Muntenia lies in the south – central part of Romania, along the Danube and further up to the mountains. Its cuisine is very ingenious and apart from some Greek and generally speaking oriental influences the most significant influence it suffered comes from the French cuisine. To understand this we should bear in mind that French culture and habits were extremely popular and fashionable in Wallachia, especially during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Muntenian gastronomy is very similar to its sister, the Oltenian fresh cuisine. So, vegetables soups made of nettles, mushrooms and all kind of beans and weeds are very popular in this region too and they are usually enriched with rice, eggs and sour cream. Meat soups are cooked especially with chicken and beef and Muntenians cooks make good use of lovage too.

Soups and thicker broths come along a large choice of meat dishes such as chicken (in fact all kind of poultry), fish, pork, beef or mutton.

Dry and smoked plums (prune) are very appreciated in Muntenia and they make good ingredients for all kind of dishes, from main meals such as prune stew (with or without meat) to prune pies and puddings.

People from Muntenia eat indeed a lot of fresh salads – especially in spring and summer time – but during cold season they would not give up their salads, only that they would use more boiled vegetables, mixed up with cheese, cheddar, eggs and various dressings – which from the French mayonnaise is held in high esteem; in fact mayonnaise is very much used in Muntenia.

In conclusion, if you go to Muntenia you should expect to find on the menu something like: chicken roast with quince or apricots, duck with olives, prune dishes, mayonnaise salads, the famous tripe soup (served with garlic and sour cream), fish dishes and of course a lot of vegetables soups and vegetables main dishes.

If we speak about desserts – prune pie and pumpkin pie (and all sorts of puddings) are very popular here. Sweet specialties of the area are the boiled “papanasi” (a sort of round dumplings served with jam and sour cream) and the “mucenici cu zeama” / “mucenici muntenesti” or simply “mucenici” (“mucenici muntenesti” – a special type of small cookies boiled in water with walnuts, honey (or sugar) and cinnamon which are prepared only once a year – on the 9th of March).

Author: Irina Petre

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