Romanian customs and traditions of Christmas

With a few days before the start of the cycle of days "festive" in the Romanian tradition the sacrifice of the pig is in Ignat day - December 20. The ritual of sacrifice an animal marks the transition from the profane everyday to celebrate the sacred, delimiting now the beginning of the festivity.
  The act of the sacrifice the pig,at the Romanians,in the day of Ignat, is a form of manifestation of the sacrifice livestock, sacrifice who is practiced by cults in Greek, Roman, Celtic, people, Hindu, Egyptian, polytheist in religious denominations and monotheist religions: Jewish, Islamic. 
Also we observed motions and ritual formulas for " the Consecration" of victim: the animal is sprayed with holy water, is situated whit the head to the East, on his forehead (Moldova), or neck (in Arges , Brasov) is drawn a cross with a knife and that is dousing whit salt. The ritual of sacrifice the pig is signed by the meal, generally called "pig dole". We think that keeping the practice of sacrifice pigs, adopted like the animal sacrifice for the Christian holiday of Christmas is a proof of age of Christianity in these places, apostolic Christianity.

 
Romanian Recipes
A traditional Romanian Winter Season menu will feature lots of pork dishes, since people raise pigs just for the holidays. Very popular are sarmale, pork roasts, jellied pork, and as deserts Romanian panetone (sweet yeasted bread) filled with walnuts, raisins, poppy seeds, chocolate. We selected for you a few well known dishes which are also easy to prepare:
Cabbage rolls - Sarmale
Salata de boeuf
Sausages pork for Christmas- Cârnaţi de porc de Crăciun
Jelly- Răcitură
Romanian Walnut Panetone- Cozonaci cu nuca


Cabbage rolls * Sarmale

Ingredients
1 large soured cabbage or one large cabbage and sour kraut*,
1 3/4 lb/750 g ground meat (mixture of pork and beef is recommended), 
4 large onions, 
2 tablespoons rice, 
3 tablespoons lard, 
5-6 tomatoes or 1 tablespoon tomato sauce,
 salt, pepper, 1 qt/1 l sour cream
Preparation

  Grind the meat with a raw onion. Place in a bowl and mix with rice, pepper, salt and finely chopped onion slightly fried in two tablespoons of lard. Mix everything well. Core the cabbage with a sharp thin knife. Carefully remove the cabbage leaves, one by one, so that they do not tear. Cut larger leaves in 2 or 3 and then place a little meat in each cabbage piece and roll in. The smaller the rolls are, the tastier they are. Place a layer of rolls in the pan (take a deep one), then cover with a layer of chopped (julienned) cabbage, then a layer of thinly sliced tomatoes. Do this layering until all the rolls are made. The last layer must be tomato slices or add tomato sauce. Add a heaping tablespoon of lard, pour the borsh and let simmer on top of the range for 30 minutes. Then place in the oven so that the liquid is reduced. Serve with sour cream.
• When soured cabbage is not available, use cabbage leaves scalded in water and sour kraut in stead of chopped (julienned) cabbage.

Salata de boeuf

Ingredients
1/2 lb – 1 lb beef sirloin (or another cut of meat that you might like)
5-6 potatoes (medium size)
3 carrots
1 parsley root
1 parsnip (optional),
1 large celery root,
1 can green peas
1 can corn
3-4 pickles (not too big)
½ - 1 cup Mayo (taste the salad before you add more mayo, it depends on your preference how much you would like to add)
1-2 tbsp mustard (the same comment as for mayo applies to the mustard)
Salt and pepper  
Preparation - boil the meat together with potatoes, carrots, parsley, parsnip, and celery root.
- after they boil, cube the meat and the veggies
- also cube the pickles (only smaller cubes this time)
- drain the pickles by squeezing them between your hands, you need to do this because you don’t want the whole salad to get soggy
- place them all in a bowl; add the peas, corn, salt and pepper
- add the mustard and mayo and mix well
- don’t mix too hard because you don’t want to turn everything into mush, but mix well enough to incorporate the mayo and mustard.
Arrange on a serving platter. 
Smooth with a knife and then cover with the rest of the mayo mixture. Garnish with a few olives, hard boiled egg white, or egg slices, pickled red peppers, parsley, etc. Try to shape flowers, other designs.  

