23 YEARS IN THE SERVICE OF ROMANIAN HERITAGE AND COMMUNITIES
Circular Catalysts exhibition and workshop in London

Circular Catalysts exhibition and workshop in London

 

From 6-8 November the British Council’s Circular Catalysts programme travelled to London. The Romanian Cultural Institute in London hosted the exhibition, meetings, discussions, presentations and workshops during this phase of the project.

Vernisajul din 6 noiembrie a adunat o comunitate extinsă de oameni interesați, expaţi dar nu numai. Aceștia au fost întâmpinați de discursurile organizatorilor și a oamenilor direct implicați în proiect:  Andrew Glass (director British Council România), Aura Woodward (director ICR Londra), Marlene Herberth (Kraftmade). O ceremonie a ceaiului coordonată de Marlene Herberth – „ How to Get Through the Day ” și o sesiune mult așteptată de networking cu toți actorii acestui proiect – pentru prima oară împreună – au întregit acest eveniment.

Pro Patrimonio has been part of this project from the beginning (in March 2023), organising workshops, presentations and sections of the general exhibition.

The opening on 6 November brought together a large community of interested people, expats and others. They were welcomed by speeches from the organisers and those directly involved in the project. A tea ceremony and a long-awaited networking session with all the actors of this project – together for the first time – completed the event.

Afterwards, the exhibition framework facilitated free discussions between the professionals directly involved in the project – designers, craftsmen, makers, artists – organisers and guests. An open table for dialogue was organised, during which different scenarios for the continuation of the project were discussed.

The last evening was dedicated to a botanical print workshop designed and implemented by Andreea Machidon along with British designer Anoushka Cole. Andreea and Anoushka’s textile printing techniques took the audience on a fascinating visual and tactile journey.

 

Photo credits: ICR Londra

 

Other events within the project:

Circular Catalysts ajunge la Londra

Circular Catalysts la HEI Timişoara

 Ateliere de Explorări şi Imprimări Botanice

Circular Catalysts- reziliență și dezvoltare durabilă locală prin design și meșteșug

Rezidenţă Circular Catalysts la Vila Golescu

Jurnal de rezidenţă Circular Catalysts

Expoziţia Pro Patrimonio din cadrul Circular Catalysts. Romanian Design Week 2023

Ateliere de Explorări şi Imprimări Botanice

Ateliere de Explorări şi Imprimări Botanice

Tot în cadrul proiectului Circular Catalysts, pe 21 mai 2023 am organizat un program de “Ateliere de Explorări şi Imprimări Botanice” chiar în spaţiul alăturat expoziţiei Romanian Design Week de la Bucureşti, din Piaţa Amzei. Acestea au fost o continuare directă a experimentelor derulate în cadrul rezidenței de creație de la Vila Golescu, jud. Argeș.

40 de curioşi – copii mici, adolescenţi, sau tineri – au venit însufleţiţi de dorinţa de explorare și imprimare cu plante alături de designerii, făuritorii și prietenii proiectului de design și meșteșug, Honest Goods. Aceştia ţi-au antrenat mușchii cu tehnica de imprimare cu ciocanul pe suporturi textile și de hârtie şi au testat metoda block-printing cu plăcuțe de linoleum, culori textile și modele ingenios create chiar de participanți. Amuzamentul lor a fost contaminant. Toată lumea s-a bucurat să înveţe plante de sezon pictându-le.

 “Atelierele de Explorări şi Imprimări Botanice” şi expoziţia Pro Patrimonio sunt rezultate ale rezidenței Circular Catalysts la Câmpulung Muscel, la care artista britanică Anoushka Cole a fost prezentă. Expoziţia şi atelierele sunt integrate într-o expoziție documentară bazată pe cunoștințele și temele generate, care prezintă fotografii, texte și obiecte reprezentative pentru puterea designului interdisciplinar și a dialogului. Expoziția face parte din cadrul Romanian Design Week 2023 (12-28 mai) și va fi itinerată în Timișoara (Capitala Culturală Europeană și în Marea Britanie (în parteneriat cu Institutul Cultural Român din Londra).

