How to make a traditional Romanian Easter lunch

This is a good time of the year to impress you dear ones with how much you know about your new home and its cuisine. Whether it’s you family back home or your new friends in Romania, plan a surprise and cook them a Romanian Easter menu. It is rather simple to do it and fun. You can even invite them over to cook together. We came up with the best-known dishes Romanians cook on Easter. Here are the recipes:

Drob (similar to a haggis; cooking time: about 120 minutes)

Ingredients: lamb guts (heart, liver, kidney), 5oo grams of chicken liver, 4 boiled eggs, 4 raw eggs, 4 bunches of spring onions, 3 bunches of fresh parsley, 3 bunches of fresh dill, 2 slices of bread, one cup of milk, salt, pepper and bread crumbs.

Place the lamb guts and chicken liver in a saucepan with cold water for about an hour. Wash them well and boil them in clean water with salt. If they make foam, make sure you clear the foam with a spatula or sieve. Boil 4 eggs for about 5 minutes from the moment the water starts boiling. Chop finely the spring onions, the parsley and the dill. Let the lamb guts and chicken liver cool well and then grind them together with the two slices of bread soaked in milk. Mix them together with the chopped herbs and raw eggs and add salt and pepper. Grease a baking pan (the form is the same as the one used for the cozonac recipe, see below) with oil and dust it with the bread crumbs. Place half of the mixture in it, put the boiled eggs and then pour over the rest of the composition. Bake it for 40 – 45 minutes.

Lamb sour soup (cooking time: about 45 minutes)

Ingredients: 1 kg of lamb meat and bones, 2 or 3 bunches of green onions, 1 dry onion, 2 carrots, 1 parsley root, 3 or 4 spoons of vegetable oil to cook the vegetables, 30 – 40 grams of rice, 2 bunches of fresh lovage, 1 liter of fresh borş (fermented mix of bran and water) or the juice from one lemon, 2 yolks, cream and salt.

Chop finely the green onions, the dry onion, the carrots and parsley root, then cook them just a bit in oil. Wash the meat well put it in cold water to boil. Once it starts boiling, throw away the water, wash the meat well and the put it back to boil in fresh water. Put the cooked vegetables to boil together with the meat. When they are almost done, wash the rice and add it in. after the rice is boiled, add the borş or the juice from one lemon. Let it simmer until the meat is well cooked. Turn off the stove and add the fresh herbs. Mix the two yolks in a bowl and add soup from the cooking pot, little by little, until the bowl fills, mixing gently. Add this to the soup and mix well.

Cozonac (traditional cake Romanians make on Easter and Christmas) – check out the recipe for cozonac here

Pască (pictured; traditional round cake with cottage cheese and raisins Romanians make on Easter and Christmas; cooking time: about 50 minutes)

Ingredients: Dough – 2 ½ teaspoons of dried yeast, 1 cup of warm milk, ½ cup of sugar, 80 grams of soft butter, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 eggs, 4 ½ cups of flour (type 000, available in any hypermarket). Filling – 500 grams of cottage cheese, sugar, 3 eggs, 3 teaspoons of vanilla-flavored powdered sugar, raisins, 5 tablespoons of semolina and lemon zest.

Put the yeast in warm milk, adding the soft butter. Mix well the eggs with sugar and add salt. Pour it over the milk, add the vanilla-flavored sugar and the flour. Knead until you have an elastic dough, slightly sticky, but which doesn’t stick to hands. Cover it and let it rise until it doubles its size. Meanwhile, make the filling by mixing together all its ingredients. Split the dough into three unequal parts. Spread one in a greased and dusted baking pan. Split the second into two: from one, make decorations to put on top of the cake, and from the second make a ribbon to place around the walls of the cooking pan. The last part of the dough is used to make a braided ring to be placed on top of the ribbon. Add the filling, grease well the top of the cake with a mixed egg and put it in the oven. Take it out when it is browned enough.

Painted eggs (cooking time: 15 minutes)

Ingredients: 10 eggs, kit for painting eggs (available in any hypermarket in various colors), 7-8 tablespoons of grape vinegar, oil.

Wash the eggs well and put them to boil in water for about 10 minutes. In another pot, boil 200 ml water, add the egg paint from the kit and the grape vinegar, add the eggs. Take them out after 2 minutes (or the time mentioned in the instructions on the kit) on a plate to cool. Grease them with oil for shine, once they are dry.