23 YEARS IN THE SERVICE OF ROMANIAN HERITAGE AND COMMUNITIES
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The heritage education component of the interdisciplinary project “Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Diary – recipes, tastes, objects and experiments” took place at Golescu Villa in Câmpulung Muscel during the long weekend at the beginning of the summer holidays.
The group of children was extremely active and was able to accomplish the whole three-day program of intense activities coordinated by Andreea Machidon and supported by guest trainers Răzvan Bogza, Cosmin Simion, Irina Melente and Ana Maria Apostoiu.
Friday in the children’s workshop at the Golescu Villa in Câmpulung was Plant Day in the edible garden. The children came in the morning, participated in workshops, lunch and games, training for the Sunday sports competitions and small continuations of the workshops in the first part of the day for those who wanted.
The second day of the children’s workshop was taken up with making botanical prints on t-shirts. Inspired by “Recettes de Cuisine” — Maria Cantili Golescu’s 1900’s notebook of recipes and advice — the children started building their own notebook by replicating the cardboard covers with textile and making their personal “coat of arms” with the initials of their name using the linocut technique.
In the afternoon we had Delia Zahareanu, a graphic designer specialized in abstract art, calligraphy and graphic design, as our guest. Delia gave us a short and applied introduction to the art of calligraphy, with practical exercises right on the newly made notebooks using tools from the props of professionals in this field.
The last day of the children’s workshop at Golescu Villa in Câmpulung was reserved for the construction of four thematic installations directly related to Maria Cantili Golescu’s Notebook – “Recettes de Cuisine” and to the times she lived in. All those who will visit us at the official launch event of the rewritten Cantili’s Notebook and the Festive Day at the end of September will be able to browse:
The evening closed with an outdoor film, in the tradition of the Foundation’s Heritage Education Caravan.
The workshop and exploration phase with the children from Câmpulung is over for now but we are moving forward and will constantly present the research project of the translated notebook resources, the collaboration with the ten culinary experts as well as the collaboration with craftsmen from the Muscelu area for the continuation of the Honest Goods collection.
For those curious to feel the atmosphere of this year’s workshops, the editorial team of MuscelTV Câmpulung has made a conclusive report.
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“Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Diary-recipes, tastes, objects and experiments” is a cultural project of Pro Patrimonio Foundation co-financed by AFCN.
Media partners: Scena 9, Rock FM, Muscel TV, Zeppelin Magazine; Friend project: Ierburi Uitate
The digitized booklet, “Recettes de Cuisine”, can be found in the Foundation’s library of useful resources here
Read more:
Comunicat de presă. Jurnal culinar Maria Cantili Golescu – rețete, gusturi, obiecte și experimente
Zece Experimente Contemporane din Jurnalul Culinar Maria Cantili Golescu
Girdle, ustensilă istorică de gătit
„Recettes de Cuisine”, caietul digitalizat
Ansamblul Golescu. Observator de Peisaj Cultural în Câmpulung Muscel
Ansamblul Golescu. Trasee botanice în Parcul Golescu
Honest Goods. Colecţia Golescu
The constant, step-by-step restoration of the Neamțu Manor in Olari has been started since 2018. Currently undergoing restoration, the manor is an important landmark for the local community. Started in 2021 together with the UiPath Foundation the project “Experimental Centre for Studies and Education at the Neamțu Manor in Olari” is dedicated to this place. As in all other interventions carried out by Pro Patrimonio, the restoration, the construction site and all efforts to activate, educate and involve the local community are open, public processes.
After completig the facades’ restoration in 2022, this year we are focusing our efforts to carry out repairs and restoration of the finishes in the interior spaces of the manor floor.
Thus, we have started working on the ceilings, where the manor largely kept only the roof structure beams. There are a few exceptions: in the room facing the main façade, a large part of the vaulted ceiling has been preserved, and in the loggia on the north-west side, fragments of the wooden panelling covering the ceiling have been preserved.
The threadlike wooden battens substructure of the ceiling plaster has now been rebuilt and the first layer of mineral wool is being laid in the attic. We are using modern materials (basaltic mineral wool, generously sponsored by Rockwool România, thank you!) in order not to add extra weight to the existing structure and to increase the interior comfort of the floor, limiting heat loss during cold periods, when we will heat and use the spaces.
At the same time, we are also adding the electrical installation for lighting, sockets and switches, in compliance with all the technical safety regulations.
We have also started to install the canopy at the secondary entrance. This was dismantled last year to complete repairs to the facade plaster. The team of carpenters led by Mr. Florin Ganea — who has helped us for years with specialized work on the Wooden Church from Urși — cleaned the wooden pieces and filled in what was missing, in order to rebuild the entire canopy.
At the „Experimental Centre for Studies and Education at the Neamțu Manor in Olari” we have been testing over the past year soil stability solutions for dry, parched land types. This agricultural experiment for the garden at the Neamțu Manor in Olari showed that it is necessary to work on smaller segments to create areas of favourable microclimate. These can then be slowly extended over the whole field.
For this purpose, for the northern windbreak, we continued planting branches of wicker (Salix Viminalis), a plant that exists in the vineyard areas where it is used to tie the vine ropes. The rest of the land is still used for small production crops ( sunflower and corn – local varieties).
The manor’s caretakers weed the crops by hand. We would like to be able to purchase a professional tiller to make the work and the labour more efficient. The caretakers are employed from the local community and also work to help the teams of craftsmen restoring the manor.
June
The room we call the “chapel” is beginning to take shape thanks to the architectural details. The restoration craftsmen together with the caretakers of the manor have repaired the ceiling, installed the electrical fittings and just finished the plastering, so the space suddenly looks much more airy.
At the beginning of autumn, the sunflowers and the corn grown on the land around the manor were harvested. We sell this grain for firewood and other expenses for future plantations. With the help of a private donor, we were able to buy a chainsaw, which will be of great help in the following agricultural work.
We thank him with gratitude. Small steps that create a whole.
Between August 30 and September 3, 2022, the Neamţu Manor in Olari became the host of the Pro Patrimonio Foundation’s Heritage Caravan for the 7th consecutive year. “The story of my village” was the theme of educational workshops.
Approximately 20 children from the local community benefited from an intense program of practical and creative workshops coordinated by the theme of discovering their own village and the cultural and natural context it has.
We thanks for the support to UiPath Foundation.
We took advantage of a still warm autumn at Neamţu Manor. We are installing the insulation donated by ROCKWOOL under the floor above the basement so that we can heat the upstairs room in the future. Soon we will be able to host the children’s workshops in the mansion as well, not just outside, on summer days.
Foto: Daniela Gheorghiu
Foto: Raluca Munteanu
At the end of a new year of extensive construction, the Neamţu Manor presents itself brightly in the meadow of Olteţ river. It is an example of strong hope for other historical monuments that can be saved and given a new life.
