll, and it is as important member of traditional Romanian cuisine as the cheese ball. It could take you half an hour to prepare the ingredients, and thrice that time to cook in an oven.

To cook the cabbage roll, you will need a kilo of minced meat, raw cabbage, which you have to scald first, 2 average sized onions, some verdure, about 200 grams of rice, 2 tablespoons of tomato paste, a teaspoon of salt, half teaspoon pepper, 2 laurel leaves, and 1 hot pepper. You will also need standard sized sauerkraut, and you should soak it in water for at least two hours beforehand so that it is free of salt.

As far as equipment is concerned, you need specific kitchen utensils and a Romanian earthen pot. Besides, as home appliances, you can use the cooker, which of course must have an oven, kitchen robot or mince maker. Hack meat using a kitchen robot or a mince maker. Mix the mince with the rice, the chopped onion, the verdure, after you minced it too using a knife, tomato paste, salt and pepper. Then you have to choose cabbage leaves and put the mixture onto them and roll them.

These two authentic Romanian recipes are an expression of Romanian essential jobs in the past, which were shepherd and rich farmer, who used to enjoy eating, drinking a little natural wine or brandy and then telling jokes and feeling great.