Transylvanian Cookbook

Florin Muresan is an unusually gifted artist. He painted, lived and loves in Milan, Prague and Bucharest, everywhere with the same, insatiable, Victorian, frenzy. I say Victorian because he is the son of a small town called Victoria, which used to be the only city in Central Europe without a church but with an Olympic-size swimming pool. And insatiable in his innocently contagious passion for creams, colors, juices and sauces which he transfers to us without a sense of guilt.

This new Radu Anton Roman – a Romanian culinary writer born in Fagaras, a few kilometers from Victoria – (in)filtrates the top of Romanian gastronomy by means of his copious imagination, not literary but visually, surprising us all with this exceptional anthology of recipes expressing his joy of life.

"Scoverzi" (Donuts), "Zacusca", White sour Soup with Lettuce, Meatballs, the best soft Stuffed Eggs in Central Europe, "silver-tusked" wild boar Sausages, Quince Jam and the ontological Slice of Bread with Lard and Salt – we knew them all from our mothers and grandmothers in Transylvania. We rediscover them in this book, not just in new tastes but also in new colors and a new language. Because what Florin Muresan does – to his credit – is to confirm the traditional cuisine of Central Romania, a variety of tongues, multicultural and interconfessional culinary palates in an Anglo-Saxon visiting card.

If I were an Englishman, an American, an Australian, a New Zealander or indeed a Scotsman, I would eat with my eyes, drink with my imagination and feast pantagruelian, reading, before swallowing, this wonderful album of household valor, reverent gluttony and thrifty appetite for life right from the foot of the Transylvanian Alps.

Emil Hurezeanu