 

Alte evenimente din cadrul proiectului:

Circular Catalysts- reziliență și dezvoltare durabilă locală prin design și meșteșug

Rezidenţă Circular Catalysts la Vila Golescu

Jurnal de rezidenţă Circular Catalysts

Expoziţia Pro Patrimonio din cadrul Circular Catalysts. Romanian Design Week 2023

Pro Patrimonio exhibition within Circular Catalysts. Romanian Design Week 2023

Pro Patrimonio exhibition within Circular Catalysts. Romanian Design Week 2023

Curatorial text for the Pro Patrimonio exhibition within the Circular Catalysts programme, initiated by the British Council Romania and supported by the Romanian Cultural Institute, Romanian Design Week, 12-28 May 2023

 

Honest Goods, version HG#3. Concept

Modeled after the first series of the Honest Goods design and craft collection in 2016, which was conceived as part of the Pro Patrimonio architecture brand, the current HG#3 collection of objects is rooted in the Circular Catalysts creative residency facilitated by the British Council Romania. It was hosted and inspired by the city of Câmpulung Muscel, Argeș county, its natural surroundings, but especially the exceptional architectural and landscape ensemble – Golescu Villa and Dendrological Park, 1910.

The HG#3 series from 2023 is the result of a structured design process, inspired by the local people and craftsmen, which was undertaken and realized with the help of the artist Anoushka Cole from the UK, the local guide and artist Elena Diță and two designers from Bucharest, Andreea Machidon and Ruxandra Sacaliș.

They explored the hills and gardens of the sub-mountainous area of the Iezer-Păpușa Mountains, harvesting and creatively transforming the fruits of the earth in its first period of rebirth. Shapes, colours and stories of place were subtly inserted as decorative patterns, working techniques and types of objects created. The support of the whole creative experiment was a family of textile elements made of natural materials dedicated to the ritual of dining and dressing. The newly created prototype objects continue the research and probing of the archives, memory and roles attributed by society during Maria Cantili Golescu’s life (1881-1962), the lady of the architectural-landscape ensemble in Câmpulung Muscel.

 

HG#3. Design process

Here is a huge cotton tablecloth, decorated with plants and textiles printed by hammering, with linocut designs and tassels made of wool boiled in natural pigments, worked on collaboratively by adults (craftsmen, designers, other professions) and especially 25 children from the community of Câmpulung, in a workshop dedicated to cultural heritage education.

Next up is a contemporary fashionable shawl, modelled by the hands of a local craftswoman and inspired by the interests, archive and lifestyle led by Maria Cantili Golescu at Villa Golescu at the turn of the last century.

At the end, you can enjoy a collection of natural materials (wool) associated with delicate textiles (silk, linen, hemp, cotton), the support of all the experiments in the creative residency: a collection of small tablecloths and linen towels, an extension of the series of kitchen objects inspired by the way Maria Cantili Golescu lived in her domestic space.

The creative process began with an immersion in the specifics of the place. The team walked the hills of Lerești and the floors of the dendrological park pertaining to the Golescu Villa, collecting the seasonal plants and flowers that nature could offer in spring in a high area. It took a walk through the town of Câmpulung and opened the doors of museums, places of worship and historic houses. It gathered stories from the locals and visually memorized working techniques, materials and valuable elements specific to the area from the lady weaver, Marieia Plopeanu, and from one of the last wool artisans in the country, Emilian Catrinescu.

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All of the above were watched, documented and recorded by Mirela Duculescu, design historian, together with her friends and long-time colleagues, designers Andreea Machidon and Ruxandra Sacaliș.

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Programme

Bucharest: 12-28 May 2023 | Piața Amzei 13 – Romanian Design Week Creative Corner | Daily 10.00-20.00

Activities and workshops

12/05    Launch of RDW Talks Podcast with Annemarie O’Sullivan (Studio AMOS) and Cristiana Tăutu (Head of Arts, British Council Romania)

18/05    10.00-18.00 | Quiet Day – Accessible Guided Tours (Superheroes Among Us)

               18.00-21.00 | Inclusion through ceramics workshop (AMAIS and Studio mud.)

