EGastroArt and Cărturești.ro announce the start of the pre-order campaign for one of the most anticipated Romanian culinary books, the book ZĂMURI - soups, soups and năcreli (Transylvanian recipes from the elderly) signed by master Mircea Groza. It is the first volume in an author's series dedicated to the researcher from Saláje, the publishing house announcing that they are already working on the second anthology of recipes dedicated to topales and tocanelosr. The volume contains 182 richly illustrated soup/soup recipes, collected over 40 years by Mircea Groza from the elders in the villages of Salăje. The recipes are written in the regional language, a phonetic transliteration, through which the author tries to preserve both the culinary heritage and the specifics of the area. The volume also benefits from a glossary with hundreds of explained terms.
Mircea Groza is one of the most famous collectors of old recipes from us, a culinary archaeologist and a mentor for many chefs. His work has been noted by local and central authorities, national and international chef associations and NGOs and he has been awarded dozens of excellence awards for his work. Volume can be ordered here or click on the cover
The book benefits from a foreword signed by Cătălin Ștefănescu, which we reproduce below:
"What is clear as day is that Mircea Groza investigated, he did not mess around with half measures. For many years he has been rummaging through the villages of Transylvania, he knows the world, he asks left and right, he notes, he remembers, he has no time. It brings to light the dishes of this part of the world, where cultures of all kinds have mixed like the ingredients of those soups that get you out of the sickness, and which you never forget. The tastes and aromas that suddenly make you see life with different eyes. Like the stew prepared according to a secret order, left mercilessly on a low fire, so the ways of being of some nations have intertwined, decanting their essences in the architecture of this veritable cultural monument: the culinary tradition of the community. The miracle that makes you, once you taste a food, glimpse something from the universe of the people who conceived it. Romanians, Hungarians, Saxons, Szeklers, Jews, Slovaks, Serbs, Roma, they all have their own culinary universe of the nation they are from. But, through common living, these worlds naturally interpenetrated, making up the multicultural show of Transylvania. And often, when words tire or simply can't say more, food takes on that role of expression, becoming the great voices that tell the deep stories of the worlds they come from.
In all the years that Mircea Groza explored his world of Salăje, the old Roman kitchen, the ancient secrets of the connection of dishes from the Transylvanian world, the man collected hundreds of recipes and stories. All of them, put together, make up a spectacular cultural resource that is hard to find. It is neither gastronomy, nor anthropology, nor social psychology, nor ethnology, but all together, and more than that. It is a cultural treasure in all the power of the word. An immaterial treasure of a world, which surrounds with a halo the space from which it comes, putting on the face of the community that kind of light that words struggle to express, but never succeed to the end. Because, only when you watch in fascination the development of the recipes collected and put into practice step by step, you realize the importance and scope of the work of the one who had the patience to collect them and keep them as he received them. It is a terrifically effective way of awakening readers' minds to the joy of rediscovering themselves as members of a community that comes from a deep history and system of traditions.
Mircea himself, the one who is fighting this wonderful research and cultural work of a kind, descends from the lineage of socacice. These phenomenal keepers of the secrets of the kitchen, the beings endowed with the magical science of linking the great dishes, on the aromas and tastes of which floated the important events of the community. Socăcita is not a person who sits in the kitchen and combines some ingredients. But one initiated in the secret codes, inherited from the elders, of preserving an essential order, of guarding a way of being in the world, of protecting some data from the vital fund of knowledge that a community has accumulated throughout history. It is a mission of great responsibility, in which you also find sacerdotal components, and elements of transmission of oral culture, and flashes of very discrete energy flows that connect this concrete, visible, palpable world to other worlds, impossible to see with the naked eye . The socacicettes carry with them the heavy responsibility of keeping order exactly, but also the unspeakable things of the magical beliefs and secrets that are at the foundation of the world, as much forgotten today as they are important in their supporting mission.
Hence the care of the author of this volume, in the way he walks with these notions. Mircea Groza is not only a collector and keeper of the treasures he collected. He also comes from a legitimacy of genuine descent from the order of these exceptional characters who are the mullets. In this volume and in the ones that will follow, there is rather an ingenious preservation of these immense values, than a simple exposition of their spectacularity. And the extremely brave choice to write in the Transylvanian language is not an aesthetic artifice. It's part of the mission to keep some essential data accurate. Perhaps most readers will find it difficult to go through this first volume dedicated to jams, soups, soups. On the one hand, the dictionary at the end of the book helps. On the other hand, the very act of deciphering, of tasting, is a very important step in entering the fascinating interior of the world of these foods. Because today, when everything is a click away, subjecting someone to an effort, no matter how small, is a real self-sabotage of the one who wants to communicate. In this case, however, it is about something else entirely. The result of a lifetime of research and sacred preservation of a part of a world's values is communicated in its apparently raw form. They don't put the jewelry directly into your palm. You are given the precious ore, but also the chance to have a hand in cleaning it and bringing it to light. Through the effort of deciphering, which can be a very enjoyable one, you participate in a way directly in the researcher's work. You are present when the prescription is collected. You enter, through imagination, and with the help of accepting this convention, on a journey through time. You enter a magical universe. Hear the voices of those who have kept these mysteries and ordinances, until it has now reached you. And it is entrusted to you, in order to understand other dimensions of the being you are, of the world you are a part of, and, why not, to take them further.
Don't be too quick to say, from the first pages, that time is no big deal. That they are all variations on the same theme. Remember, if you have experienced this, the moment when a soup or soup lifted you from the disease. They repaired your groins like a miracle, and put your whole being on your feet. Remember the mornings after a wild party, when a well-dressed zama made you glimpse the dawn of hope that there can be life even after the worst hangover. Soups and soups inherited from the elders are real enchanted potions. And like all potions, they resemble. Apparently. But once you delve into them, you find that the most insignificant ingredient sometimes makes a huge difference. We owe Mircea Groza not only the size of the research, but also the provision of it in a way that puts us to work. It makes us partakers. It's simply extraordinary to cook according to a recipe in which you don't measure quantities on scales of finesse, but stick to regionalisms. Because you're not just cooking. But you also go through part of the ritual, you also go through a process of discovery, you enter the universe of a world. It's just the beginning of a fascinating journey. Right from here, from the first pages, dropped from under the lids of the pots, we feel the aromas that will take our minds immediately. It started to drip. In mouths. Where rains like you've never seen before will start immediately".
The volume can be ordered on carturesti.ro
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