Radio România Internațional

Tag: recipes

  • Women on Matasari Street, reloaded

    Women on Matasari Street, reloaded

    A cat drawn on a T-shirt, dutifully scratching
    a vinyl record, under the motto When the Cat is at home!. Another T-shirt displayed
    a motivational slogan Bee the sun! And, just as expected, there’s another such
    slogan, Dream Big! painted on a shirt: craft ice-cream, colored cotton candy,
    Indian, Asian dishes, burgers, home-prepared beverages or cocktails, but also
    Prosecco, have made, as usual, the regular stuff in the last weekend of May on
    Matasari Street. A street that, for 11 years now, has been giving the go-ahead
    for the summer events happening in Bucharest. It changed its meaning and
    purpose of three decades ago, when it was a drug-trafficking area where street
    workers were soliciting. That is why the phrase Women on Matasari Street
    changed its meaning thanks to a genuine urban festival, invented a decade ago. From
    the very early editions of the event that made it possible for a complete makeover
    to occur in the area, in people’s courtyards on Matasari Street painting workshops
    were staged, but also tailoring or handmade jewelry workshops.
    Areas for antiquaries and conferences have been created as well.


    Merry people are jostling about on Matasari Street, braving the
    flippant May weather, with quick spells of rain or brief periods of sunshine,
    with winds blowing and older or newer participants providing local color to the
    place. For starters, we spoke to the vice-president of Kola Kariola, an association
    that brokers the adoption of puppies, Marius Chirca. With datils on that, here
    is Marius Chirca.


    We’ve been absent from the
    events for a couple of years now. The pandemic
    prevented us from participating. We mainly came…well…not to raise funds, we
    turned up to socialize with the people who support us in the online environment,
    since we have over 400,000 followers and for each such event, we participate in
    a bid to meet those living close by, in Bucharest, in Ilfov, some even came from
    outside Bucharest to see us, to have a conversation about certain cases. As on Facebook, on Instagram, where we promote our activity, we cannot
    just post absolutely everything. We come with promotional articles, we also
    have puppies for adoption. We work, we don’t have weekends, we don’t have our days
    off, as there is no such thing as closing time when it comes to animals and for
    us that comes as an opportunity, going out, being outdoors, having a bit of
    fun, we laugh, we crack a joke on and off, ’cause otherwise, there is more like
    sadness and pain in what we do. That is what we get to see! We have already had
    contact data from people who want to adopt, tomorrow we bring other puppies to
    promote them, and if we spend at least two days here, if there is one single
    dog we send home, that means we haven’t been here for nothing.


    At the Festival, Ilinca Andrei can be found behind a stand with
    bracelets inscribed with Morse code messages.
    Here is her story.


    We’ve got a brand making bracelets, each bracelet
    has a word written in the Morse code, and on the little card that goes with the
    bracelet we have the word, in the language we use, but also its transcription
    in the Morse code, with lines and dots. The idea sprang from the wish to have a
    bracelet with a personalized message that cannot be accessible to everybody but
    which can only be known by the person wearing that bracelet. We have explored several possibilities,
    and the Morse code seemed the most ingenious way to code a message, especially
    on a bracelet. Clients seem to be most interested in messages from the family
    area, like mother, father, brother, sister, but there are also words in English
    that our clients chose, such as love,
    hug, hope, faith, so we sold those very well.


    Women and men on stilts were making their
    way with difficulty on the crowded street, the children tried a more unusual
    pastime, that of entering a circle and staying closed for a few
    seconds in a balloon of soap. Also for children, we discovered a candle making
    workshop. There we talked with Andreea
    Şerpe, who had a very special stand, full of cake-looking candles, of shapes and
    colors that made one think they were in a confectionary.




    I make candles from soy
    wax, in the shape of sweets. We have all kinds of stand-alone candles, candles
    in a jar, wax melts for aromatherapy lamps, we use perfumes and ingredients as
    natural as possible. We also organize workshops for children, we have pots that
    they can decorate with flowers, with all kinds of fruit, pieces of chocolate,
    candies (made of wax), we use cold wax,
    so that it doesn’t burn and everything is safe. I had two or three children who
    actually bit into the Macarons and they were very upset, they started crying,
    even though I’d told them they were not edible; they couldn’t understand that,
    but they were very cute!