19/05     Launch of RDW Talks Podcast with Anoushka Cole

21/05     Intergenerational workshops on textile printing with plants by Pro Patrimonio

22/05     Launch of RDW Talks Podcast with Lola Lely

26/05     Author Presentation – Francesca Sarti (Arabeschi di Latte)

Details about the entire Circular Catalysts programme facilitated by the British Council Romania here


Other events in the project:

Rezidenţă Circular Catalysts la Vila Golescu

Pro Patrimonio exhibition within Circular Catalysts. Romanian Design Week 2023

Circular Catalysts – Residency Journal

Circular Catalysts – Residency Journal

Circular Catalysts – Residency Journal

Craftsmen’s Day

The adventure of materials and colours from nature starts with British designer Anoushka Cole. One can reach Câmpulung through the filter of wonderful local craftsmen.

For this project we chose to visit one of the most appreciated weaving craftswomen in the country, Mrs Mariea Plopeanu. We were greeted not only with a museum of items woven by Mrs Plopeanu and her mother, but also with carefully researched, traded, rescued and selected items from all over the Muscel basin, up to 200 years old. Local patterns and materials, gold and silver threads and various stories accompany each woven piece, along with a sincere love for this craft and, ultimately, lifestyle.

 

We were welcomed especially warmly and with surprising stories by one of the last wool artisans in the country. At Emilian Catrinescu, wool is washed, carded and spun into yarns dedicated to industry or various individual orders. Highly sought-after services, he can’t keep up with demand.

Câmpulung Festive Day

How could we better capture the local specificity of a city like Câmpulungul if not by a stroll around the city?

From the newly restored Negru Voda Monastery to the Town Hall we enjoyed an impressive architectural landscape and told the past, present and future scenarios for this town. We were greeted by abundant information at the Museum of Ethnography and sat the rest of the day around the Golescu Villa preparing for the experiments and workshops of the days to come.

Joining us for our debates, preparations and explorations was Mr. Andrew Glass from the British Council, whom we told all about our plans for this intense week.

Fruits of nature harvest day

We set out to be inspired by the local tangible and intangible cultural heritage, while using the surrounding nature as the main element in obtaining natural pigments, making blockprinting patterns and printing flower leaves and petals directly onto materials.

That’s why we dedicated most of the day to a foraging expedition in the hills of Lerești with our guide and local specialist Selena (Corina-Elena Diță). A connoisseur of edible plants, mushrooms and the stories that accompany the hills at the foot of the Păpușa Iezer mountains, Selena helped us to fill our “forage bags” with a great many seasonal plants, such as: crocus, violas, scarlet elf cup, strobilurus mushroom, wild strawberries, Easter flower, busculite, moss, dog’s tooth violet, hairy wood-rush, coltfoot, star of Bethlehem, cherry bark, dried ferns, cones or walnuts.

The rest of the day was eminently busy around the pots, since we chose to boil wool, flax, silk and cotton in a solution of nettle, spruce cone, fern, red onion, maple and cherry bark.

Magic day in the kitchen

We aimed to have a whole day dedicated to various plant and plant-inspired painting techniques.

Boiling natural materials in various herbal solutions – this was already started the day before and completed on ready-made textiles. Linen tableware was given the colour of spruce cone and nettle, and the silk shawl was taken to the light earthy colour of dried fern.

The hammer technique –it marked the final linen materials, in musical rhythms and with some force, with traces of: rose hips, greater celandine, dwarf periwinkle and forsythia picked directly from the dendrological park of the Golescu Villa. One of the experiments I even kept with the pressed, unpicked flowers and leaves as part of the creative process.

The roll-wrapping technique – used for the linen and silk all with plants from the home garden left to steep and soak for a long time: greater celandine, dwarf periwinkle, blackberry flowers and forsythia.

Block printing – inspired by the colours and shapes of nature we accessed the linocut technique to create repeating patterns on linen tablecloths and kitchen towels. Leaves, mushrooms and geese(!) remained printed on the textiles as traces of the places we explored.

