The Famous Zacusca

Each country has its own culinary specialties and when you visit, it's advisable to taste the most famous ones. Romania has quite a few famous dishes, the offer varies depending on the region you visit, but there's one dish that you can find everywhere and that's the famous zacusca.

Zacuscă (Romanian pronunciation: [zaˈkuskə]) is a vegetable spread popular in Romania and Moldova. Similar spreads are found in other countries in the Balkan region, and bordering regions.

The main ingredients are roasted eggplant, sauteed onions, tomato paste, and roasted "Round of Hungary" or "Paprika Pepper" pepper (Romanian pepper called gogoșari). Some add mushrooms, carrots, or celery. Bay leaves are added as spice, as well as other ingredients (oil, salt, and pepper). Traditionally, a family will cook a large quantity of it after the fall harvest and preserve it through canning. source

And that's exactly what we did today. It was about time as the gardening season is going to end soon.

I'm not sure why, maybe those ugly communist times, when food was rationed, contributed to the spread of zacusca, but every decent household has zacusca in the larder or cellar. This is a dish that saved you during winter, when you did not have much to put on the table. It was the food safety blanket for rainy days and still is. I remember when we were kids, we could hardly wait for the zacusca to be made and then to be able to eat it. We got some when it was made, to satisfy our hunger, but the rest was kept for winter. Those were rough times and I don't like to talk about them.

Now you can buy it at the grocery store as well, but better make your own, for your own taste.

There are several recipes available. We usually make two types, one with eggplant and the other with beans, but some are using carrots and squash.

Today we made the bean version as we already have the eggplant version.

Ingredients:

• 1 portion of onion,
• 1 portion of red pepper,
• 2 portion of eggplant or beans,
• tomato juice,
• salt,
• pepper,
• bay leaves,
• oil (as much as the onion requires),
• conservant.

Method

The method is very simple. Grind the onion, add as much oil as to cover, then sauté till it's soft. Add the ground red pepper and continue till it's soft. Add the spices and finally the beans. There are two way to do this. You can add whole beans or grind half of the beans and add whole beans and the ground part too. We usually do the latter, half ground and half whole beans and that's what we did today.

After that, add the tomato juice and cook till it is thick enough to be a sauce.

Season with salt or whatever you like if needed, add some conservant and it's ready to be canned.

In case you opt for the eggplant version, the eggplants need to be grilled first, pealed and then added to the mix.

It's a simple recipe, you only need a few ingredients, all vegetables. The key to success is to choose ripe veggies, not the plastic ones you buy at the supermarket.

For someone, who has never heard or tasted this dish, it may look strange, but trust me, once you taste it, you're going to ask for more. We had some German friends visiting a few years back, who came to Romania the first time. They knew a few dishes, among which chicken soup and csirkepaprikás, which is the Hungarian name of the chicken paprikash 😁, but they have never heard of zacusca. After tasting it, they asked for a jar to take home. Since then, every time we send them a pack, it has to contain zacusca.

With this batch we are safe for the winter, wont die of hunger 😂 However, we're going to make another batch, a mixed one with eggplant and beans as well. Mixing the two is new, but can't be bad. We'll see.