We thank our individual donors who choose to support this lasting project as well as the companies that constantly support us.
Foto: Ovidiu Serghe
Citeşte şi:
Written between 1900 and 1901, Maria Cantili Golescu’s recipe book covers a fascinating period in the history of Romanian gastronomy, as it contributes to the specific literature with culinary material from a decade from which no other cookbook survives.
Cantili most likely gathered her recipes from various French, English, German and Romanian materials available during the Golescu couple’s travels across the European continent, but certainly also through an exchange of recipes “housewife to housewife”, as was the custom before the widespread diffusion of culinary publications. They reflect a predilection for cosmopolitan, Western cuisine, under the auspices of French gastronomic trends, considered at the time to be the height of culinary refinement. These trends had already been announced by 19th-century cookbooks (Kogălniceanu-Negruzzi, Hințescu, Ionnin, Maurer, Steriadi), but also by those that followed in the next decades, in the midst of the inter-war era (Bacalbașa, Marin).
Set on the border between centuries, but also at the crossroads between traditional and modern cooking styles, the recipe book also offers some exciting insights into the design of old kitchens before the widespread adoption of modern cooking equipment. Among these small details, easily missed on a quick read, we were intrigued by the description of how to make a cake called “Spice cake” and the utensils mentioned by the author.
”— Spice cake*—
“1 pound of flour, 3 ½ ounces of dripping, a small teaspoonful of salt, well rubbed together; 3 ounces of fresh currants mashed and dried, all mixed well together with the flour etc. make it a medium paste with a little mill, roll,, it about half an inch thick, then put it into a creed girdle or frying pan, bake on one side for a ¼ of an hour, moving it round 2 or 3 times to prevent it burning, turn it over and do the same. Try to do the edges in front of the fire. “ (-*despite the name of this dish, the spices are not mentioned. Traditionally, a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves is also put in the composition of such a cake).
The girdle mentioned here is a historic cooking utensil – almost forgotten today – a practical and useful object especially for cooking over an open fire or hearth. It was most often made of cast iron, but also of other metals, was round or rectangular in shape and, characteristically, had a looped handle that allowed it to be hung over a fire or a hot pan. It was used extensively throughout European culinary history, in times when the source of fire in the kitchen were wood-burning fireplaces or cheminées. The object is coming back into fashion especially among historical gastronomy and culinary reenactment enthusiasts, but also among those interested in traditional, sustainable and durable cooking objects.
Photo sources:
“Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Diary-recipes, tastes, objects and experiments” is a cultural project of Pro Patrimonio Foundation co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration.
Media partners: Scena 9, Rock FM, Muscel TV, Revista Zeppelin
Friend project: “Ierburi uitate”
The digitised workbook, “Recettes de Cuisine”, can be found in the Foundation’s library of useful resources here
Read also:
Zece Experimente Contemporane din Jurnalul Culinar Maria Cantili Golescu
Digitized Booklet “Recettes de Cusine”
The Culinary Diary of Maria Cantili Golescu-recipes, tastes, objects and experiments
The story of the notebook with “cooking recipes”, as Maria Cantili Golescu called it in 1900, enters a new stage in our project entitled „Maria Cantili Golescu – Culinary Recipe Book – recipes, tastes, objects and experiences”, carried out during this year aims to recover these fragments of taste over a century old, to give access to information for the public passionate about our culinary heritage and offer a small contribution to the enrichment of local gastronomic literature by publishing this notebook in a digital version that will be freely accessible in the ProPatromonio archive starting this autumn.
Maria Cantili’s recipes were written in four languages at the beginning of the last century, in a splendid calligraphy specific those times, and describe an unexpectedly cosmopolitan way of cooking and dining, deeply influenced by Western European culinary trends, especially French, but also English, Iberian, German and Italian. It should not be forgotten that the author belonged to a privileged social category at the time, highly educated, multilingual, well-travelled and having had the opportunity to live in several European cities. The multiculturalism of the Golescu family, and perhaps of an entire local elite, is reflected in these glimpses of everyday life suggested by the way they ate, and reveals an interesting piece of Romanian gastronomic history from a decade not yet covered by other sources.
In the first part of the project, we carefully photocopied and digitised every page of the notebook, followed by many weeks working on transcribing the original recipes, translating them into Romanian and editing the texts so that the language became easy to understand for the contemporary reader.
The first page of Maria Cantili Golescu’s notebook
This summer, we’re entering a new and even more spectacular phase of work, with 10 professional and amateur chefs joining the project to help us bring to life a series of recipes from the notebook. These recipes, narrated and cooked by our chefs, will be published in a new “cookbook”, with clearly explained texts and photos, also aimed for the public.
We have therefore invited Andrei Chelaru (Fragment, Cluj), Oana Coantă (Bistro de l’Arte, Brasov), Irina Georgescu (author of the cookbook “Carpathia”), Cristina Mehedințeanu (Horeca Culinary School, Bucharest), Mara Oană (Viscri 32), Mona Petre (Ierburi Uitate), Alex Petricean (Noua, Bucharest), Mădălina Roman (Szikra, Sf. Gheorghe), Horia Simon ( Transylvanian Gastronomic Club), the team of Adriana Sohodoleanu and Cosmin Dragomir (Gastroart) and Adela Trofin (Slow Food Edinburgh).
This summer, as our chefs venture out to bring these old recipes back to the table, we’ll share with you glimpses (in stories and pictures) of the process.
“Violet meringues”, cake prepared by Mădălina Roman (Szikra, Sf. Gheorghe) following the original recipe from Maria Cantili Golescu’s notebook
Browsing through Maria Cantili Golescu’s 1900 recipe book, Chef Andrei Chelaru – a frequent collaborator of several fine dining establishments in the country and winner of a Gault & Millau Romania award in 2019 – found inspiration to choose three of the recipes from the book and combine them in a unique, particularly tasty and contemporary dish.
“I was very delighted when I leafed through this precious book of recipes and it was hard to choose, as they were all very interesting. In the end, I chose three recipes: one for borsch, a dish with which I have a special relationship, as I originally come from Moldova, and which I often use, replacing lemon juice or vinegar. The second recipe is the biscuits manqués, which go perfectly with the 3rd chosen recipe, strawberry mousse. All three, paired on the same plate made a light, aromatic, tart-sweet dessert with a subtle home-made borsch flavour, perfect for hot summer days.”
Andrei, shared his encounter with these century-old recipes and deconstructed each working stage in very simple steps explained on his culinary blog, so that anyone can cook at home the three recipes, simple or combined as he creatively combined and served them.
