B2 · Upper Intermediate
15 min
food cultureeconomicshistoryeuropean politics
The Romanian Table: History, Crisis, and the Soul of a Country
La Mesa Rumana: Historia, Crisis y el Alma de un País
This week, Romania's parliament ousted Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan and the Romanian leu collapsed to a historic low against the euro. Fletcher and Octavio use that political moment to explore something almost nobody knows: Romanian cuisine, its Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian roots, and what happens to a country's food when its economy falls apart.
Esta semana, el parlamento rumano derrocó al primer ministro Ilie Bolojan y el leu rumano cayó a su nivel más bajo en la historia frente al euro. Fletcher y Octavio usan ese momento político para explorar algo que casi nadie conoce: la extraordinaria cocina rumana, sus raíces otomanas y austrohúngaras, y lo que le pasa a la comida de un país cuando su economía se derrumba.
8 essential B2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| devaluar | to devalue | Cuando una moneda se devalúa, los productos importados se encarecen de inmediato. |
| vasallo | vassal / subject state | Los principados rumanos eran estados vasallos del Imperio Otomano durante siglos. |
| fermentado | fermented | La ciorbă debe su sabor característico a un líquido fermentado llamado borș. |
| valor añadido | added value | El país vende la materia prima en bruto y pierde el valor añadido del procesamiento. |
| propósito | purpose / intention | Te lo cuento con el propósito de que puedas entender la historia completa. |
| escasez | scarcity / shortage | La escasez de alimentos durante el comunismo obligó a las familias a ser más creativas en la cocina. |
| artesanal | artisan / handcrafted | Los quesos artesanales rumanos tienen una complejidad de sabor que los productos industriales no pueden igualar. |
| incertidumbre | uncertainty | El subjuntivo en español expresa incertidumbre sobre si algo va a ocurrir o no. |
Romania brought down its government this week, 281 votes to 4, and the currency promptly fell off a cliff.
And my first thought, I'll be honest, was: what do people eat there?
Es una pregunta perfectamente razonable, Fletcher.
It's a perfectly reasonable question, Fletcher.
Cuando una moneda se devalúa así, una de las primeras cosas que cambia es la comida: lo que puedes comprar, lo que puedes importar, lo que puedes poner en la mesa.
When a currency devalues like that, one of the first things that changes is food: what you can buy, what you can import, what you can put on the table.
Right.
And here's the thing I kept running into while I was reading about this, the leu at a historic low, the government collapsed, and I realized I genuinely know almost nothing about Romanian food.
Which felt like a gap worth fixing.
Es que Rumania es uno de esos países que la gente ubica en el mapa pero no sabe imaginar.
Romania is one of those countries people can locate on a map but can't really picture.
Conocen a Drácula, conocen a Ceaușescu, tal vez conocen a Hagi si les gusta el fútbol.
They know Dracula, they know Ceaușescu, maybe they know Hagi if they follow football.
Pero la cocina rumana es casi invisible fuera de sus fronteras.
But Romanian cuisine is almost invisible outside its borders.
That invisibility is actually interesting on its own.
Why?
Because Romanian food has, from what I can tell, a genuinely extraordinary range of influences.
Es que está en una posición geográfica única.
It sits in a unique geographical position.
Al norte, los Cárpatos y la influencia austrohúngara, con sus estofados y sus coles rellenas.
To the north, the Carpathians and Austro-Hungarian influence, with its stews and stuffed cabbage.
Al sur, siglos de presencia otomana, con sus especias, sus pastelitos de carne, sus berenjenas.
To the south, centuries of Ottoman presence, with its spices, meat pastries, and eggplants.
Y al este, Moldavia, que tiene su propia identidad entre lo rumano y lo eslavo.
And to the east, Moldavia, which has its own identity between Romanian and Slavic.
The Ottoman layer is the one that surprised me most.
We don't usually think of Romania as part of the Ottoman world.
Pues lo fue, parcialmente y durante mucho tiempo.
It was, partially and for a long time.
Los principados de Valaquia y Moldavia eran estados vasallos del Imperio Otomano durante siglos.
The principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia were vassal states of the Ottoman Empire for centuries.
No fue una ocupación directa como en los Balcanes, pero la influencia fue profunda.
It wasn't a direct occupation like the Balkans, but the influence was deep.
En la cocina rumana hay una palabra que lo dice todo: mușchi, que viene del turco.
In Romanian cuisine there's a word that says it all: mușchi, which comes from Turkish.
So the food absorbed all of that.
And then what?
Communism arrives in the twentieth century and presumably changes everything.
Lo cambia casi todo, sí.
It changes almost everything, yes.
Ceaușescu tenía una obsesión particular con la alimentación del pueblo.
Ceaușescu had a particular obsession with feeding the people.
En los años ochenta, exportaba casi todos los productos agrícolas para pagar la deuda externa, y la gente en Rumania pasaba hambre.
In the eighties, he was exporting almost all agricultural products to pay the foreign debt, and people in Romania were going hungry.
Hambre real, no metafórica.
Real hunger, not metaphorical.
I spent some time in 1991, just after the Wall came down, in a few Eastern European countries for a piece I was writing.
Romania was the one that hit differently.
The emptiness in the shops wasn't just an economic thing.
It felt like an act of cruelty.
Y sin embargo, la cocina rumana sobrevivió en las casas.
And yet, Romanian cuisine survived in homes.
Es que las recetas de las abuelas no necesitan las tiendas del Estado.
Grandmothers' recipes don't need state shops.
Las familias guardaban sus propias tradiciones: los sarmale, que son coles rellenas de carne y arroz;
Families kept their own traditions: sarmale, which are cabbage rolls stuffed with meat and rice;
la mămăligă, que es una polenta de maíz que es casi el corazón del país;
mămăligă, a cornmeal polenta that is almost the heart of the country;
la ciorbă, que es una sopa agria fermentada que tiene siglos de historia.
ciorbă, a sour fermented soup with centuries of history.
The mămăligă is fascinating to me because it's essentially a New World ingredient, corn, that became the defining dish of a very Old World country.
How does that happen?
El maíz llega a los Balcanes en el siglo diecisiete, probablemente a través de los otomanos, que lo recibieron de los españoles.
Maize arrives in the Balkans in the seventeenth century, probably through the Ottomans, who received it from the Spanish.
Y en Rumania encuentra un terreno fértil, literalmente.
And in Romania it finds fertile ground, literally.
El suelo de Valaquia es perfecto para el maíz.
The soil of Wallachia is perfect for maize.
En cincuenta años reemplaza casi por completo al mijo como cereal básico de los pobres.
Within fifty years it almost completely replaces millet as the basic grain of the poor.
So the Spanish bring corn to the New World, the Ottomans carry it back east, and it ends up being the national starch of Romania.
That's a trade route I never would have drawn.
Así funciona la historia de la comida, Fletcher.
That's how food history works, Fletcher.
Ningún plato nacional es realmente local si lo miras bien.
No national dish is truly local if you look closely.
Los tomates de Italia vinieron de América.
Italy's tomatoes came from America.
El chile de Tailandia, igual.
Thailand's chili too.
Y la mămăligă de Rumania también.
And Romania's mămăligă as well.
Which brings us back to this week.
Because when a currency collapses, the first foods that disappear from ordinary tables aren't the local ones.
They're the imports.
The things that arrived late and can leave just as quickly.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Rumania importa bastante: productos procesados, café, ciertos tipos de carne.
Romania imports quite a lot: processed products, coffee, certain types of meat.
Cuando el leu pierde valor frente al euro, todo eso se encarece de inmediato.
When the leu loses value against the euro, all of that becomes immediately more expensive.
Y lo irónico es que Rumania tiene una agricultura muy potente.
And the irony is that Romania has very strong agriculture.
Tiene tierra excelente.
Excellent land.
Podría alimentarse sola con mucha más facilidad que otros países europeos.
It could feed itself far more easily than many other European countries.
That tension between what a country could produce and what it actually ends up importing is one I've seen play out in a lot of places.
Argentina had the same paradox.
One of the great agricultural nations on earth, and people going hungry.
