Garlic dishes

Ștefan Baciu, 06.12.2015, 15:01

In the Romanian folk beliefs evil spirits emerge on the night of November 29th prior to St. Andrew’s Day, November 30th. In order to ward them off, people would grease their body with garlic. In the past, girls who wanted to know their future husband would eat a sort of pie made of flour, water and salt and the future husband would appear in their dream. On St. Andrew’s Day, a fermented drink is made of maize flour and flour called “covasa” having a sweet-sour taste. Peasants would give it out to their neighbors in clay pots hoping their cows would give more milk.

In the Romanian cuisine, garlic is used for various dishes such as “ostropel” — chicken in tomato sauce — or Dutch oven – roasted pork chop. Today we’ll give you a recipe of a smoked fish dish called “scordolea” made in the Danube Delta, which is to be found in the Greek and Turkish cuisine too. In Greek “scordo” actually means garlic.

You need one 1 kilo of potatoes, 1 kilo of smoked fish, cooking oil or milk, butter, nuts, garlic, pepper and celery leaves. In the Danube Delta potatoes and the fish are boiled in the same pot. You needn’t add any salt to the mashed potatoes since smoked fish is salty. You can add a bit of the water in which the fish was boiled to the mashed potatoes as well as a few pounded nuts, crushed garlic, pepper to taste and a few minced celery leaves, a bit of olive oil or milk to make the mashed potatoes creamy. Pieces of smoked fish are put on a platter being covered by a layer of mashed potatoes, but you can also mix pieces of smoked fish with the mashed potatoes. You should also have a glass of white semi-dry wine together with this dish called “scordolea”. Enjoy!