Felul principal de sărbătoare — the great festive slow-cooked dish that reigns at the center of the table

Sarmale cu mămăligă (stuffed cabbage rolls and polenta)

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Fermented cabbage leaves rolled around a filling of meat, rice and onion, slow-cooked for hours until meltingly tender. Served with mămăligă, golden cornmeal polenta, and a dollop of sour cream. The Sunday and holiday dish.

Felul principal de sărbătoare — the great festive slow-cooked dish that reigns at the center of the table

Ah, sarmale! You must understand that you don't make them for just one evening; you make them for a celebration, and you always prepare too many — that is the rule. We would roll the sour cabbage leaves tight like cigars, and the pot would cook so long that the whole house smelled of sourness and smoke. My grandmother claimed they were even better reheated the next day, which is an absurd and magnificent truth: a dish that improves by waiting, like certain truths. We eat them with mămăligă and a cloud of cream, unhurriedly, talking too loudly.
— Eugène Ionesco

Ingredients

•Whole fermented cabbage leaves (varză murată) — one whole cabbage (wrapper — provides fermented acidity)
•Pork mince — a good amount (filling)
•Rice — a large handful (filling)
•Onion — several (filling)
•Cornmeal — according to number of guests (mămăligă)
•Dried dill, peppercorns, bay leaves — to taste (aromatics)

How it was made : Cabbage was stored all winter in large barrels of brine where it fermented whole — leaves were taken as needed. Mămăligă, cornmeal polenta, was for a long time the bread of Romanian peasants, cooked in a cauldron and overturned onto a board to be sliced with a thread. Corn, which arrived from the Americas after 1492, was fully integrated into 20th-century Romanian cuisine.

Sources : Sanda Marin, Carte de bucate