    Cezar Proca participated in the Festival
    with natural products for external and internal use, but also with decorations
    inspired by nature




    We came to Women on
    Matasari primarily with skin-care products, all organic, therapeutic, based on
    oils obtained by cold pressing the seeds and organic medicinal plants. We get
    the oil drop by drop, it is a medicinal product for the skin. We also have
    plant terrariums, wooden decorations with plant terrariums, wood and ceramic
    decorations and hand-painted ceramics. The Digestive and the Bitter are drinks
    obtained from herbs macerated in fruit brandy from Satu Mare, the teas are made
    of pressed herbs, we can get two liters of tea from one medallion. The digestive drink helps to calm the nervous
    system thanks to the mint and lemon balm it contains. It’s very good for digestion, after a rich
    meal, especially in the evening, it also disinfects the oral cavity and we
    sleep better. And the Bitter is the
    recipe of Dr. Engineer Iuliana Barbu from Farmacia Naturii, a recipe tested for
    more than 20 years.


    At 6:00 p.m., the street became more animated,
    as every year, with live music, and the spectators enjoyed the experience to
    the fullest, despite the rain that this year chose to appear from time to time
    at Women on Matasari.







  • Romanian tastes on Canadian vloggs

    Romanian tastes on Canadian vloggs

    Pakistan, Jakarta (Indonesia), Brazil, are just
    some of the places visited and featured on the vloggs created by two Canadian
    youths calling themselves the JetLag Warriors. They visited Romania as well,
    and produced a series of 90 videos recommending several unusual traditional
    recipes, as well as outstanding areas, including buildings of great historical
    value in our country.


    JetLagWarriors, the Canadian couple made up of Steve
    and Ivana, have travelled for several years, especially during the Canadian
    winter, so that got the taste of traveling and decided to spend their life on
    the road indefinitely. They post information on low-budget travel, Airbnbs,
    street food and many others. In the series devoted to Romania, the tripe sour
    soup is not necessarily a surprise, but the clip recommending palinca or plum
    brandy with black pepper as a sickness cure is a lot more exciting. It is in
    Romania that the Canadians seem to have discovered this universal remedy, which
    cures everything from a hangover to a sore throat.




    We talked about this tradition of old folk
    remedies in Romania and elsewhere with Chef Relu Liciu, and we found out that
    hangover remedies are very different:




    Relu Liciu: These remedies vary from one
    region to another and, around the world, from one country to the other. When I went
    to Germany I found out they used bananas, given the lack of potassium in your
    body during a hangover. Usually, in 90% of the cases, people get a hangover
    because they mix drinks.




    And still, can ţuica or palinca be used as sickness
    cure?




    Relu Liciu: Some use it as an appetiser, to
    drink before the meal, while others regard is as a digestive, to be had after a
    meal. A lot of nations, including Italy or Austria, use spirits as a digestive.
    But go to Transylvania, and you’ll never get ham and palinca at the end of a
    meal, this is what you start with. And it does have to do with the stomach. I remember
    I went to Serbia many years ago and I saw a bottle in a drugstore, the label
    read Stomakia, and it was a local brandy with leaves of wormwood in it.




    Our guest also told us why some of the
    best-known Romanian sour soups, especially the giblets and the tripe soup, are seen
    as hangover cures:




    Relu Liciu: Just before a hangover, you get
    dehydrated and you desperately need liquids. But after that you get really
    hungry, and you can’t have anything solid. A tripe soup serves both purposes,
    and it’s a meal in itself, you don’t really need a second course after that.
    But if you ask me, the giblets soup is THE hangover cure. I first heard about
    it when I was 7, it was served at weddings after the party or the next day, you
    couldn’t have a wedding without giblets soup!




    As for the tripe soup, Steve and Ivana, who
    have learned to cook it as well, not only to eat it, call it life! The vloggers
    across the Ocean were so delighted with what they found in Romania, that they
    celebrated their return home with a plate of mici. Other culinary
    recommendations they make include the pálinka / pălinca, various vegetable
    spreads, the Cluj-style cabbage which they compared to sweet lasagna, and
    various traditional desserts. But Romanian food, they say, is so good and
    filling that you don’t really need a dessert.




    Chef Relu Liciu tells us more about what we
    should eat or drink after having local drinks:




    Relu Liciu: Many people use coffee, many
    others use pickles, yet others eat sweets or use carbonated drinks. People
    planning to drink usually do a little preparation first, in the sense that they
    have a fatty meal or drink some olive oil, to make sure the stomach is lined
    and the alcohol doesn’t go straight into the blood stream.




