Astuffed rdeis and sarmales are consumed in all areas of the country. Both dishes have countless variations: we generically call stuffed peppers a lot of stuffed vegetables, just as sarmales have countless compositions and vegetable coverings. Both have fasting variants, mostly based on rice and mushrooms, but the list of ingredients used continues with inexhaustible inventiveness.
In Oltenia there is crayfish soup, where crayfish are not really crayfish, not even at all. This invention from Olten is also called the same way, as you will see, and the version with dough was known as "the poor man's meat". But the "poor" also made another ingenious upgrade and replaced the dough with beans rubbed with garlic, just to spite those who say that we have no gastronomy at all.
This soup is not really on all roads or books, and if you are looking for it at Radu Anton Roman, you will only find it in the edition "long revisited and much added" (ed. Paideia) and only in its festive version, by connoisseurs or householders with a handshake when it comes to satisfying the belly.
"Wow, how many more can I put through the heads of the Oltenes (that is, through the goiter!). Especially here, in the humid and hot south of the Danube, where peppermints are as big as doughnuts, donuts as big as melons, and melons as big as truck wheels! Here, in the tribes' tractir, the peppers are called capia, when ciushchi, when raki, when (I don't know Sorbelte and Turkish), in a joyful Balkan polyglot and polynomial.
Friends, dear lovers of hot stoves, we will eat today, under the willows and willows of the fluvial and multicultural Oltenia, an unprecedented "crab" and Sunday soup (they too? You will grumble, the landscape is inviting, I agree, but I have more we also saw the willows, and crayfish, and even Oltenia, with multicultural Olteni and everything, it's Sunday, come on, we're resting too, why did you wake us up for so much work, what a lot of fuss for a pot of juice, and Roman makes this crap, with clams and bugs, let him eat crayfish stew, if he feels like it, we are serious people, we have jobs, tomorrow morning we wake up early!!).
But, dear friends and irritated guests, I'm going to ask you to take your time. A surprise is coming. In fact, our food today, you will see, is not original because of "crabs". Orin is completely different, she is a shocking, absolutely irreverent violation of all culinary rules. Please fasten your seat belts, there follows a paradoxical association between two delicious, admittedly, human creations, but obviously different, parallel and incompatible, like the sheep with the genetic code or the sorcova with the theory of finite sets.
The madness begins at the moment when two dishes, a soup – belonging to the (generally fluid) kingdom called Felulîntâi – and stuffed stuffed peppers – (apparently) definitively, in the Feluldoi category – come together. Thus, all customs are brutally disregarded, our culinary art acting, if not chaotically, then according to unknown laws, which are strictly related to the not few oddities of mountain gastronomy.
So, I have the impression that only the infinite, therefore capacious cosmic order can accept and rest tolerantly on its chest this unusual south-Julian goodness, of summer and late autumn.
Both soup and feldoi, this stew, little known beyond the Olteano-Montenesti valleys, honors many Sundays of the Corabian and Calafatan autumns, but also Aramen baths or iron baths. And I will shout, with the certainty of pedantry and the unconscious zeal of arrogance (national, but with regional "participants") that unbridled, undisciplined Oltenia, with instabilities and southern exuberances, is a thorough devourer of soups but also of worn-out habits!
Vegetable soup – onion, celery, parsnip, parsley, carrots
2-3 tomatoes
1 beef knee
salt pepper
1 l borscht
1 jar full of capsicums - which are usually red, hence the misleading name of the soup, which is also called "scarlet" soup (did you see that you oppressed me for nothing?)
500 grams of minced beef
2 eggs
1 cup of rice
1 link of walnut.
The movement (vortex) of its soup is of two parts:
First, a first soup is made, from onions, grated vegetables and beef bones, soured with borscht, given separately in a boil. Then the meat is sautéed with onions and mixed with a little flowery rice, eggs, salt, pepper, it will fill the peppers well, well cared for by the spines. In the burgundy cauldron or earthen pot fit the peppers ("crabs"), pour the maelstrom of boiling soup over them and leave them on the edge of the stove or under the test, to simmer for about an hour. At the table it is served with polenta, cream, hot peppers and soft brandy from Dolj, to go with the soup (but should it be soup?)
Secret: the people of Olten also make crayfish soup during fasting, but with many shortages, making up for the lack of meat, eggs, cream and other tasty expenses, pretending, as they can, that they don't even need it (if they don't even have them)".
And it is a great sin for Radu Anton Roman when he dispatches in just a few lines this pious poverty or Christian culinary penance. Amu, I don't know which one to say was the first, the one treated at length by the great gastronome, which others call "stuffed pepper soup" or its more "humble" variants. Below I present the recipes discovered by Mrs. Antoaneta, from Oltea, and collected by the tireless Simona Lazăr, one of the most active archaeologists of Romanian gastronomy: "In our area, in Bechet, there are many dishes that are not made in other parts . For example, we cook "crabs". They have nothing to do with true crayfish. There are red peppers that are grown specifically for this and that are filled with a composition. It is made in the following way: saute the onion with many spices (dill, thyme), add flour and simmer, then add water to make a paste close to the crust. The "crabs" are stuffed with this composition and put in soup or baked in the oven with a sauce, or stuffed with boiled beans, prepared with garlic. Of course, they can be filled with meat or rice. It's a food from Olten and anyone from our area, no matter where they are, if you tell them about crayfish, they answer: "I'd eat it too""
It is possible that this crayfish soup is the basis of stuffed pepper and sarmal soups. Well, there is no great inventiveness here, although the taste is phenomenal. In themselves, these two soups that I am concerned with here are the usual dishes, but not reduced as they say, with much more sauce, thicker than a clear soup or a vegetable soup, more like a cream soup.