Mădălina Roman joined the project with two recipes chosen from Maria Cantili Golescu’s recipe book. We now present the first of them, a seasonal dish based on the classic recipe of stuffed aubergines, to which Mădălina has managed to give her own twist in a style that defines her.
Mădălina, who studied culinary arts at the “Paul Bocusse” institute in Lyon, is currently head chef at “Szikra” in Sfântu Gheorghe (CV), passionate about the “secrets” of food chemistry, old recipes and wild plants, but also an active promoter of sustainability in gastronomy and respect for nature. “Szikra” quickly became a landmark for new Romanian gastronomy, surprising both by reinterpreting old recipes and by the original combinations and innovative techniques.
About this dish, she told us: “Since it’s their season, and this summer is busy with the publishing of Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Diary, I chose to play with a stuffed eggplant recipe. Following the 1900 recipe, I slightly adjusted both the ingredients and the cooking technique. Beside very young beet leaves, I added orach leaves, and green onions and ramson in the stuffing. In addition, to soften the bread, I used a reduction of borsch and a little vegetable stock soup. Half of the sauce I left with the leaves inside and the other half I blended into a thin sauce placed on the plate next to the baked eggplant. At the end, I added green ramson fruits and onion blossoms which completed the dish wonderfully adding a crunchy touch.”
Inspirați de vară și ingrediente de sezon, echipa formată din Adriana Sohodoleanu și Cosmin Dragomir a ales și gătit din caietul de rețete de la 1900 al Mariei Cantili Golescu o foarte potrivită mâncare estivală — biban de mare cu ierburi aromatice. Felurile cu pește erau favorite în multe din casele mari ale epocii, iar Vila Golescu din Câmpulung Muscel n-a fost mai prejos. Se prepara o paletă poate surprinzător de variată de specii de pește și crustacee, iar mâncărurile erau puternic influențate de bucătăria franceză și mediteraneană, cu siguranță un gust căpătat în călătoriile cuplului în Franța, dar și sub tendința generală a epocii, în care ”la cuisine française” se impusese ca idealul gastronomic pentru orice familie cu pretenții.
Maria Cantili scria: ”Peștele, evident foarte proaspăt, trebuie spălat, curățat și eviscerat. Înfășurați-l cu o foaie de hârtie unsă bine cu unt. Coaceți la cuptor până capătă o culoare frumoasă. Pregătiți, în acest timp, un vas foarte cald, în care puneți peștele scos din hârtie. Sărați și decorați atât peștele cât și vasul cu unt amestecat cu plante aromatice. Untul se va topi pe jumătate, așa și trebuie. Serviți fierbinte. Coacerea trebuie supravegheată foarte bine; focul nu trebuie nici foarte tare, nici redus. În aceasta constă tot secretul.”
Adriana Sohodoleanu are un doctorat în ”noua bucătărie romanească” și scrie despre mâncare, istorii și trenduri culinare pe biscuit.ro, implicându-se adesea în proiecte felurite de istorie gastronomică și chiar în ceea ce s-ar putea numi reenactment culinar. Ea a abordat această rețetă scrisă acum mai bine de 120 de ani dintr-o perspectivă cât mai apropiată de textul original, detaliind tot procesul de lucru, ingredientele și etapele într-un articol cuprinzător și explicativ, ce poate fi citit aici: https://biscuit.ro/2022/07/08/biban/
Cosmin Dragomir este istoric culinar amator, fondatorul editurii Gastroart, unde a publicat o serie de cărți de bucate istorice, unele într-o ediție nouă la mai mult de un secol și jumătate de la prima apariție. Cosmin este și inițiatorul sau co-inițiatorul mai multor proiecte de cercetare și aducere în atenția publicului larg a patrimoniului culinar național, prin articole, podcasturi și evenimente conexe.
We are delighted to benefit within the project “Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Diary – recipes, tastes, objects and experiments” from the vision of Irina Georgescu, culinary writer and author of the book “Carpathia”. Irina has published her cookbook in the UK, presenting to the British public, in a specific format, Romanian food as it is prepared in households in various regions of the country. Since then, “Carpathia” has been translated into several languages, taking our recipes overseas. In addition, Irina is preparing a new book to be released this autumn called “Tava”, a collection of tray-cooked dishes inspired by rural and contemporary cuisine.
Browsing through Maria Cantili’s notebook from 1900, she chose two recipes for cakes, of which we present today the delicious rice muffins.
The recipe goes like this: “Two cups of cold cooked rice, 570 g flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar, half a teaspoon baking powder or yeast, 285 ml milk, 3 eggs. Mash the rice to remove lumps and add the other ingredients. Bake in muffin tins for 15 minutes.”
For their preparation, Irina followed closely the tips from the original recipe, adding just a little personal twist and detailing the method on her website – link
Mara Elena Oană – Viscri 32
Born in Deva, in a multicultural family, with Romanian and Hungarian grandparents from Maramureș and Hunedoara, Mara Elena Oană worked for over 10 years as a lawyer in Bucharest, before leaving everything and moving to Viscri, a UNESCO-listed village. Here, together with her partner, they founded the Viscri 32 project, a small retreat with a strong gastronomic component. Together they restored an old Saxon house using local craftsmen and converted the former barn on the property into a Slow Food restaurant.
Mara is focused on using seasonal ingredients grown by local family producers in the region, as well as documenting and promoting recipes specific to Transylvania.
Involved in the project “Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Diary – recipes, tastes, objects and experiments”, Mara chose to recreate two recipes based on easily accessible seasonal ingredients: „cauliflower bread” and apples a la russe, two dishes cooked in the oven and served in earthen bowls.
As Mara recently posted an explanatory video about “cauliflower bread” on the Viscri 32 account, today we present this special dessert served with butter, apricot jam, toasted walnuts and cherry palinca, following closely Maria Cantili’s recipe from 1900:
” Remove the apple peel and scoop out the interior. Put them in a deep, ovenproof dish and add butter and powdered sugar. Place in the oven on low heat. Then arrange the apples in a bowl and drizzle them, while still warm, with a sauce made from apricot marmalade, mashed and diluted with 2-3 tablespoons of kirsch. This dish is served warm or, conversely, very cold.”
As we do at the beginning of every weekend this summer, we propose a new and appetizing seasonal dish inspired by Maria Cantili Golescu’s 1900 cookbook. Our guest Adela Trofin has chosen to recreate a famous Provençal fish soup, Bouillabaisse, found in the pages of this notebook: “In a pot, add chopped onions, tomatoes, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, garlic and cloves, 700-800 g of fish and shellfish cut evenly. Season generously. Sprinkle with saffron, pour in a glass of oil, two decilitres of white wine and finish by adding fish stock or water to cover half the fish. Simmer over high heat for 15-18 minutes. Arrange the fish on a platter, ladle the soup into a soup tureen in which you have also placed pieces of bread.”
