Christmas traditional Romanian dishes

Romanians have a special tradition, saying that on Christmas they should eat pork. That is the reason why they have many specific dishes. After it is sacrificed, the pig is cleaned, fried and sliced. The pork chops without bones are used for the steak, ‘jambon’, ‘sarmale’ and ‘tochitura’. ‘
Sarmale’ is a traditional Romanian food which consists of minced meat balls wrapped in pickled cabbage leaves. The mixture contains beef meat, bacon, rice, eggs and spices. This dish is boiled in wine and then baked in the oven, in a clay pot. The meal is served hot, with cream and ‘mamaliga’. ‘
Tochitura’ is a dish which consists of slices of fresh pork meat and bacon, fried in a cast-iron kettle, potatoes and eggs, fried in lard and ewe’s milk rich and salty cheese. It is served with pickled cabbage salad. ‘Jambon’ is a type of ham, obtained of boiled in wine and vinegar with black pepper and laurel meat, rolled and tied with a cord to dry and get smoked. The head, the legs and the tail are used for the ‘racitura’. ‘Racitura’ or ‘piftie’ is a dense soup made of boiled pork meat, vegetables, spices and garlic.  Each portion is put in a clay bole and let in the basement for a few days. The meat grease actions like the gelatine. The dish is ready when the meal is like a jelly. A part of the bacon is rubbed with salt and let to get smoked; the other is chopped together with red lean meat, and then mixed with spices. The composition is used to fill the ewe guts for the Romanian specific sausages, called ‘carnati’. These are let to dry and get smoked or kept fresh till they are fried in the oven. From the viscera, people make other specific dishes, like ‘toba’, ‘leibar’ or ‘sangerete’.

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