Below I leave you a recipe from 1875 from the National Kitchen volume, The newest COOKBOOK of Romanian, French, German and Hungarian CUISINE" JC Hințescu (Brașovu, 1875, FRANK & DRESSNANDT) preserving the calligraphy of the time because it also brings with it the historical value. (The volume, reissued for the first time, is being published by the GastroArt publishing house).
"STUFFED SOUR CABBAGE:
1 pound (560 grams) of pork meat and a strand of fresh bacon, chop them finely, put in them a handful of well-washed rice, a strand of salt and pepper, finely chopped onion and two whole eggs and mix them all together well with another. Now take the most beautiful sheets from a head of sour cabbage, cut the strips down and fill with the above preparation one sheet at a time, a small hand, wrap it tightly around the other and put these sarmals together with another cut cabbage in a Place the dishes on the fire and boil them for about two or three hours, stirring well in the pot with the sama paste so as not to spoil the sarmales. After boiling the cabbage to soften, put it in a thin slice and boil until done. Finally, pour a few spoonfuls of sweet cream into the cabbage and let it simmer for a while with finely chopped dill. When you are going to serve the cabbage to the table, garnish the bowl (bowl, strachina) with the filling (with the sausages and the meat, in which you have fermented them). "
In Transylvania, sarmals are also called pirostes. We also find a recipe for sarmale soup collected by the tireless and extraordinary gastronome Mircea Groza, a recipe from his grandmother Florica li Hilimon from Hida, which we reproduce with the specific voice of Văia Almașului, Sălaj: "No, amu will tell you how to make zama die cureti morat with pirostes. Yes, yes, just like you heard! Zama die piroste. When you've cooked and made the pirostes, all that's left is to bury them, you chickens and make a sauce in which you give them herbs. No, that's it! The scraper that you have left after you have chosen the sheets in which you twist the pirosts, cut the spine, and start to cut the scraper, scraper, scraper, as much as you can. In a pot thicker at the bottom, put the fennel, sloboz and cut curetiu, mix the binie and stir it gently. It's time to cut an onion so-n-darab die teler coscuta mnici, one or two morcoz, p-these cut them round by round. You put the noodles in the pot cleanly, you cook them like that, I don't burn them because you didn't do anything! The bitter sauce comes out... you move the pot to the edge of the pan, put a spoonful of crushed peppercorns, yes sweet, stir quickly so that they don't burn and add a couple of cups of warm water. It wouldn't hurt if you had a soup made with some kind of Galician pork... yes, with good water too... father, you cook that soup until you think you've had enough of a pot with ten herbs in it, cinsprazece pirostes...yes, don't hie dinsuisite! Amu, die ai, I can also cut a half of die red capricorn, father like that. Let the grass grow slowly, slowly, it grows slowly...
I'll tell you how to make the pirostes. You make this kind of jam after Easter, after Lent, some spring, because you need a green millet and four, five hire die ai green. It's okay on dárab die carne die porc o die curca, neither very thin, yes nor fat. You cut the meat with a good knife. Hilimonu mneu, when he lives, and cut the meat die sausage with his little bag. Who then has mosin die minced meat? Work hard! That's it, you cut the meat too, don't mince it, he saw that the pirostes are better like that... well, you cut the meat and only cut an onion, cut it and the food and put it in a smaller bowl , c-on ptic die oloi ș-on ptic die grease, bun-ar hi die raça! Cut a red string, you have, you don't, you don't have to, punch and trijejite the crushed ass, salt, thiperi...only on ptic lie moi and put a pretend die care that you have winded him die hospe, you washed him in two three waters and scalded him a country. Io pui si on punm die riscaș... that's how you punch Erji, that's the way to go... you think that it's better to pirostes like that and with care and with risk... no, that's it... you just cut them off, you let them cool down on ptic , you put meat paste on them, put a good fistful of cut millet, binie... shake and a sprig of dry thyme, a die, cut green thyme... add salt and pepper, make them a bit tougher, that you don't make them for drinking... amu die popacălit don't say that father I told you, it's only on curethi binie morat, with thin leaves, thin leaves...
- Yes, if they were, they wouldn't spread... how would grass like that?
- No, don't you tell me, because you put them in a fake piroshti with a green tail, but you scalded them, little one...oh, the zama would have to be more ready...slowly, slowly, put the piroshti into the zama and eat the herbs like this, don't ploaptăn, cate ler, don't you hurry because you don't have anything, make the food as it should be...when you put this zama in the pot you'll get three pirostes die om...put some chopped millet on top...who if he can put a spoon, two big dies. Noa, that's ar hi zama die piroste, beat your binie let you beat!"
Photo Credit: Mircea Groza's personal archive
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