    The Romanians who saw the video in which Steve drinks
    a shot of ţuică with black pepper seem to have enjoyed it, while some found it
    funny and said the brandy should have been hot and the pepper shouldn’t have
    been ground. But beyond the jokes and criticism, the fact is that a growing
    number of Romanian recipes are getting viewed and appreciated around the world.
    (AMP)

  • Courgettes. Wheat in cooking.

    Courgettes. Wheat in cooking.


    Courgettes


    Courgettes, also known as zucchini, have a wide variety of uses. One very easy to make dish is fried courgettes. Take three medium sized courgettes, as larger ones have tougher seeds. Cut off the ends, and cut it into half inch slices. Sprinkle salt on them and leave them to sweat. Douse them in flour, shaking off the excess. Beat an egg, mix in a bit of ground black pepper, and dip the slices in the egg. Fry in oil at medium heat. You can serve hot or cold. They go well with the garlic sauce of your choice.



    Another great application are courgettes stuffed with ground chicken meat. Large size courgettes go well with this application, after you scoop out the seeds. You also need two onions, one carrot, one capsicum, a few tomatoes, a bunch of fresh dill, as well as thyme, black pepper, and paprika. Cut the courgettes in two lengthwise, and scoop out the seeds. Chop the capsicum and onions finely, grate the carrot, then sweat them in oil. You can add the scooped out core, if the seeds arent tough. Add the ground chicken meat, along with the dill, finely chopped, and the herbs and spices. Place the mixture into the courgettes, then cover with tomato slices. Put the courgettes into a deep oven tray. Chop up the remaining tomatoes, then place them in the tray, covering in water. Bake for about 45 minutes at medium heat. At the end, you can sprinkle with fresh parsley. Serve hot, garnishing with sour cream.



    Wheat in cooking


    It is wheat harvest time, and in Romanian rural life, that is a crucial yearly event. Wheat is a fundamental part of harvest rituals, and it is also closely associated with traditional religious events, such as the celebration of St. Elijah’s day.



    In times before staples such as corn, potatoes and rice had yet to reach Europe, wheat was not considered only something to make bread out of, but also as a major side dish. One dish mostly lost is one that was a staple for sailors and dockworkers in ports on the Danube. While shipping the wheat, the river boatmen would boil wheat in a large covered pot, then add sautéed onion and chopped tomato to it, a little wine, and the fish. This mixture would be simmered no more than 30 minutes, taking care not to overcook the fish.



    Another recipe that might interest you is one inspired by the popular pilaf, but we will substitute wheat for the rice. Take half a kilogram of wheat, 3 medium sized onions, a few mushrooms, fresh or tinned, two green peppers, and a bunch of fresh parsley. Boil the wheat with a bit of salt. Separately, sautee in a bit of oil the finely chopped onion, then add the sliced green peppers, and the sliced mushrooms. Keep stirring the sautee until it is well blended, then add it to the boiled wheat. Garnish with the fresh parsley, then serve immediately.



    Enjoy!

  • Veal Stew Mountain Style

    Veal Stew Mountain Style

    This particular recipe was collected in the villages of the Apuseni Mountains, in the heart of Romania, and it is famous across the country. It is as simple as it is effective. It is a veal stew, and it is a hearty, though rather heavy, meal.



    What you need for this recipe is veal, of course, lots of onion and green pepper for the solids, and for the sauce you need sour cream, tomato paste, garlic and fresh parsley. If you want to make it like the mountain people do it, you will make this in a thick cauldron on an open fire or on a wood fired stove.



    However, if you dont want to go out in the wilderness for a hearty meal, you can simply use a larger pot at home, if you want to make this dish in the quantities that the mountain peasants do. For instance, in the original recipe, our host made this using no less than 10 large onions. Of course, since this is a simple recipe that does not require great precision for a great taste, you can simply match whatever quantities suit your taste.



    Start by chopping roughly the onion, then cutting the veal and the pepper into squares. Set them to sweating into the pot, on low heat, mixing regularly to ensure even cooking and prevent sticking. Separately make the sauce by mixing and bringing to a boil the sour cream, tomato paste, garlic and fresh parsley. Pour it into the stew pot, then leave the heat on for a few more minutes to have the tastes blend nicely.



    Enjoy with a thick slice of homemade bread, preferably right out of the oven.

  • Palm Sunday Dishes

    Palm Sunday Dishes


    Although Palm Sunday is a Lent day, when people are generally fasting, fish dishes are permitted on this day. So here are some fish-based recipes for the special Palm Sunday dinner. Well start with a couple of recipes using carp, which is readily available in Romania.