 

Community Day

Around 30 children and adults joined the Pro Patrimonio team on Saturday to close the project with a final community experiment.

With the plants and inspiration provided by the Golescu Villa garden, the children brought to life a giant 5m long tablecloth. They hammered, sewed, made wool cottons, attached plant materials and then decorated the whole thing at the end with their own stamp made in linoleum.

Music, snacks and merriment accompanied the whole; we ended the adventure with some outdoor soup and a wood fire animation.

 

 


The residency in Câmpulung Muscel is part of the Circular Catalysts project carried out by the British Council Romania, in partnership with the Romanian Cultural Institute. This is a programme designed to generate new collaborations between designers, artists and craftspeople from Romania and the UK and to facilitate fertile conversations around sustainable production practices and processes.

Other events in the project:

Rezidenţă Circular Catalysts la Vila Golescu

Pro Patrimonio exhibition within Circular Catalysts. Romanian Design Week 2023

Circular Catalysts – Residency Journal

Recipes / Maria Cantili Golescu. The expanded notebook.

Recipes / Maria Cantili Golescu. The expanded notebook.

Starting from the original manuscript turned digital „Recettes de Cuisine”, after it was transcribed, translated, explained and tested, we arrived at the form of a contemporary adapted editorial product called “Recipes”, Maria Cantili Golescu.

Maria Cantili Golescu’s culinary notebook contains 144 pages of “kitchen” recipes and household tips, to which she has added a final 8-page table of contents. On the first page, Maria began her notebook with the following words:

Recettes de Cuisine etc.

Paris, 21 January 1900

19 Avenue Bosquet

Marie, E. Cantilli

On the page before the title page, she wrote down her measuring units in the Anglo-Saxon system, translating them into metric approximations:

16 drame = 1 uncie
16 uncii = 1 livră
1 quart = 1 litru
1 pint = 1/2 litri
1 gill = 1/8 litri
1 uncie = 30 g

It is important to go through this material understanding that she did not write her notebook with the intention of ever publishing it – it was not intended to be an original cookbook, but a support in her own kitchen. As was the custom (carried on from previous generations and carried forward), each housewife gathered her more elaborate recipes for main courses, sauces, desserts, preserves, etc. from various sources: received from other housewives/cooks or copied from magazines and cookbooks, less accessible in those days.

By 1900, a limited number of gastronomic books had been published in Wallachia and Moldavia and not all households had access to them. In addition, as was the fashion across the continent, French cuisine had become the guiding light for anyone with gourmet pretensions. It was therefore desirable to have on hand a collection of French recipes suitable for any occasion.

When she started her diary, Maria had just turned 19. She had just received as gift from the Central Stationery Shop at 113 Rue St. Dominique (now a clothing store) a notebook with cloth-covered card covers and lined dictation-style sheets. The cover had been personalized with her initials – “MC” (we reproduced the monogram on the cover of our notebook). Over the next year, she meticulously jotted down her various recipes in French, English, German and (one) Romanian, filling every page to the last.

 

These dishes include a rich range of dishes, soups, drinks, desserts, doughs, ice creams, suitable to be served at different times of the day both at everyday meals and at the most festive for guests. Housekeeping tips (how to clean flannel, silverware, leather, lace, etc., how to prepare holiday decorations, and more) come in turn, interspersed among the food recipes. The approximate order is established at the end, when she reviews the course of the whole notebook, notes the page numbers and composes a table of contents referring to the pages where they can be found.

The recipes are often written with few explanations, as was the practice. It was assumed that the person reading them had sufficient knowledge in the art of cooking to intuit the steps required. Sometimes, for example, he omits to say “put it in the oven” – whoever cooked from this notebook would have understood by itself. The shortest of the recipes is dispatched in a few words: Pie dough. 250 g flour, 150 g butter, 30 g sugar, 1 whole egg, 1 yolk. No further explanation. Others, are described in detail: the pastry dough exceeds two pages.

