The sour cherry – walnut is a very common combination in Eastern and Central Europe, usually used for strudels. In my family, grandma would make us a kind of rustic pie in winter, using brandied sour cherries and a lot of walnuts. Combined with a very tender dough made with pork fat instead of butter,…
Ciorbă rădăuţeană – chicken soup with garlic and sour cream
This is my favourite soup recipe, first of all, due to its taste (I love everything that has either garlic or cream), second of all due to its origin. It was invented in the Romanian town Rădăuți in 1979, so it is traditionally considered a Bukowinian recipe and I am proud to promote recipes from…
Tart with sheep cheese and zucchini
This is the cheesiest zucchini tart I have ever made. It has spicy sheep cheese in the crust and a mixture of cheeses in the filling. I got this idea after I had some dough left from my cheese crackers recipe, and I thought it would do wonders if combined with a summer vegetable. Ingredients:…
Crumble with “brandied” sour cherries, oats and walnuts
For this recipe I used the pickled sour cherries (“brandied”, fermented or whatever you want to call them…) my grandmother sent me. It is in my region a very common way to preserve sour cherries and it gives an amazing brandy-like flavor to cakes. If you want to find out more about them, you can…
Homemade Nutella
If you have a food processor this recipe will reward you with heavenly goodness in only 30 minutes. If you don`t have a food processor, buy one! It is totally worth the money. Homemade nutella is far better than the original. It has no palm oil and no huge amounts of sugar. Instead it contains…
Spanakopita (Spinach and Cheese Phyllo Pie)
Spanakopita is a traditional Greek pie made with thin phyllo sheets brushed with melted butter or olive oil and filled with a mixture of feta cheese and spinach. Similar to the Turkish Börek this kind of pie is spread, under different names and varieties, in the whole Southern and Eastern Europe. I have always considered this…
Mango sorbet – no sugar added
This recipe asks for only three ingredients and is ready in less than five minutes. That makes it the perfect treat for hot summer days, when you are too lazy to get out of the house. Ingredients: frozen pieces from one ripe mango (about 200 g) juice from half a lemon half of teaspoon of…
Sour cream and cherries cake – no sugar *Smântânel
Smântânel is a cake very popular in the Republic of Moldova, but a version of it, with biscuit instead of shortbread layers, is spread also in my region, Bukowina. There is a reason why Bukowina is called the land of the cream: almost everything you can think of either contains or is served with sour…
Stuffed salmon with wild garlic risotto
This is a recipe which came to me as a revelation. I had no idea that salmon and white cheese can go so well together. It was an unexpected wow. And the wild garlic risotto is the perfect side dish, with its spicy, lemony creaminess. I will continue my experiments with wild garlic, I feel…
Red Orach Borscht
Red orach, also called mountain spinach, is widely consumed in the Romanian countryside and plays an important part in the so-called “popular cuisine”. Why? Because it is cheap (it grows really everywhere, by itself, and it is actually considered a weed by many people), it`s healthy, tasty and, last but not least, it gives food…
Jurnal culinar 