 Sausages pork for Christmas* cârnaţi de porc

Ingredients
1 kg pig meat
150 g bacon
1 head of garlic
30 g salt
1 / 2 teaspoon pepper
1 top knife spices sausage
Pig intestines

Preparation
It passes two or three times by car shredded meat fat from the pig's neck, leg and muscle in equal shares. Add small pieces of minced bacon, pisses garlic, salt, pepper, spices. We attach to trencher a special tube for filling the sausages. The intestines, well cleaned and washed, is filled with the composition slowly and not too crowded, to not broke this.
Sausages are served fresh, fried in fat, but may also be dry and cure.

Jelly

Ingredients
a boiled beef
Dishware and accessories second bird
Two pig legs
Vegetable soup
Salt, pepper seeds
Garlic

Preparation

The boiled beef, pig legs and the dishware and accessories bird is put into a large vessel with 10 l of water.
It boil at small fire in the vessel. In the middle time boiling add vegetables of soup, cleaned and washed, cut slices and a large spoon of salt. When the meat fall off the bone it out and let the vegetables away.
The meat is clean from the bones, is divided equally and put in the plate. Each plate is decorated with slices of boiled carrot and pickled bell pepper, then cover with water in which boiled meat mixed with garlic slipped. Bowls are filled with water and let cool for the gelatin to catch. It tries power clotting, before adding the juice of meat, taking a spoon of water and to let in the refrigerator. If water is clot fast, you do not need any added. Otherwise, you have to boil few sheets of gelatin food, let them be cool and add the juice of the meat or add a little aspic.
  Jelly have to be served with a red wine.

Romanian Walnut Panetone * Cozonaci cu nuca

Ingredients

 2 lbs/1 kg flour,
 10 oz/300 g sugar,
 1 1/2 cups milk,
 6 eggs, 2 oz/50 g yeast,
 7 oz/200 g butter,
 2 tablespoons oil,
 Vanilla stick, salt,
 egg for washing the dough, grease for the pans. 

Preparation
Make a starter from yeast and a teaspoon of sugar. Mix until the consistency of sour cream, add 2-3 tablespoons tepid milk, a little flour and mix well; sprinkle some flour on top, cover and let sit in a warm place to rise. Boil the milk with the vanilla stick (cut in very small pieces) and leave it on the side of the range, covered, to keep warm. Mix the yolks with the sugar and salt, and then slowly pour the tepid milk, stirring continuously. Place the risen starter in a large bowl and pour, stirring continuously, the yolk-milk mixture and some flour, a little at a time. Then add 3 whipped egg whites. When you finish this step, start kneading. Knead, adding melted butter combined with oil, a little at a time, until the dough starts to easily come off your palms. Cover with a cloth and then something thicker (like a blanket). Leave in a warm place to triple in bulk. If during kneading the dough seems too hard, you may add a little milk. If, on the contrary, the dough seems too soft, you may add a little flour.
Filling: 10 oz/300 g ground walnuts, 1 cup milk, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup rum, vanilla 
Melt the sugar in the warm milk with vanilla in a pot on the range. When the sugar is melted, add the walnuts and keep stirring. After a few minutes of boiling, and after the filling has thickened, remove from heat and add rum. When the filling is cold, roll a sheet of dough about one finger thick, uniformly spread the walnut filling on top and roll like a jelly roll. 
Grease a bread pan, place the roll inside, let rise for a while. Wash with egg and bake at medium heat. Take out of the pan as soon as it is done, place on a cloth and let cool. 
 
BON APPETIT!