Uncovering culinary traditions along the banks of the Danube River

The Danube River flows through 10 countries, facilitating trade and migration throughout Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In her new cookbook, Danube: Recipes and Stories from Eastern Europe, author Irina Georgescu focuses on the culinary traditions of Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria, all of which border the river. It's an area rich with history, and the food reflects that while being relatively simple to make. 

Irina also spoke with us a couple years ago to discuss her book Tava: Eastern European Baking and Desserts From Romania & Beyond, which focuses on Romanian desserts and baking. Her Curd Cheese and Golden Raisin Pie recipe is perfection.

Evan Kleiman: You're Romanian, and I know that's a big focus for you in terms of your research and cooking. Explain what it is about the Danube River, in particular, that called you to use it as an organizing principle for this book.

Irina Georgescu: It's really the reason why I called it Danube, because southern Romania is dominated by the river, and when it enters Romania, it creates this amazing gorge that's spectacular. Then you cross the river, you see Serbia. So it's a beautiful area. I focused on this part of Eastern Europe, of the Danube, because it's also a sort of border between Eastern Europe and the Balkans. South of the Danube, if you follow the story, you will find the Balkans. You find the mix of recipes like this, a bit of Central European, I would say. Then you follow the river to the east, and you find more Ottoman cuisine, then Turkish and Tatar, just before the river flows into the Black Sea.

Irina Georgescu travels eastward from the Danube River as it meanders into Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria, for her latest cookbook. Photo courtesy of Quadrille. 

It really is fascinating. It's such a great history lesson, too. Let's start with the Oltenians. Who are the Oltenian people, and what is their link to the Roman Empire? 

The Oltenians are from a region called Oltenia in southern Romania. The region is called Oltenia because of the River Olt. Olt is a river that flows into the Danube. So it's dominated by two big rivers in Romania, the Olt and Danube in the South. It's also my grandfather's homeland. My mom's dad was from Oltenia and my mom's mom was from Transylvania. That's my link with these historic regions of Romania, and they are really considered to be kind of the heart of Romania, the Oltenians. Mostly because they have a special way they speak Romanian. They have a certain tense of a verb that is used only in Oltenia. And they speak really quickly and in quite a, we would say in an Italian way, because they consider themselves to be the descendants of the Romans who ruled over these lands in the 1st, 2nd century AD. We all consider them to be Romans. First, it was called the Romanian country because in the south, it had this lineage with the Roman Empire. You can see it in the cuisine. You can also see it in the way they still bake bread. There are so many, I would say, vestiges of the Roman Empire, not only in terms of buildings or ruins, but also in terms of the cuisine.

Let's talk a bit about that cuisine. Oltenian ash bread is so unusual. It's so photogenic. It's cooked under a clay cloche in a fire oven. Can you describe the process for us? 

Yes, absolutely. First of all, it is the way bread was baked in Pompeii a long time ago, and it was also the first possible oven in the world. Because it is a clay cloche, it doesn't have a base, or it didn't used to have a base. You make a fire that doesn't require a lot of wood but just some kindling or dried weeds or anything you have just to make a fire quickly, and you put that on top of the fire. When the cloche is hot, you lift it and you put bread in the embers of the fire, so straight in it. That's why it's called ash bread. Then you put the cloche on top and you bake really quickly a bread that is not a flatbread, but it's not a tall loaf. It's quite flat but not flatbread in the way we talk about flatbreads.

Clay cloches are used to make ash bread, dating back to the 1st century AD in Pompeii. Photo by Issy Croker.

It's like a low boule.

Yes, absolutely, without a dome, that's the thing. It's quite level and it's pierced with the fork. That's why it doesn't have a dome or anything, the spirit of even, I would say, Central Asian breads, if you have those naan breads in mind. We bake that bread under the cloche, and we have kept this tradition since the 1st, 2nd century AD, to bake bread like that. And we still bake like this. People still have memories of this bread when they visited their grandparents, and they used to have this in the garden. 

Nowadays, some people just make the fire on a bed of bricks and they put the cloche on the bricks. But traditionally,  it wasn't like that. Also, there is a whole ritual when you build the cloche, called test, from the Latin test tube. It's still even the same word. So you can only build it in spring when you have enough good temperature, good heat in the air. But also the soil is still wet, so that clay that is mixed, and you have this pattern of the cloche to put on top of the bread. 

Nowadays, in Oltenia, they actually use the cloche for more than just baking bread. They can slow cook beans, for instance. Another dish that is famous under the test is roast chicken. They put it in a tray, and they put it under the cloches. It is the most delicious chicken you've ever had. It's amazing. Oltenians are famous for the bread and the chicken and the leeks, as well. 

Ash bread, flat and without a dome, is made in the embers of a small fire. Photo by Issy Croker.

Let's talk for a minute about the leeks, because I noticed that throughout the book, there is a lavish use of onions of all kind, but spring onion and leeks in particular. Share a recipe that you love that shows off the use of leeks. 

