At the Table: Food and Family around the World - Ken Albala (2016)

Romania

Simona Dinu

Most of the food in Simona Dinu’s Romanian household is cooked on a gas range, although an electric oven is also part of the weekly cooking. Simona and her family use nonstick pans and stainless steel pots, stainless steel and wooden spoons, and all sorts of silicon utensils. For this particular meal, she did the cooking using slow-cooking methods, which are common in her house, although they buy carefully chosen convenience food as well and cook quick recipes quite often. Slow-cooking methods are the same used by Simona’s mother and grandmothers, and the quick recipes come mostly from specialized television programs. Slow cooking doesn’t necessarily take a lot of time, as she relies a lot on good organization, such as boiling the whole animal or part of it and using it for several dishes, sometimes even freezing part of it. Most of the meat they eat comes from animals raised by their grandparents (poultry, pork) or from the butcher Simona knows well (beef). Her family buys fish from the supermarket and fruits and vegetables either fresh from the farmers’ market or fresh or frozen from the supermarket. This is a normal Sunday early dinner served together with close relatives, including Simona’s brother and his spouse.

For serving, Simona’s family doesn’t normally use a big table, nor do they use special cutlery but rather use the ones they would use any other day of the week.

With small children in Simona’s life, serving meals is very casual. The food is brought to the table, and everybody helps himself or herself. They consider it nice to invite guests to help themselves first, and they usually expect this, but nobody gets offended if the guests or even one of the hosts just starts eating. If older people are at the dinner table, Simona and her family would make sure they are having a good time and perhaps would set a proper table with chairs, being a bit more formal with the details.

To serve, Simona uses ordinary stainless steel cutlery (purchased from IKEA), simple white plates, and big juice glasses, the same her family uses every day. They don’t use special expensive cutlery for guests, although this is still done in some more conservative families. Fingers are sometimes used for meals that include polenta, such as the one today. Her family uses paper napkins and opts for nicely colored ones. A tablecloth was used for this meal, which is not necessarily the norm—place mats or nothing at all is just as common for this family, but again, in more conservative families, a tablecloth is used most of the time and, depending on the occasion, can be cotton or plastic. Simona used a tablecloth today, as she used the children’s play table, the only table in the room.

Albala

A relaxed Sunday, family dinner. (Courtesy of Daniel Robert Dinu)

The manners at the table are simple; there is no special protocol. Guests are served first. Simona makes sure they are comfortable and have everything they need handy. They are encouraged to let Simona know if they need anything else at any time. Sometimes Simona insists a bit too much that the guests eat—this is the influence of her parents and grandparents, which sometimes leads to excess eating, and most people at the table are so full that they need to rest a bit before leaving. This was not the case today; everybody estimated how much they wanted to eat and filled their plates accordingly. The guests typically praise the food (sometimes even if they don’t particularly like it) and often ask for the recipe. They appreciate the efforts that the host made to cook for them.

For this meal, everybody is dressed casually and comfortably. This time dinner lasted about an hour, and then for another hour or so the family and friends enjoyed the dessert and continued chatting. Most of the time there is coffee at the end of the dinner if it is served early enough. After 6:00 p.m. Simona typically doesn’t have coffee, as she knows that this might affect the night’s sleep. Some of guests stayed at the table, and some moved around while eating; in this family, there are no rules such as everyone sitting until the end of the meal. Everybody looked after the kids and offered them food and hugs.

Children can explore the food while playing or moving around. They learn how to use the cutlery, and Simona hopes they are careful not to throw food on the floor or on the table while eating, but they are encouraged to try all the foods. Sometimes they only eat a little, especially if the recipes are new for them, and sometimes Simona has to feed them after the guests leave or while they have the dessert. Cell phones are not banished from the table, but normally no one uses them unless someone calls or if someone at the table has to make an important call. When there are more people invited for dinner, some might get bored and check their Facebook account or call someone to check on how they are doing.

TV Dinners

TV dinners are an invention that grew indirectly out of wartime rations, which were sealed in metal trays and could be easily heated as a complete meal, not unlike early airline food. After World War II, it occurred to manufacturers such as Swanson that they could sell similar frozen foods on a tray with the novelty of being well suited to watching TV from a portable tray-table. For many critics these marked the symbolic breakdown of the family dinner, since conversation was curtailed by the TV, each diner eating alone or merely in proximity, with attention fixed on the screen. Aesthetically, it also marked the nadir of cooking, since it required nothing but heating or eventually by the 1980s microwaving. The descendants of these, although rarely marketed with TV in mind, still survive as complete frozen dinners.

The TV is playing in the background most of the time Simona has guests—they watch news, music, or cartoons with the kids. When they have guests, they serve the meals in the living room or the kitchen. Tonight they chose the living room, as it is bigger and there is more natural light. Her home has simple minimalist furniture, colored walls with a few paintings, and carpets on part of the floor. At the windows there are roller blinds and no curtains. Part of the living room is empty at the moment, as her family is renovating.