    For the first one, carp with tomato sauce, you will need around 2 kilos of carp, 5-6 tomatoes, 2-3 peppers, two onions, a head of garlic, parsley, a lemon, oil, salt and pepper. After you have cleaned, scaled and eviscerated the fish, dice it and put the pieces in an oiled pan. Salt the meat, then arrange the sliced tomatoes, peppers and onions around it. Sprinkle the finely chopped parsley on top, add lemon slices and pour a glass of wine. Everything is now ready for the oven, where it should bake for about 45 minutes, on medium heat, until the fish pieces are golden brown.



    Another recipe is a little more spectacular: skewered carp. For this recipe you will need a large, 3-4 kilo carp, which you have washed, scaled and eviscerated. Oil both on the inside and outside, and place about half a meter over an open grill by means of a metal spit. Another rod needs to be placed inside the fish, to keep the sides apart and allow the heat in. It will take around 30-40 minutes for the fish to roast. Serve hot, with garlic sauce or lemon, and of course with a glass of white, dry, well-chilled wine.



    Another proposal for this occasion is minced fish balls. You obviously need a fish with large bones, easy to pick out, such as catfish. Take one kilo of boned fish meat, two or three onions, a few cloves of garlic, two eggs, some flour, salt and pepper to taste. Some people use mashed potatoes, others use soaked stale bread, about two slices worth. By all means do not forget a whole bunch of fresh dill. Mince the fish meat. Finely chop the onion and the dill, and knead it into the minced meat with the mashed potatoes or soggy bread, eggs, and the salt and pepper, then add the garlic, finely chopped or crushed to a paste. While kneading watch out for bones you may have missed. Shape the composition into balls, douse them in flour and fry them in oil.



    Another recipe worth mentioning has become something of a rarity, because it is difficult to make in its traditional form. It is Gefilte fish, which in Romanian is known simply as “stuffed fish, and it is usually made with pike. The fish is skinned carefully to keep the skin intact, then the meat is boned and minced. It is mixed with a bit of rice and with finely chopped vegetables such as onion, carrot and green pepper. Egg yolk is added to bind the composition together. There are many variations on the ingredients, some recipes favoring sweet ingredients such as pine nuts, walnuts and raisins. Herbs such as thyme and basil are also used in many versions, and we highly recommend chopped fresh dill. After making the mix, carefully fill the skin of the fish with it, then sew it shut. Oil it and place it in an oven dish, with tomato juice and lots of garlic. Bake for about 45 minutes or until the fish is golden brown.

  • Apricot Preserves

    We start with the apricot jam. You need 3 kilograms of apricots and one kilo of sugar. Wash the apricots first and then remove their seeds. Place them in a pan together with the sugar, long enough for the apricots to release their juice. Boil over medium heat for about half an hour. Stir frequently to make sure the jam does not stick to the pan. If needed, mash the fruit into a homogeneous mixture. To check whether the jam is ready, take a half spoonful of the still boiling mix and pour it on a plate. If a membrane is formed and the mixture has a thicker consistency, turn off the cooker, pour the jam into jars and close them tight. Allow the jars to cool gradually, wrapping them in a blanket.



    If you want to have jam for a long time, after they have cooled, put the jars on a tray and put it into the cold oven. Turn on the oven on low heat and leave it like that for about half an hour. Remove the jars and wrap them in a blanket, allowing the jars to cool gradually. Store the jars in a cool storage room. You can have the jam as such, or you can use it as an ingredient, whenever you want to prepare cakes.



    You may also want to prepare apricot comfiture, and for that, after having allowed the mixture to boil for about half an hour, remove the apricots with a slotted spoon, allow the syrup to boil for yet another half an hour, stirring often. Then pour the fruit back and allow the mixture to boil for yet another couple of minutes. Put the comfiture into jars and close the lids tight.



    You can also use apricots to make a sweet and balmy alcoholic beverage, easy to prepare. Cut three kilos of apricots in half, remove the seeds, crash them softly, then pour them into a demijohn. Make sure a layer of sugar covers a layer of fruit. Also make sure the top layer is all sugar. Allow the mix to macerate for a week, stir the content and pour enough alcohol to cover the fruit layer in the demijohn. Allow the mix to become even for about a fortnight. You can have the drink, known as “caisata” as an appetizer, just like the sour cherry drink or the blueberry drink.


    Enjoy!