We added explanations notes where I considered them necessary. These may regard ingredients that are less commonly used today, or historic ones that have been lost from consumption or trade. Also, where the method of preparation seems incomprehensible to the contemporary reader, we have provided explanations detailing the context: until the early part of the 20th century, sugar could come in the form of solid lumps/cups from which you would crush and mash as much as you needed; another example relates to the cooling methods of the time (in the cellar, with ice, with salt etc). Some recipes indicate the use of hearth-type ovens, others a primitive type of cooking machine, such as those with a griddle – but all the dishes described can be adapted with a little imagination to today’s technology.

22 dishes from the 1900s recreated by contemporary chefs and culinary authors

At the end of the notebook we have included a limited series of recipes photographed and explained at length, drawing on the creativity of several chefs and culinary authors who have leafed through Maria Cantili’s notebook from 1900-1901, selected a number of recipes from it and recreated them in the conditions of a contemporary kitchen. They have brought them up to date, following their personal inspiration and style. Below, you can follow the 22 dishes, starting with the original recipe at the top of each page, accompanied by detailed explanations of the ingredients and preparation process.

We would also like to thank all those involved in the production of this material, chefs and culinary authors: Andrei Chelaru, Oana Coantă, Cosmin Dragomir, Irina Georgescu, Cristina Mehedințeanu, Mara Elena Oană, Mădălina Roman, Alex Petricean, Horia Simon, Adriana Sohodoleanu and Adela Trofin; to the coordinator and editor Mona Petre who contributed two recipes, to the translators Nona Henți and Aura Pandele; Mirela Duculescu for editorial advice and the staff of the Golești Museum in Ștefănești (AG), represented by Cristina Boțoghină, for providing some unknown details about the life of Maria Cantili Golescu.

 

 

We invite you to consult the expanded notebook in the library of useful resources of the foundation here

 

RECIPES, OBJECTS AND EXPERIMENTS.  A project inspired by Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Diary from 1900.

RECIPES, OBJECTS AND EXPERIMENTS. A project inspired by Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Diary from 1900.

We have gathered three seasons of research, trials and experiments in the fields of heritage education, object design and last but not least of culinary experience.

Maria Cantili Golescu’s culinary diary opens up a whole world of inspiration of bourgeois families in the 1900s, with spicy details of a lifestyle that naturally and playfully blends local and European influences, and invites biographical research into a female character from the Golescu family who has not had the chance to be much in the spotlight of historical stories.

Extras caiet Maria Cantili Golescu

So we want to share with the inhabitants of Câmpulung, with friends, collaborators and curious people from all over the world the sophisticated culinary discoveries in this notebook written in Romanian, English, French and German, to learn together how to clean hat feathers, how to waterproof the soles of shoes or how to make rice glue…like in 1900. We want to stroll through the ladies’ wardrobe of that period, follow the Golescu family’s genealogical thread, explore Mrs Cantili’s kitchen objects, taste the culinary experiments of the time and immerse ourselves musically and visually in the aristocratic atmosphere of 100 or so years ago.

How so?

Through an informal country party on October 1st in the courtyard of the Golescu Villa in Câmpulung Muscel!

The programme is packed with content but approachable:

11:00

– Those who have not yet tried our Berechet architectural tour of the city are invited from 11am to pick up their treasure hunt maps and quietly enjoy the beautiful city of Câmpulung

– This year we are also inaugurating a prototype of a culinary map of the city that we invite you to explore and even complete with suggestions and preferences.

14:00

– Opening event in the courtyard of the Golescu Villa: a short history of the project and a short guide to explore the site

14:00-18:00

–           Fill the afternoon with music and vintage visual sequences, local snacks, exhibitions and launches of all kinds.

  • Launch of the Maria Cantili Golescu Recipe Booklet with 22 historical recipes rewritten by contemporary culinary experts.
  • Launch of the new Honest Goods #2 collection, inspired by Maria Cantili Golescu’s recipes, objects and lifestyle
  • Exhibition of art installations dedicated to Maria Cantili Golescu and made by the children from Câmpulung during the summer heritage workshops: culinary tour of the garden, clothing exhibition, family tree of the Golescu family, old culinary objects and practical tips from 1900
  • Exhibition of portraits of Maria Cantili Golescu
  • Visitors can try out three do-it-yourself workshops in calligraphy, linocutting and family tree building

18:00-19:00 – Cantili recipe competition with prizes

We invite cooks and amateurs alike to try preparing a recipe from the book and enter it in a competition judged by the participants by tasting.