After entering the house, the guests left their coats in the entrance dressing, took off their shoes, and washed their hands in the bathroom. Simona invited them in the living room. They sat on the couch, and they turned on the TV and started talking about various things, sharing their latest experiences at work, with kids, with parents, etc. Simona told them what they were going to eat and that she enjoyed cooking for them (to make them feel welcome).

Today the family served two dishes and a dessert. The first dish was a warm pasta, vegetable, and meat salad. The recipe was inspired by a famous British chef. For the salad Simona used medio orzo pasta, which she boiled in beef stock; frozen vegetables and grains (some purchased from the supermarket—peas and corn—and some grown in her parents’ garden, minced and frozen by her mother for winter use); some dried tropical fruit (papaya and pineapple) purchased from a spice store; some local honey purchased from Simona’s parents’ small town; pancetta; and some traditional pork and beef sausage and various spices (pepper, paprika, a little five-spice mix). Vegetables and grains dominated the dish; meat was used rather sparingly for taste. They prefer it this way, as the second dish was heavier with lots of meat and fat.

The second dish is a very familiar, comforting one for Simona and her brother (the man in the photo). It is a dish they grew up with, and they like it so much that they tried and managed to make their spouses love it too. As described in the recipe, it contains duck meat and bones and onions. They enjoyed it with hot polenta or, as it is called in Romania, mamaliga.

Typically Simona’s family does not usually have a nice dessert after dinner, even on weekends. For this meal, however, she did prepare a dessert, as she typically does when she has guests. The choice for the dessert tonight was a chocolate mousse cake, again inspired by a famous chef. Simona knew that all her guests like chocolate, so she chose to surprise them with a delicious cake they never ate before.

As usual, they sat at the table randomly and even moved around and changed seats. The guests didn’t snack or drink before Simona and her husband set the table, so Simona made sure she had the food nice and warm, ready to be served, shortly after they arrived. Everybody at the table started with the first dish, which they enjoyed and praised.

The diners person put onto their plates the amount of food they estimated to eat, knowing they could add more if they wanted to. The small quantity of leftovers is normally thrown away. If there are more leftovers, Simona’s family may choose to eat them later if they get hungry again after the guests have left, but they rarely eat leftovers the next day.

Simona estimated how much the group was going to eat and also thought about what recipes everyone would all enjoy and cooked accordingly. She cooked everything in advance, as she prefers to stay with the guests and with the kids at the table rather than spend time in the kitchen. The children tried all the dishes at the table; they were not forced to eat, but they noticed what adults were doing and asked for whatever they wanted.

The group drank water and good-quality orange juice purchased from the supermarket. The hosts put the juice bottle out and filled the guests’ glasses shortly upon their arrival, and then everybody helped themselves if they wanted more. Nobody drank alcohol this time, as they were going to drive afterward, but if they were going to consume alcohol, beer would have been the first choice and wine (homemade or purchased from the supermarket) the second choice. Usually men drink alcohol, and women drink juice.

The hosts cleared the table and cleaned the dishes. Sometimes the guests try to help, but Simona politely refuses and invites them to relax and leave it to her. In her house, it is either Simona or her husband who clears the table, and usually her husband puts the dishes into the dishwasher while Simona watches the children and serves the guests with more juice, dessert, or whatever else they want. After the second dish today they chose to clean the table to prevent the children from making a mess. They continued to watch TV, chat, and enjoy the dessert, and then some of adults had coffee. While drinking coffee and eating the dessert, women may gather and talk more about kids, while men talk more about cars, politics, and sometimes sports.

Good-quality food is important for Simona and her family, and its accessibility is relatively easy. They normally have the freezer full of various kinds of meats (mostly poultry and pork) from animals grown by their grandparents during summer and autumn, which they eat until late winter. There are supermarkets only five minutes away by foot where they can buy anything else they need. There is a temperate continental climate, and her family eats differently according to the seasons (more meat and fat during the cold season and more fruits and vegetables during summer).

Albala

A much enjoyed family recipe and an exotic dish. (Courtesy of Daniel Robert Dinu)

Simona and her family are Orthodox Christians. Religion doesn’t impact the dining habits in her house, though; they don’t fast or have any other rules imposed by the church, although a lot of people in Romania, especially in the countryside, do fast for long periods of time.

Duck with Onions

1 duck, whole

4 medium onions, thinly sliced

1 bay leaf

2 tablespoons of homemade tomato paste

Salt and pepper to taste

1.Cut the duck into pieces and put in a pot with cold water just enough to cover it, then put it on the stove on low to medium heat.

2.As soon as it starts boiling, remove the foam on the top.

3.Now add the bay leaf and ½ teaspoon of salt and leave it to boil for 2 to 2½ hours. If necessary, add a little water once in a while so it doesn’t completely evaporate from the pot.

4.When the meat is easily removable from the bones and really tender, add the onions, salt, and pepper to taste and the tomato paste.

5.Let everything cook together on low heat for another 15 minutes. Taste and season again if necessary. Serve with polenta, boiled rice, or mashed potatoes.