Following Maria Cantili’s advice closely, Adela says: “For me, this soup is not Provençal, it’s not Scottish, it’s not Romanian. It’s comfort and warmth. It has a bit of the memory of Romanian fish soups, but it also intensely reflects the feeling that food is relaxation and connection. Each time I prepare it, its taste and texture are slightly different, depending on what I find at the fish market that day, but its warmth and intensity remain the same, making it one of my favorite dishes.”
Adela Trofin was born in a small town in northeastern Romania, into a family with Romanian, Austrian and Greek roots. She learned from her grandmother about home-cooked meals and stories about seasonal ingredients, either grown or gathered from the surroundings, but also about values closely connected to conviviality and loyalty to the natural course of nature, sustainable agriculture and small local producers with minimal environmental impact. Involved in the Slow Food movement since 2012, Adela has been the leader of the Slow Food Iași Convivium for 6 years contributing among other things to the development of the first ASAT (for supporting peasant agriculture) consumer group in the region. Relocated to Scotland, Adela quickly joined the Slow Food Edinburgh board, getting involved in the local effort to bring back to light forgotten or lost ingredients of Scottish culinary history and culture, without forgetting her origins and concern for Romanian gastronomy.
Following her chef training course, Cristina Mehedințeanu worked in several prestigious London restaurants and bakeries, such as Ottolenghi and Harrods, where she gained experience as a pastry chef. Back in the country, she became a trainer and instructor for pastry chefs and confectioners at the Horeca School in Bucharest, where she conducts pastry chef qualification trainings and masterclasses. Recently, she opened her own business in the capital, Cofetăria Zmeur.
Cristina chose from Maria Cantili Golescu’s notebook two cakes dating back to 1900, giving them even more sparkle and contemporary flair: a Chantilly cream cake with blackcurrants, great seasonal fruits, and a recipe for chocolate pricomigdalas to which she added a decadent ganache.
About the first recipe, she writes: “I love blackcurrants. They are hardly ever used in confectionery. More popular are blueberries, although they don’t have much taste or flavor. This recipe uses blackcurrants to the full, in a sweet-sour marmalade, a thick sauce that naturally sweetens and colors a creamy Chantilly with whipped cream and mascarpone for decoration. A delight!”
Both dishes are detailed on Cristina’s website, cristinamehedinteanu.ro, where, in addition to the text of the original recipe, the ingredients used and all the working steps are explained in detail, allowing anyone to try to reproduce this culinary jewel.
Horia Simon
Horia Simon was born into a family of “barkeeps” and has been in contact with the world of gastronomy since childhood. He believes he left one kitchen behind to pursue his studies, but returned back into the kitchen. He did his apprenticeship in a restaurant in Barcelona, then, back home, he gained experience travelling all over the country, through Cluj, Târgu Mureș, Timișoara, Bistrița and Baia Mare. He is the founder and (co-)owner of several projects in the gastronomic area, from consulting activities to the production of canned food and dishes according to traditional techniques (Les Mignonnes de Simon, Foc și Pară – Afumatoria de Oraș), lecturer at the American Hotel Academy in Brașov (Taste Academy), active member of Slow Food Transylvania and co-founder of the Transylvanian Gastronomic Club, an NGO that researches and preserves the Transylvanian gastronomic heritage.
Passionate about local gastronomy as well as its history, Horia was delighted to join the project “Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Diary – recipes, tastes, objects and experiments”. From the notebook kept in the archive of the Golescu Villa in Câmpulung, he chose to closely recreate two recipes that manage to evoke through descriptions and images the complexity and culinary diversity of the Romanian Belle Epoque cuisine.
Shellfish dishes also had a period of glory in the Romanian provinces, at least in the kitchen of privileged social classes, before being set aside during the communist period. The French and Mediterranean culinary influence was a contributing factor to their popularisation, so that we find them relatively often in cookbooks from the 19th century until the interwar period. Following this historical gastronomic line, Horia recreated the lobster salad. Alongside it, he also chose the stuffed aubergine recipe, which he says: “I didn’t want to change the original recipe too much, even though that’s the tendency – to leave your mark as a chef. Curiosity drove me to do as little as possible and I only intervened where I felt it didn’t fit with what I understood by taste.”
Horia has detailed both his culinary approaches on his blog, www.chefhoriasimon.ro, a virtual space where he presents his most significant activities.
Recipe links:
https://chefhoriasimon.ro/retete/salata-de-homar-dupa-o-reteta-a-mariei-cantilli-golescu/
https://chefhoriasimon.ro/retete/vanata-umpluta-dupa-o-reteta-a-mariei-cantili-golescu/
Those who are passionate about gastronomy are likely to immediately recognize the name of Oana Coantă, chef and manager at Bistro de l’Arte, the restaurant in Brașov that has become a mandatory stop for any foodie visiting the city.
With studies in journalism and public relations, Oana embarked on the culinary path in 2000, embracing both the role of chef and administrator or, as the French call it, “restaurateur”. For Oana, being a restaurateur (the term exists in Romanian, but is rarely used) has meant not only unravelling the bureaucratic hurdles of cooking and serving meals to guests, but also bringing back to life dishes of the past, from Transylvania and beyond.
“In the beginning I took for granted the recipes, the gestures, the working techniques of the chefs I worked with. Intuitively, however, I understood that food had to go hand in hand with other things. That recipes are not rigid, that we don’t all have to eat the same way, that tastes have to be discovered. (…) I built menus and invented dishes. Together with my team, I fed thousands of people. I have worked on mountain tops, in castles, manors, churchyards, cellars, small and very large kitchens. Sleepless nights, thousands of kilometres, hundreds of plates,” Oana writes on her website, www.oanacoanta.ro, where she presents her stories and recipes. Today, after 22 years at Bistro de l’Arte, all her efforts “are directed towards educating customers and those who work in restaurants, towards discovering and rediscovering good food and especially towards promoting good Romanian tastes, in their authentic form or adapted to the city”.
From Maria Cantili’s recipe book from 1900, Oana Coantă has chosen two recipes and writes on her Facebook page: “I re-made them as they suit me. Old and simple tastes are forgotten, they can be brought back with a little care and a dash of modernity. Stuffed eggs and carrot jam, simple and therefore sometimes abandoned recipes, prepared to suit our times with less sugar and not so much salt, completed with new ingredients, truffles, wine vinegar and apricots, parsnips.”
Carrot jam.
