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Romanian cuisine is diverse, blending the dishes of the several traditions which it has come into contact with, as well as maintaining its own character. It has been greatly influenced by Balkan cuisine but also includes influences from the cuisines of other neighbours, such as Germans, Serbians, and Hungarians. An exhaustive study of Romanian cuisine is very hard to make, because under the same food name are sometimes included products which can hardly belong to the same category.
Description "I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was "mamaliga", and egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call "impletata"." --Bram Stoker, Dracula An existential Romanian question is: We eat to live, or live to eat? A great number of proverbs and sayings have developed around the activity of eating. From the innocent child's saying of thanks: Sărut-mâna pentru masă, c-a fost bună şi gustoasă, şi bucătăreasa frumoasă Thank you for the meal it was good and tasty and the cook was beautiful to the more philosophical: Mulţumescu-ţi ţie Doamne c-am mâncat şi iar mi-e foame Thank you Lord for I have eaten and I am hungry again and Dragostea trece prin stomac (Love passes through the stomach); or the simple Pofta vine mâncănd (Appetite comes while eating); or the sarcastic Porcul mănâncă orice, dar se-ngraşă pentru alţii (The pig eats anything, but it gets fat for others); or a total fulfillment saying Mâncat bine, băut bine, dimineaţa sculat mort (Ate well, drank well, in the morning woke up dead). Recipies bear the same influences as the rest of Romanian culture: from Roman times there still exists the simple pie called plăcintă in Romanian and keeping the initial meaning of the Latin word placenta, the Turks have brought meatballs (perişoare in a meatball soup), from the Greeks there is musaca, from the Bulgarians there are a wide variety of vegetable dishes like zacuscă, from the Austrians there is the şniţel and the list could continue. One of the most common dishes is mămăliga, a cornmeal mush, long-considered the poor man's dish (N-are nici o mămăligă pe masă - He hasn't even a mămăliga on the table), but it became more appreciated in recent times. Pork is the main meat used in Romanian cuisine (Peştele cel mai bun, tot porcul rămâne - The best fish will always be the pork), but beef is also consumed, and a good lamb or fish dish is never to be refused. Different recipes are prepared depending on the season or for special events. For Christmas, a pig is traditionally sacrificed by every family and a wide variety of recipes are prepared, including: cârnaţi (or cărnaţi) - a kind of long sausages with meat, caltaboşi (or cartaboşi) – sausages made with liver and other intestines, piftie – made with difficult to use parts like the feet or the head and ears, suspended in aspic, and also tochitură (a kind of stew) is served along with mămăligă and wine (so that the pork can swim) and of course sweetened with the traditional cozonac (sweet bread with nuts or lokum - rahat in Romanian). At Easter, lamb is served and the main dishes are roast lamb and drob - a cooked mix of intestines, meat and fresh vegetables, mainly green onion, seved with pască (pie made with cottage cheese) as a sweetener. Wine is the main drink and has a tradition of over two millennia. Romania is currently the world's 9'th largest wine producer, and recently the export market has started to grow. A wide variety of domestic (Fetească, Grasă, Tamâioasă) and worldwide (Italian Riesling, Merlot, Sauvignon blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Muscat Ottonel) varieties are produced. Beer is also highly regarded, generally blonde pilsener beer, made with German influences. Romania is the worlds's 2'nd largest plum producer and almost the entire plum production becomes the famous ţuică (a plum brandy obtained through one or more distillation steps). List of dishes List of spices and salads List of cheese types The generic name for cheese in Romania is brânză and it is considered to be of Dacian origin. Most of the cheese is made of cow or sheep milk, goat milk being rarely used. List of Desserts
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