The delectable pastry encasing the Romanian strudel is more than just the sum of its tangible ingredients. To cookbook author, Irina Georgescu, it represents an enduring family tradition of baking that generated joy and an understanding of her national cuisine while living under the iron curtain.
“I grew up in Bucharest, the capital of Romania,” Georgescu, tells SBS. “Part of my childhood was spent under the communist regime. So at the time, we didn't have pre-cooked meals or anything like that. We just ate food that was home-cooked, which was good in a way. But I don't want to romanticise it: it was a very bad political regime.”
As Georgescu recalls, life was tough and store-bought ingredients were hard to come by. The regime standardised cookbooks, so recipes that had too many ingredients were usually altered and ethnically diverse recipes were eradicated.
Despite the hardships of life, one thing persisted: traditional Romanian recipes for baked goods. These were recipes that did not necessarily come from a cookbook. They were authentic recipes that reflected the true essence of Romanian baking, passed down the family line by generations of grandmothers.
Georgescu recalls how the recipe for one of her favourite desserts, Romanian strudel, was taught to her by the matriarchs in her family. “We made the pastry from scratch because you couldn’t buy pastry from a shop. I have fond memories of helping my grandmother to stretch the filo pastry and pull it over the dining table (because we didn’t have enough space to do this in the kitchen).”
Author of the new Romanian baking cookbook, Tava: Irina Georgescu. Source: Photo by Matt Russell.
The pastry would hold a pumpkin stuffing when the vegetable was in season in autumn. However, in summer, strudels would be filled with sour cherries bought from the market.
Georgescu recalls that pumpkin and sour cherry strudel always tasted comforting and homely. To her, they are iconic Romanian desserts.
Romanian baking: "A constellation of many cultures"
Although the communist regime influenced access to ingredients and recipes during part of Georgescu’s childhood, she stresses that the country’s communist past does not define Romanian cuisine. Georgescu talks about this in her new cookbook,
The book, published by Hardie Grant, celebrates the many diverse recipes that capture the complex identity of Romanian baking. Tava is also Georgescu’s way to raise the profile of Romanian food across the globe and forms part of a growing movement to rediscover traditional ingredients and cooking methods.
So what exactly is Romanian cuisine then? To Georgescu, it’s a reflection of her country’s culture, which is a “constellation of many cultures”. As she writes in her new book, Romania is “a ‘little Europe’, where the Middle East meets Austrian and German influences, layered on top of the inheritance left by the ancient Romans and Greeks”.
In our conversation over the phone, Georgescu reflects on an old saying that succinctly describes the attraction of Romanian cuisine during the start of the 19th century. “It was said that if you really wanted to dine in three empires at the same time – the Habsburg Empire, the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire – you had to come to Romania because it's where the food of all three empires met,” she tells SBS.
A vanilla mocha layer cake by Irina Georgescu, as featured in Tava. Source: Photo by Matt Russell for Tava.
“I think that old saying is also a good description of what our cuisine is [today].”
By deduction, recipes for Romanian baked goods also feature overlapping cultural influences from modern central Europe and the Balkans. This diversity jumps off the page in Tava. Through the cookbook, readers are able to access baking recipes from six cultural communities within Romania, carefully selected and narrowed down by Georgescu.
“You will find Armenian pakhlava, Saxon plum pies, Swabian poppy-seed crescents, Jewish fritters and Hungarian langoși alongside plăcinte pies, alivenci corn cake, strudel and fruit dumplings,” she writes in Tava.
“Rice or pearl barley puddings, doughnuts and gingerbread biscuits come with their own stories, while chocolate mousses, meringues in custard sauce and coffee ice cream introduce you to the glamour of famous Eastern European pastry shops.”
It all comes together through 'tava'
Uniting the diverse array of dishes featured in the book is a meaningful Romanian word: tava, hence the name of the cookbook.
“In Romanian, tava means tray because we use a rectangle tray for almost everything we cook.” She adds that Romanian desserts are typically served on a tray alongside black coffee and a glass of water. “We also bring dishes to the table on a tray.”
Georgescu hopes that the Romanian deserts contained in Tava will make their way to tables in homes across Australia. Of course, she wants people to experience the richness of dishes she once baked with her grandmother in her youth. But she also anticipates that by tasting a range of Romanian desserts, home cooks in Australia will come to know a bit more about her homeland.
“Food is a great bridge that connects us to other cultures. So I really hope that through this book, people start to understand where Romania is, how beautiful the country is and who real Romanians are.”