” Back in earlier times, when there were no refrigerators, salt and sugar were used in excess for preservation. Now that we have somewhere to keep it cold and we’ve learned that proper cooking and preservation techniques help preserve food, we can dramatically reduce salt and sugar as well. 100g of carrot contains 3.45g of sugars, let’s not forget that. So I took 300 g of carrot, added 200 g of parsnip and used no lemon, but wine vinegar and apricot. I diced the vegetables, not grated them. I didn’t flavour with citrus peel, but with pine peel. The sugar was about 400 g. I didn’t put in much water either, just about 300 ml, low-medium heat and patience to stir.”
Stuffed eggs.
“My stuffed eggs were packed in some good tomatoes. After that, the chopped liver composition with cooked yolk and herbs got some truffles and green onions dipped in butter.I browned the breadcrumbs in butter, placed the tomato nest eggs in there and left them in the oven long enough, but not too long, to soften the tomatoes and roast the stuffing.”
“Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Diary-recipes, tastes, objects and experiments” is a cultural project of Pro Patrimonio Foundation co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration.
Media partners: Scena 9, Rock FM, Muscel TV, Revista Zeppelin. Friend project: “Ierburi uitate”
The digitised workbook, “Recettes de Cuisine”, can be found in the Foundation’s library of useful resources here
Read more:
Standerul de haine cu garderoba Mariei Cantili Golescu şi alte poveşti
Comunicat de presă. Jurnal culinar Maria Cantili Golescu – rețete, gusturi, obiecte și experimente
„Recettes de Cuisine”, caietul digitalizat
Girdle, ustensilă istorică de gătit
Ansamblul Golescu. Observator de Peisaj Cultural în Câmpulung Muscel
Ansamblul Golescu. Trasee botanice în Parcul Golescu
Honest Goods. Colecţia Golescu
A translation of a recipe notebook from 1900, written in four languages and taken by the author all the way from Paris to Bacău and Câmpulung at the beginning of the last century, cannot today remain a mere translation. It is, first and foremost, an immersion in the culinary context of an era on the borderline between old and modern.
While working on transcribing and understanding the dishes presented in Maria Cantilli Golescu’s notebook – together with Mona Petre, Nona Henti and Aura Pandele – we reveal small fragments of national culinary history heavily influenced, as was the case at the time and continued until after the middle of the 20th century, by French cuisine, but also archaic, extremely picturesque ways of cooking, or, as we find in the recipe we offer as an example, a series of ingredients surrounded by an aura of mystery.
This is also the case of the Chiffonnette cake (in transcripts and translations booklet on page 64) described as follows:
”Détremper 250 grammes de beurre dans l’eau tiède; quand il sera amolli, le mettre dans un mortier et, avec un pilon, incorporer dans le beurre 300 grammes, 500 grammes de fleur de farine, douze jaunes d’œufs crus et une poignée de fleur d’oranger pralinée et écrasée préalablement. Fouetter 6 blancs d’œufset les ajouter au mélange, puis beurrer une tourtière, y verser le gâteau et faire cuire au four.” – original French transcript
“Soak 250 g of butter in lukewarm water; when the butter has softened, place it in a mortar and pestle and stir in 300 g of sugar, 500 g of very fine flour, twelve raw yolks and a handful of orange blossoms, pralinée and crushed beforehand. Beat 6 egg whites and add them to the above mixture, grease a pie tin with butter, pour in the cake and bake in the oven.”
“Praline orange flowers”. A mystery ingredient for us today, on which we asked the advice of our chef friends involved in this notebook and dishes recovery project. Should orange blossoms simply be sugared, as they are made with egg white and powdered sugar? Or are they truly pralined in the red, brittle crust of melted sugar? Contemporary gateau chiffon recipes have lost this special ingredient along the way and offer no clarification. It’s a (seemingly) small detail, perhaps easily overlooked at a first reading, but in the eyes of those fond of the cuisine of past centuries it is nothing short of a small gem.
Photo sources:
“Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Diary-recipes, tastes, objects and experiments” is a cultural project of Pro Patrimonio Foundation co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration.
Media partners: Scena 9, Rock FM, Muscel TV
Friend project: “Ierburi uitate”
The digitised workbook, “Recettes de Cusine”, can be found in the Foundation’s library of useful resources here
Read also:
The Culinary Diary of Maria Cantili Golescu-recipes, tastes, objects and experiments
On Friday, March 25, from 17:00 at the Golescu Villa, Soldat Golescu nr. 3, in Câmpulung Muscel, there will be a special reading event, held as part of the Cărturești Scholarships and Creative Residencies programme, with writers Moni Stănilă and Alexandru Vakulovski as guests.
Moni Stănilă is the winner of the 2nd edition of the Cărturești Scholarships and Creative Residencies, in Poetry category, and she performs her creative residency in March, at the Golescu Villa in Câmpulung Muscel, offered with the support of Pro Patrimonio.
With studies in theology and with her poems already translated into English, French, Swedish, Russian, Azerbaijani, but also Catalan, Turkish or Hungarian, among others, with nominations and awards won both in Romania and in the Republic of Moldova for poetry (but not only), Moni Stănilă currently lives in Chișinău, with her husband, Alexandru Vakulovski, and together with him she organizes the Republic Literary Circle of the Municipal Library.
In 2019, in Polirom Publishing House’s collection Fictional Biographies, she published the biographical novel about Constantin Brâncuși Brâncuși or How the Turtle Learned to Fly. And for her fantasy novel for children The Solomonic War, also published by Polirom (junior), she won the Union of Moldavian Writers Award in 2019. The novel Scream as much as you can, her latest publication (Polirom, 2020), is “an autofiction in disguise”, according to Simona Sora.
Alexandru Vakulovski is a poet, novelist, playwright, translator, publicist and screenwriter. He graduated from the Faculty of Letters of the “Babeș-Bolyai” University of Cluj. Together with his brother Mihail Vakulovski and graphic designer Dan Perjovschi he founded the online journal Tiuk!. He was editor-in-chief of Stare de Urgență magazine in 2009 and editor of PLIC magazine – literature, art, attitude in 2010. Together with Moni Stănilă, he directs the Republic Literary Circle of the Chișinău Municipal Library. He published the trilogy Letopizdeț (2002-2007) and the novel 157 steps to hell or Save me at Roșia Montană (2010). His books of poetry include ecstasy (2005), Set fire to books (2012), Sightseeing (2017), Whose house is this (2020). He has also published a volume of interviews, The Afghans (2016), and a children’s book, Ivan Turbincă 2.0. The novel Pizdeț has been republished by Polirom Publishing House (2020) and has been translated into Hungarian (added edition, 2015). Poems and excerpts from his books have been translated into German, English, Czech, French, Swedish, Russian, Azerbaijani, Turkish, Hungarian, Italian, Greek, Lithuanian.