We invite you to choose from the extensive cookbook: https://www.propatrimonio.org/maria-cantili-golescu-retete-de-bucatarie/

We suggest sweet or savoury dishes that do not require heating and can be sliced or shared for the whole audience to taste.

19:00-20:00 – Movie night

Party preparations and suggestions:

  • Look for an old and interesting recipe at home that you can leave as a memento in your calligraphy table exercise book.
  • Spice up your casual garden attire with a vintage item that complements the 1900s atmosphere suggested by Maria Cantili Golescu. Basic attire should also include warm evening clothes. We suggest: șuba (shepherd’s wool cloak), pearls and boots, to check all criteria.
  • Those who would like to participate, don’t forget the competition preparation!

 

“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 

The extended booklet here

 

 


Read more

Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Diary – Recipes, Tastes, Objects and Experiments. Press Release.

Standerul de haine cu garderoba Mariei Cantili Golescu şi alte poveşti

„Recettes de Cuisine”, caietul digitalizat 

Girdle, ustensilă istorică de gătit 

Zece Experimente Contemporane din Jurnalul Culinar Maria Cantili Golescu 

Ansamblul Golescu. Observator de Peisaj Cultural în Câmpulung Muscel 

Ansamblul Golescu. Trasee botanice în Parcul Golescu 

Honest Goods. Colecţia Golescu

Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Diary – Recipes, Tastes, Objects and Experiments. Press Release.

Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Diary – Recipes, Tastes, Objects and Experiments. Press Release.

Bucharest, June 16, 2022

Pro Patrimonio Foundation is conducting a cultural, creative, interdisciplinary project in Câmpulung Muscel throughout 2022, bringing together translators and linguists, chefs and gastronomic experts, students and craftsmen, in a unique concept dedicated to the tangible and intangible heritage of the Golescu Villa. The project follows four levels: documentation, gastronomy, heritage education and craftsmanship.

The project started from the discoveries made during the pandemic in the Golescu family’s vast library, namely two recipe notebooks from around 1900 written by Maria Cantili Golescu, Vasile Golescu’s wife. At the beginning of this year, the project team started to document and creatively exploit these materials as part of the intangible heritage belonging to the house and the town of Câmpulung Muscel.

 “All the hidden details of this recipe book open up a surprising universe of that period’s bourgeois class and we hope to capture it as best we can in the materials we will reveal and develop throughout the project.” – architect Andreea Machidon, coordinator of the Education for Heritage project, Pro Patrimonio Foundation

Therefore, each page of one of the two notebooks was carefully photocopied and digitised, followed by the transcription of the original recipes, their translation into Romanian and text editing so that the language becomes easy to understand for the contemporary reader. A translation of a cookbook from 1900, written in four languages and carried by the author from Paris to Bacău and Câmpulung at the beginning of the last century, thus becomes more than a simple translation. It becomes an immersion in the culinary context of an era on the borderline between old and modern and an active collaboration between translators, linguists and historians.

The gathered details reveal an unexpectedly cosmopolitan way of cooking and dining, deeply influenced by Western European culinary trends, especially French, but also English, Iberian, German and Italian. Maria Cantili Golescu belonged to a privileged social class at the time, highly educated, multilingual, widely travelled and who had had the opportunity to live in several European cities. The multiculturalism of the Golescu family, and perhaps of an entire local elite, comes through 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.

The first developed resource material is the scanned digitised notebook, “Recettes de Cuisine”, which can be found in the Foundation’s useful resource library, and will be presented along with the fully translated and reinterpreted notebook.

