My Introduction to Romanian Food

A more area-based post this time, featuring the best thing in the world next to anthropology: food!

While here, I’ve had the opportunity to work on the MARBAL Project and also eat a lot. One of our nights was spent eating burek, a stuffed filo dough dish:

Burke brânză (with salty sheep’s cheese), burek carne (with ground meat), and burek cu spanac (with spinach)

We all shared a beef burek, a cheese one, and a spinach and cheese burek. They were all good! I think we agreed the cheese one was the best though, can’t go wrong with cheese.

Food number two that I tried was langos. Langos, fried dough topped with sour cream and sheep cheese, quickly became a huge favorite of mine. I had it three times and regret nothing.

Langos cu smântână si brânză (fried dough with sour cream and cheese)

The final night we were there, Jess, Colin, and I had kürtőskalács. Kürtőskalács is spit-cake that is made from yeast dough coated with sugar and butter before being cooked. It is sold at a stand in the center of the Cetatea Alba Carolina, which is normally easy to find because of the groups of excited children clustering around it!

Kürtőskalács, a sweet yeasted dough that is roasted on a spit.

I got a really cool picture of it cooking! Once it’s cooked it can be coated with various toppings. We had ours with cinnamon. 

Roasting the kürtőskalács

Later on I had a stew called pomona porcului that made my night. It had sausage and cubes of pork with polenta in the center. The polenta was great! We had seasoned mushrooms to share which were some of the best mushrooms I’ve ever had.

Pomona Porcului – Pork and polenta stew

It was the perfect end to the field season and helped me get through the overnight train to Budapest!

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