Cărturești Foundation, Maria Association and Pro Patrimonio Foundation Literary Creation Scholarships were born out of the desire to promote and encourage the development of contemporary Romanian literature, starting with the support given to its authors. In a book market dominated by translations, where for most authors, writing is their second, if not third job, the aim of these scholarships and residencies is to give writers the necessary context to devote themselves to writing: time, “a room of their own” and a minimum of external constraints.
Pro Patrimonio was searching models and solutions for cultural heritage, especially architectural heritage, as a socio-economic and environmental resource. Thus it proposes a productive model of cultural and entrepreneurial activation through the Creative Residency Accelerator programme launched in 2022 for the Golescu Villa. Due to the times we are currently undergoing, the possibility of resilience residencies for Ukrainian artists is open.
Project details: https://www.propatrimonio.org/al-doilea-an-al-burselor-carturesti/
Impressions from the residency
“After the residency in Câmpulung Muscel, at the Stefan Golescu House, I feel like telling everyone: you must go to Câmpulung, you must see the Golescu House.
This residency was a joy, even if it happened in a very bad moment (or in a very good one, since I left Chișinău just then). In the first days I couldn’t pull myself together, I couldn’t forget what was happening in Ukraine, it seemed to me that the silence and the beauty of the surroundings hurt me, they made me feel guilty. Then I went to the Church of St. Mina, near the villa, and I calmed down. Gradually, this surrounding beauty overcame me. Within only three days I was writing with vigour. In the breaks I tried to do some research on the past of the house, but also regarding the Golescu family (returning, however, hour by hour, to Ukraine, Basarabia, the cruel reality).
I will remember for years to come the portrait of Nicolae Golescu in the living room, painted by George Demetrescu Mirea, as you remember a friend. The terrace, with the view over the city; the dendrological park; the dogs and seagulls roaring in the night; our dear Lăbuș / Muscel whom I want to see again, Sergiu and Ioana whom I know I will see again and whom I have definitively fallen in love with; the discretion and attention of Mrs Lucica; the Mățău peak and the Păpușa mountain – all will be reflected in my next volume.
A volume from which there will not be missing – unfortunately – the war, which has accompanied me like a skin disease that you can only forget about when you don’t look at yourself.”
Details and poems on the Cărturești Blog
We enjoyed the presence at the Golescu Villa of the editors of the local TV station Muscel TV, who helped us catch a bit of the local atmosphere https://fb.watch/c74zyf1dat/
April 2022
50 children from five communities surrounding the historical monuments George Enescu House in Mihăileni, Botoșani county and Neamțu Manor in Olari, Olt county, will receive “Heritage in a Package. The Art Nouveau Style” work kits before the Easter holidays.
Pro Patrimonio’s Heritage Education Programme is a continuous, trans-annual and interdisciplinary programme through which the Foundation has been carrying out a steady activity for over seven years, constantly diversified. The majority of the workshops undertaken are aimed specifically at children and young people from areas -sometimes poor and unstructured- where projects are being carried out to save, preserve and rehabilitate the architectural heritage (The Golescu Villa in Câmpulung, the Neamțu Manor in Olari, the Perticari-Davila Manor in Argeș, the George Enescu House in Mihăileni, etc.).
The 50 beneficiaries of the “Heritage in a Package.The Art Nouveau Style” work kits are children from the Future Acceleration Program run by UiPath Foundation in collaboration with Pro Patrimonio Foundation in both Botoșani and Olt. For three years Pro Patrimonio Foundation and UiPath Foundation have joined forces to help the local children’s communities.
The Easter kits encourage the discovery of the Art Nouveau style in Europe through exercises and practical tests, including examples from Romania. Springtime with its explosion of plants and flowers will be tuned in with this journey through the story of one of the most spectacular styles in architecture. Individual activities will engage the graphic and creative skills of the young beneficiaries in a personalised workbook and help the children to design a decorative object for the Easter table complemented by tasty surprises. The subsequent group activity will bring the children together in a joint workshop.
These DYI kits will be sent to children who will work on them independently according to precise instructions and at the same time having various free options plus an online meeting for further guidance and comparison of results. The group challenge encourages teamwork and the necessary human interaction and will be carried out under the guidance of a teacher or adult coordinator.
The kits encourage the exploration of Art Nouveau through practical exercises and games that stimulate curiosity, craftsmanship, creativity and logical thinking. The chosen field engages the dialogue between past, present and future, blends elements of past heritage with elements of contemporary technology and encourages the discovery and improvement of the inhabited, aesthetic and relational-human universe near by.
In the run-up to Christmas the children will receive a new set of kits with a different theme.
Audio details in the Radio Romania International interview, Pauza Mare show, minute 45 https://bit.ly/3NOBQpi.
In the run-up to Christmas the children will receive a new set of kits with a different theme.
Context
The George Enescu House in Mihăileni, Botoșani county and the Neamțu Manor in Olari, Olt county are two historical monuments owned by Pro Patrimonio Foundation. Over the years numerous individuals, private institutions and companies have donated time, money and materials to save them.
The George Enescu House din Mihăileni was saved from collapse and underwent a 7-year restoration process. It is now returned to the local community as a cultural and educational centre. The “Academy of Music, Education and Sound Studies” has been running here for three years.
The Neamţu Manor in Olari is in the early stages of restoration. Since 2018 the steady, step-by-step restoration has been underway. Even during the ongoing construction, the manor is an important landmark for the local community, since 2021 the “Experimental Centre for Studies and Education at the Neamțu Manor in Olari” has been created and is dedicated to this place.
Read also: Heritage Education
Landscape and Sound Workshop Log
“Workshop 5: Community Festivities”, July 16-21, 2019
On the 4th of March, we launched a music manual — ‘’ Introduction to the ABCs of Music. Guide for teachers and parents’’, written by Diana Bratan, during an online webinar. It was inspired by the atmosphere, projects and needs of the children from communities around the George Enescu mansion in Mihaileni.
The public for the presentation consisted of music teachers and parents, and next to the author, Diana Bratan — who is a music and piano teacher herself, Paula Gavriluta — music teacher for the Music Academy in Mihaileni; Greta Gasser — piano teacher at Gasser Music Studio Yorkshire Young Musicians and Manchester High School for Girls; Raluca Munteanu — programme director at Pro Patrimonio.
The manual can be downloaded as a pdf from Pro Patrimonio’ free resources library: https://bit.ly/ABCmuzical.
Also, there is already a number of printed copies which can be ordered at the following address propatrimonio.romania@gmail.com. The manuals are free of charge, buyers have to cover just courier fees. The copies will be sent out in a ‚first come, first served’ manner, within the available numbers.
The publication is part of a larger framework developed by the “Academy of Music and Education for Children”, a music education program run by the Pro Patrimono Foundation in partnership with the UiPath Foundation.