 

Maria Cantili Golescu notebook extract

Creative Workshop for Children in Câmpulung

At the beginning of the summer holidays, between 17-20 June, 15 children from the communities of Câmpulung Muscel will take part in three days of activities in the Golescu Villa’s courtyard. The agenda prepared will include on the first day “Plant Day in the edible garden”, then “Notebook, drawing and calligraphy day” and at the end they will go through “Art installation day” with stops in the universe of: culinary objects from the villa, portraits of Maria Cantili, “bizarre” words from manuscripts, family tree and advice from Maria Cantili Golescu.

Thus, children will build, research, interpret, create and play, being mentored by a series of expert guests who will complete the educational journey with valuable information and unique working techniques. The final evening will offer an open-air film in the Golescu Villa garden in the tradition of the Pro Patrimonio Foundation’s Heritage Education Caravan.

The children’s works and explorations will be the subject not only of an online exhibition, but especially of a physical exhibition during the “Festive Community Day” planned for the autumn, when the results of the whole project ” Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Diary – recipes, tastes, objects and experiments” — the culinary journal, the dedicated objects and the presentation film — will be launched and opened to the interested public.

10 Professional and Amateur Chefs

Also part of the project, the recipes in the notebook were subjected to a selection process with the help of guest culinary experts. Each of them chose 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 each individual expert’s preferences and the final content of the Recipe Book, 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 physical and digital formats.

Here are those we invited to bring these old recipes back to life: 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 (Clubul Gastronomic Transilvan), the team of Adriana Sohodoleanu and Cosmin Dragomir (Gastroart) and Adela Trofin (Slow Food Edinburgh).

Over the summer these story fragments and images will gradually be presented on the Pro Patrimonio Foundation website.

 

“Meringues with violets”, cake prepared by Mădălina Roman (Szikra, Sf. Gheorghe) following the original recipe from Maria Cantili Golescu’s notebook

Honest Goods Collection Enriched

The same culinary resources and elements of Maria Cantili Golescu’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 related stories throughout the project through games, competitions, challenges and hands-on projects.

The objects will be made in the spirit of the existing Honest Goods collection, using local materials and craftsmen, with designs prepared by two designers. The resulting objects will be featured on the dedicated Honest Goods object page, each of which will contain in its presentation the recipe that influenced its making.

Honest Goods collection, clay objects

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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

Standerul de haine cu garderoba Mariei Cantili Golescu şi alte poveşti

„Recettes de Cuisine”, caietul digitalizat 

Girdle, ustensilă istorică de gătit 

Zece Experimente Contemporane din Jurnalul Culinar Maria Cantili Golescu 

Ansamblul Golescu. Observator de Peisaj Cultural în Câmpulung Muscel 

Ansamblul Golescu. Trasee botanice în Parcul Golescu 

Honest Goods. Colecţia Golescu

The Clothes Stand with Maria Cantili Golescu’s Wardrobe and Other Stories

The Clothes Stand with Maria Cantili Golescu’s Wardrobe and Other Stories

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.

“Plant Day in the Edible Garden”

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.

 

“Notebook, Drawing and Calligraphy Day”

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.

“Art Installation Day”

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 Tree of Plates, with stories related to the culinary objects of Villa Golescu
  • The clothes rack with Maria Cantili’s wardrobe from that period
  • The story box with useful tips from Maria Cantili’s original notebook “Recettes de Cuisine”.
  • The Golescu family tree.

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

 

Girdle, historic cooking instrument

Girdle, historic cooking instrument

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:

  1. https://www.europeancuisines.com/
  2. Detail from Maria Cantili Golescu’s cookbook, photo by: Mona Petre

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

 

 

Ten Contemporary Experiments from Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Recipe Book

Ten Contemporary Experiments from Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Recipe Book

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.

A multicultural notebook

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

Contemporary cooked recipes

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

 


Andrei Chelaru

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

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.”

Adriana Sohodoleanu & Cosmin Dragomir

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.


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.”


Adela Trofin

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.

www.adelicii.ro

 


Cristina Mehedinţeanu

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/


Oana Coantă

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

 

Tablou activitati Ten Contemporary Experiments from Maria Cantili Golescu’s Culinary Recipe Book

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