Traditional Cuisine

Besides other traditions, Dolj County takes pride in its gastronomic delights. Every year event “Dolj County’s savory dishes” brings together traditional recipes from Dolj County and other areas from Oltenia, in an attempt to bring value to the rural communities households, which have taken the responsibility for preserving and promoting the local identity.
Guests are greeted with bread, salt and wine. Housewives from Dolj County communities, as well as from other parts of Oltenia region, bring to Craiova traditional dishes prepared according to recipes inherited from generation to generation, indulging the visitors with tastes from the past.
Traditional dishes such as: corn bread, roasted dock rolls with fried polenta, spicy dried red peppers, sour milk, donuts, apple pies, cakes, prunes meals, smashed beans, fried spicy dried red peppers, cabbage rolls, wine and traditional plum brandy and the so popular leek dishes are still preserved nowadays in Dolj area.
A clay oven, pots, jugs, Romanian traditional costumes, pictures, a carriage, a clean traditional Romanian room and many, many memories, are all gathered in a museum made to stand in the way of forgetting our roots and our grandparent’s lifestyle. In this scenery, an episode within “Dolj County’s savory dishes” event was organised at Pielesti village museum, project initiated and supported by County Center for Conservation and Promotion of Traditional Dolj Culture.
It is a good opportunity to establish a strong cultural link between the rural local communities and an extraordinary opportunity to highlight the traditional cuisine of Dolj County, born out of our ancestors’ poverty and indigence, but yet so diverse and tasty that it definitely deserves the place in the cooking gallery that completes the traditional Romanian cuisine.
"Dolj County’s savory dishes” is a project initiated in 2014 by the County Center for Conservation and Promotion of Traditional Dolj Culture, representing a journey through the Dolj County traditional village, illustrated by the culinary diversity and the recreation of the traditional Dolj peasant family reunion scenes around the table, where joys or sorrows were shared. The project was launched in collaboration with Dăbuleni municipality, which facilitated the filming in a 100-year-old preserved kitchen, where old story teller ladies narrated tales and cooked at the bake-stone. The photos taken at that moment were displayed in the first exhibition called "Fairytales recipes cooked at the bake-stone". Dăbuleni city has already participated to several “Dolj County’s savory dishes” events, where the housewives cooked like in the old days, using ingredients they harvested near their houses.
Another extraordinary example of community involvement and assuming the improvement of its image by promoting traditional culture is the Initiative Group “Berceni House” located in Bârca village. On several occasions, both in Craiova (At Chromatic Galleries but also at the University of Craiova), as well as in the village, people could taste traditional bread, dried stuffed peppers, eggplant salad with garlic and celery, pickles, baked cornbread, donuts and many savory dishes, skilfully cooked by the housewives of Barca. The County Center for Conservation and Promotion of Traditional Dolj Culture Dolj team also filmed in a traditional kitchen and took pictures for the exhibition.
The event was attended by local officials, representatives of the County Center for Conservation and Promotion of Traditional Dolj Culture Dolj, including Amelia Etegan, the director of this institution, mass media representatives and folk musicians from Craiova.
source text and photo: www.gds.ro;
www.folcloroltenesc.ro