Read more: “Introduction to the ABCs of Music. A guide for teachers and parents”
Fundaţia Pro Patrimonio se alătură iniţiativelor de sprijin şi solidaritate cu artiştii din Ucraina şi oferă posibilitatea de cazare şi creaţie în casele pe care le deţine. Astfel aceştia îşi pot continua profesia sau pot beneficia de un interval liniştit în care să îşi organizeze viaţa.
Cel mai apropiat spaţiu de Vama Siret este Casa George Enescu din Mihăileni, judeţul Botoşani. Aici putem acomoda un artist şi familia sa adică maxim patru persoane. Proaspăt restaurată, dar nelocuită, în casă există două paturi, baie, bucătărie şi un pian Bösendorfer. Vom face tot posibilul ca prin apeluri de strângere de fonduri şi colaborări extinse să acoperim cheltuielile de întreţinere şi încălzire.
Iniţiativa de salvare a Casei George Enescu din Mihăileni a presupus şi dezvoltarea unui program de educație muzicală — „Academia de Muzică şi Educaţie pentru Copii” — cu rol de activarea culturală a casei lui George Enescu şi transformarea ei într-un pol cultural şi educaţional comunitar.
Suplimentar, în centrul ţării, la Vila Golescu din Câmpulung Muscel, judeţul Argeş, putem oferi spaţiu de cazare şi creaţie pentru doi artişti cu familiile lor sau patru artişti singuri. În acest moment aici sunt găzduite Bursele de Creaţie Cărtureşti dar spaţiul este ofertant şi putem acomoda mai multe persoane.
Ca atare,
Invităm artişti din domeniul muzical şi literar precum şi profesori de muzică din Ucraina care au nevoie de spaţiu de odihnă, creaţie sau protecţie să intre în program de sprijin oferit de Fundaţia Pro Patrimonio. Casele puse la dispozitie sunt monumente istorice: Casa George Enescu din Mihăileni – judeţul Botoşani (20 km de Vama Siret) şi Vila Golescu din Câmpulung Muscel – judeţul Argeş. În afară de cazare vom asigura masă şi sprijin în funcție de necesar. Cererile le vom analiza şi onora în ordinea primirii lor.
Adresă de contact propatrimonio.romania@gmail.com, detalii www.propatrimonio.org
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EN
Pro Patrimonio Foundation joins the support and solidarity inititives with artists in Ukraine and offers the possibility of accommodation and creation in the houses it owns. In this way they can continue their profession or benefit from a quiet interval in which to organize their lives.
The closest place to Siret Customs is the George Enescu House in Mihăileni, Botoșani county. Here we can accommodate an artist and his family, a maximum of four people. Freshly restored but uninhabited, the house has two beds, a bathroom, a kitchen and a Bösendorfer piano. We will do our best through fundraising appeals and extended collaborations to cover maintenance and heating costs.
The initiative to save the George Enescu House in Mihăileni also involved the development of a music education program — “Academy of Music and Education for Children” — with the role of cultural activation of George Enescu’s house and its transformation into a community cultural and educational pole.
Additionally, at the Golescu Villa in Câmpulung Muscel, Argeș county, the heart of our country, we can offer accommodation and creative space for two artists with their families or four single artists. At the moment the Cărturești Creative Fellowships are hosted here but the space is very generous and we can accommodate more people.
As such,
We invite musical and literary artists as well as music teachers from Ukraine who need space for rest, creation or protection to join the support program offered by Pro Patrimonio Foundation. The houses made available are historical monuments: George Enescu House in Mihăileni – Botoșani county (20 km from Vama Siret) and Golescu Villa in Câmpulung Muscel – Argeș county. In addition to accommodation we will provide meals and support as needed. Requests will be considered and honoured in the order in which they are received.
Contact propatrimonio.romania@gmail.com, details www.propatrimonio.org
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UA
Фонд Pro Patrimonio приєднується до ініціатив підтримки та солідарності з митцями в Україні та пропонує можливість проживання та творчості у своїх будинках. Таким чином вони можуть продовжити свою професію або скористатися спокійним інтервалом для організації свого життя.
Найближчим місцем до митниці Сірет є будинок Джорджа Енеску в Міхайлені, повіт Ботошань. Тут ми можемо розмістити художника та його родину, максимум чотири людини. Щойно відреставрований, але безлюдний будинок має два ліжка, ванну кімнату, кухню та піаніно Bösendorfer. Ми зробимо все можливе через заклики до збору коштів та розширену співпрацю для покриття витрат на технічне обслуговування та опалення.
Ініціатива порятунку будинку Георгія Енеску в Міхайлені також передбачала розробку музичної освітньої програми – «Академія музики та освіти для дітей» – з роллю культурної активізації будинку Джорджа Енеску та його перетворення на культурну та культурну громаду. освітній полюс.
Крім того, на віллі Golescu в Кампулунг Мушель, округ Арджеш, у серці нашої країни, ми можемо запропонувати проживання та творчий простір для двох художників із їхніми сім’ями або чотирьох самотніх художників. Наразі тут проводяться Творчі стипендії Cărturești, але простір дуже щедрий, і ми можемо вмістити більше людей.
Як такий,
Запрошуємо музичних і літературних митців, а також вчителів музики з України, яким необхідний простір для відпочинку, творчості чи захисту, приєднатися до програми підтримки, яку пропонує Фонд Pro Patrimonio. Надані будинки є історичними пам’ятками: будинок Георгія Енеску в повіті Міхайлені – Ботошані (20 км від Вама Сірет) і вілла Голеску в Кампулунг Мушель – повіт Арджеш. Окрім проживання, ми забезпечимо харчування та підтримку за потреби. Запити будуть розглянуті та задоволені в порядку їх надходження.
Звертайтеся до propatrimonio.romania@gmail.com, деталі www.propatrimonio.org
Inspired by a discovery that gave us no peace during the pandemic, we are launching a new cultural and creative project that will bring together translators and linguists, chefs and culinary experts, students and craftsmen, in a unique concept dedicated to the Golescu Villa.
In the Golescu family’s huge library, we discovered two recipe notebooks from around 1900 written by Maria Cantili Golescu, Vasile Golescu’s wife. An older notebook begun in Paris in January 1900 and completed in Bacău a year later. The second notebook was started 30 years later, in Câmpulung and finished there in 1935. The recipes are written in a time-specific script in French, Romanian, English and German. The notebooks offer a unique insight into the bourgeois and cosmopolitan lifestyle of the period, draw an imaginary map of the cultural influences from the region and from Europe, point out elements of the kitchen setting and utensils of the period, provide a picture of the foods and spices used at the time and present new curiosities about Maria Cantili Golescu, her family, the culinary objects of the period and the cultural landscape in which she lived.