Well, it absolutely has to be the Mancare de Praz, which is again an Oltenian dish. It's a leek stew with tomatoes and olives. That's also my grandfather's recipe, and we used to make this at home. We owe it to him that we actually have it in our family repertoire. Leeks also are from the Roman Empire. They loved leeks, and they are the ones who introduced leeks all over the Roman Empire. 

I recently reorganized my spices and found that I had a lot of poppy seeds. I must have thought I had none, and went and bought more. I saw a recipe at the beginning of the book in the breakfast section about yeasted pancakes topped with a poppy seed mixture. Could you describe that dish?

Yes, that's an amazing dish. It actually belongs to the Czech communities in the area of Banat. That's western Romania, where we still have some of the Central European cuisine, and therefore you will find poppy seeds. And later on to the east, you won't find any poppy seeds. You'll find walnuts and baklavas. But here with this recipe, the pancakes are quite in the American style. I would say fluffier, so not the French thin pancakes, but they love this topping of poppy seeds, and you put some honey as well. It's a beautiful, wonderful way to have some seeds in the morning. Poppy seeds are really nutritious and also all the honey on the pancakes. 

You will find another recipe with poppy seeds from the same community, the Czech community, in the baking section. They have what they call Bucte with Three Jackets, brioche buns filled with curd cheese, poppy seeds, and strawberry jam, all three in one bun, that are amazing.

Kindling is used to make a small fire to quickly bake bread under clay cloches. Photo by Issy Croker.

With this poppy seed mixture, do you have to first grind the poppy seeds?

Yes, if you prefer and you feel if you have the right utensils. But you can also find already ground poppy seeds, like the way I find them in the UK, so I use those. 

I can't believe we've already been talking this long and we haven't talked about cornmeal. I'm always amazed how corn has made inroads to all these places in the world that are far away from the Americas, where it was born. Mamaliga is just such an enormous part of Romanian cuisine in this particular area that you chose to cover for Danube. Are there particular cornmeal recipes that are different [than] those that you've talked about in the other books?

We have so many recipes with cornmeal that I cannot exhaust the subject, so I will always have a new recipe in the book. What I found here in the south is that to make a cornbread, they usually ferment the batter, the mixture, instead of using baking powder or bicarbonate. They ferment the mixture with yeast. The way you make bread, you add a bit of flour to it, just for some structure, not too much, but then you allow the mixture to ferment. After that, you pour it into a tin and put it in the oven, and you have this amazing cornbread. 

In the recipe, in the book, I took inspiration from another culinary custom in the south. They like to bake smaller cornmeal cakes on horseradish leaves, especially in the summer. We have a Saint Day in the summer and the horseradish leaves that time are quite big and thick, so they are perfect for protecting those corn cakes from the heat of the fire. Obviously, in my book, I didn't want people to go and look for horseradish leaves, because if you don't have it in the garden, you won't find it in the shops. So I actually put horseradish in the mixture, and you will see it's mild. You won't cry when you eat the cornbread. It's a mild flavor but you will identify that there is something interesting in that recipe, and it's a beautiful story.

There is one dish that I'm sure, as you are interviewed, many people are referencing, because it is a real showpiece of a dish but it seems like it's pretty easy to make, although it has steps, and that's the potato stew with the cheese filo crust.

Yes, that's a fantastic dish, and has its own festival as well, so you can actually travel and see how other people make it. This is a dish from the Banat region. We're now back in the west when the Danube enters Romania, and it is a bit north from the Danube. I gave myself permission to travel north and not just follow the river very closely. It's called păturată crump. Crump is a German word for potatoes in the Banat region, because especially the northern part of the region is for the Swabians who settled here in the 18th century. They have this dish where they can make a potato stew. On top of it, traditionally they make a strudel, and they fill it with cheese, and they roll it like a strudel, so it's thick, like a log, and then they coil it around in the middle so it's round. They take that round strudel and they put it on top of the potato stew, and they put a lid on top, and that goes into the oven. To simplify it a little bit, I use filo, and I use the same filling and everything the traditional way, but I didn't roll it like a strudel.

Filo is coiled atop potatoes for this Romanian stew. Photo by Issy Croker.

You make a beautiful ruffle.

Exactly like a crown, like a filo crown. [That] has the cheese, has the sour cream, has the eggs, has everything traditional ingredients. It's just a little bit, the method is different. But if you travel to actually attend one of the păturată festivals, people make huge, very long strudels. There are four, five, six women aligned to hold it like a huge snake. Then, they coil it around and put it on top of these huge trays filled with potatoes and they cook it like this to share it with everyone at the festival. It's quite a spectacle. But I liked it at home and I wanted people to find out about this recipe, because it is amazing like that. It actually shows how the Balkans met Central European cuisine. You have the stew with the potatoes, and then on top, you have the filo pastry, which is such a Middle Eastern, Ottoman thing to have in this part of Eastern Europe.