We want to document, structure and creatively enhance the archive of these recipe notebooks of Maria Cantili Golescu, as part of the intangible heritage belonging to the house and the city of Câmpulung Muscel. All the culinary resources thus discovered will be compiled in an online digital document, and some of them will be rewritten and creatively narrated with the help of 10 culinary experts in a recipe book, published both in print and online, accompanied by photo-video materials presenting and promoting each recipe.
The same culinary resources and items from Maria Cantili’s life will also form the basis of a new Honest Goods collection dedicated to these discoveries. Children and adults alike will experience recipes and their associated stories during the project through games, competitions, challenges and hands-on projects.
The project brings together specialists from various fields, enriching the experience in discovering the intangible culinary heritage of Villa Golescu with perspectives such as: the architecture and history of the place and of the Golescu family; the design of culinary objects from the past; the surrounding cultural landscape; local craftsmen and materials; contemporary design; the different methods and dynamics of contemporary and past cuisine; games and practical exercises from the educational sphere; the experience of the competition and the outdoor workshop.
“The Culinary Diary of Maria Cantili Golescu-recipes, tastes, objects and experiments” is a cultural project of Pro Patrimonio Foundation co-financed by AFCN.
Media partners: Scena 9, Rock FM, Muscel TV
Friend of the project: “Forgotten herbs” platform
The research project has already started with the creation of a digital archive with all the recipes discovered, in raw format, easily accessible to all those interested, transcribed and translated.
The recipes thus discovered, in their original form, will be archived online in the form of a scanned digital notebook that can be freely accessed by anyone interested on the Pro Patrimonio website.
The recipes will then undergo a selection process with the help of guest culinary experts. Each of them will choose two recipes to explore and adapt and then present them as creatively as possible to their online audience. The selection of recipes will take into account both the preferences of the individual experts and the final content of the Recipe Notebook, which aims to document and bring to the public’s attention a collection of recipes that is as diverse and rich as possible in terms of both taste and the story that accompanies each tasteful memory. Participants will “translate” and transform the language of the notebook notes into recipes with marked ingredients and clear steps to follow for today’s user. The materials will ultimately form Maria Cantili Golescu’s Recipe Notebook, accessible in both print and digital formats.
In parallel with the adult specialists, 15 children will take part in the workshop held in summer at Golescu Villa and will produce their own rewritten Cantili Golescu recipe notebooks. The resulting children’s notebooks will be available in both physical format during the community celebration day and online on the foundation’s website. The children will also create an informal-playful map of the Golescu Villa with the dining places in the house and the old culinary objects to which they will link the documented recipes and their use.
The recipes selected for Maria Cantili Golescu’s Recipe Notebook will be related to the history of Maria Cantili and her relatives from the Golescu family and also documented from the point of view of their origin, their mixed influences (local or European), but also of the way they are served through an original proposal of kitchen objects inspired by them and designed for serving the dishes. The objects will be made in the spirit of the existing Honest Goods collection, using local materials and craftsmen, with projects prepared by two designers. The resulting objects will be featured on the dedicated Honest Goods objects page, each of which will contain the recipe of influence in the presentation.
Depending on the health-related context, the festive day in the community, planned for the autumn period, will host a culinary pickle-making workshop and a gastronomic contest with prizes dedicated to the people in the community — adults or children — who will propose to the participants to try some of Maria Cantili Golescu’s recipes.
The history of the Golescu family is little known from the perspective of female characters, and Maria Cantili Golescu can be a starting point for exploring new characters, using objects, written memoirs, stories or other elements that are part of the discrete family history and the places where they lived. Maria Cantili Golescu’s personality is currently unknown, and the resources of the Golescu Villa offer the opportunity to explore it.
On the other hand, contemporary gastronomy today pays particular attention to reinterpreting recipes from the past and integrating them into menus. Plants used in the past and forgotten along the way are being rediscovered, and influences received over the years from neighbouring countries are being highlighted in the context of more complex cultural exchanges. In this context, the culinary research at Vila Golescu feeds an increased public appetite for such topics and encourages the creation of a more detailed future map of foreign influences received, integrated and reinterpreted in the community.
At the same time, Honest Goods is a collection of objects inspired by Villa Golescu and its surroundings, made with local resources, through the collaboration of local craftsmen and designers. The Honest Goods collection initiated in 2016 is a calling card and an invitation to the place from which it originates and contributes punctually to the maintenance and activation of the house. The special openness to the public shown since its launch until now through participation in national and international fairs and exhibitions and the actual demand for products and novelties, creates the basis for building a new series of objects. In the same spirit, but this time directly inspired by Maria Cantili Golescu’s recipes and linked to the serving of selected menus, the household objects will better highlight both the collection of studied recipes and the crafts and working techniques of the area in relation to contemporary, multidisciplinary approaches and visions.
The Foundation’s continued involvement among children groups in Câmpulung was what made our relationship with the community tighter and earned us the trust of both children and adults. From 2012 to date the Golescu Villa and Park have hosted a particularly diverse series of workshops, events and meetings including: A series of three landscape workshops related to exploring the natural and cultural landscape around Villa Golescu, as well as doing practical work in the garden, from 2012-2017; heritage workshops and multi-annual creative exercises for children from 2014-2018; textile restoration workshops from 2015-2016; culinary landscape workshop in 2016; making and maintaining the Honest Goods collection and the local craftsmen’s map from 2016 to date; the international festival “3 Doors, 3 Countries” in 2018; the “Heritage Education” project with specific workshops related to discovering certain heritage specialists: urban planner, architect, landscape architect, artist and craftsman in 2019; bi-annual workshops dedicated to young people in the community for the last 6 years.
Heritage activities and workshops have thus become an almost indispensable component of any activity at Vila Golescu, an effective means of continuous development and diversification of the public, an opportunity to support the dialogue between children and craftsmen/specialists of all kinds, but also a sure, albeit always unique, way of enhancing the tangible and intangible heritage.
There are already a series of notebooks in the Golescu Villa collection that visitors can use to explore the local natural landscape through trails and local points of interest, the gastronomic landscape from the perspective of an experimental workshop with local elements and French influences, the intangible heritage through the collection of Honest Goods objects, using local craftsmen and materials.
Thus, the Recipe Notebook complementing these proposals, invites an to a sensory exploration of the tastes discovered at the Golescu Villa and an identification of the local and European influences that shaped Maria Cantili Golescu’s life. It also provides an insight into the context of the Golescu family at the time and invites to creating a link between taste, history and utility through the old objects in the house and newly created objects designed to support the culinary act. The alternative discovery map of the house offers the prospect of a playful tour through which the visitor associates places and objects in the villa with the culinary moments of Maria Cantili’s time.
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