Argentina es un ejemplo perfecto, sí.
Argentina is a perfect example, yes.
Y Rumania tiene algo similar: es uno de los mayores productores de girasoles y maíz en Europa, pero gran parte de esa producción se exporta sin procesar.
And Romania has something similar: it's one of the largest producers of sunflowers and maize in Europe, but much of that production is exported unprocessed.
El valor añadido se queda fuera.
The added value stays elsewhere.
El país vende el grano y compra el aceite.
The country sells the grain and buys back the oil.
The raw material trap.
It's everywhere.
But let's go back to the actual food, because I want to understand what a Romanian table looks like.
Not a crisis table.
A normal Sunday, say.
Un domingo normal en Rumania empieza con sarmale, casi siempre.
A normal Sunday in Romania almost always starts with sarmale.
Coles rellenas de carne de cerdo picada, arroz, cebolla, un poco de eneldo, cocinadas en caldo de tomate con trozos de tocino ahumado.
Cabbage rolls stuffed with minced pork, rice, onion, a little dill, cooked in tomato broth with pieces of smoked bacon.
Se hacen la víspera, se calientan el domingo, y la casa huele a eso desde la mañana.
Made the day before, heated up on Sunday, and the house smells of it from morning.
That sounds almost identical to what I had in Georgia, the country, not the state, back in 2003.
They call it dolma.
The stuffed cabbage leaf is everywhere across this whole swath of the old world.
Porque es un plato otomano en origen.
Because it's originally an Ottoman dish.
El dolma turco, el sarma balcánico, el sarmale rumano: son la misma idea viajando por el mismo imperio y adaptándose a cada cocina local.
The Turkish dolma, the Balkan sarma, the Romanian sarmale: it's the same idea traveling through the same empire and adapting to each local cuisine.
En Turquía se usa hoja de parra.
In Turkey, vine leaves are used.
En Rumania, col fermentada o fresca.
In Romania, fermented or fresh cabbage.
El relleno cambia, el concepto no.
The filling changes, the concept doesn't.
And the ciorbă you mentioned, the sour soup.
That's the one I've seen described as the thing Romanians actually miss most when they live abroad.
Es que la ciorbă no tiene equivalente fácil.
Ciorbă has no easy equivalent.
La acidez viene de borș, que es un líquido fermentado de salvado de trigo, o a veces de vinagre o zumo de limón.
The sourness comes from borș, which is a fermented bran liquid, or sometimes vinegar or lemon juice.
Hay decenas de variedades: de ternera, de pollo, de verduras, de tripa.
There are dozens of varieties: beef, chicken, vegetable, tripe.
La de tripa, la ciorbă de burtă, es la que los rumanos comen para curar la resaca.
The tripe one, ciorbă de burtă, is what Romanians eat to cure a hangover.
Tiene una lógica propia.
It has its own logic.
Every culture has that dish.
The one that supposedly puts you back together.
In Mexico it's menudo.
In Korea it's haejang-guk.
In Spain, Octavio, you'd probably argue it's cocido.
El cocido madrileño, sí, aunque yo diría que el cocido no es solo para la resaca.
Cocido madrileño, yes, though I'd say cocido isn't only for hangovers.
Es para cualquier momento en que la vida se vuelve complicada.
It's for any moment when life gets complicated.
Pero dejemos España por ahora.
But let's leave Spain for now.
Lo que me parece importante es que todos esos platos, la ciorbă, el menudo, el cocido, son platos de gente pobre que se convirtieron en platos nacionales.
What seems important is that all those dishes, ciorbă, menudo, cocido, are poor people's dishes that became national dishes.
Usan las partes del animal que nadie quería.
They use the parts of the animal nobody wanted.
Which is the story of almost every country's national cuisine, isn't it.
It's almost never the food of the wealthy that survives.
It's the food of the people who had to make something from nothing.
Totalmente de acuerdo.
Completely agree.
Y en Rumania esto es especialmente claro porque durante el comunismo, cuando no había casi nada, las familias perfeccionaron el arte de cocinar con lo mínimo.
And in Romania this is especially clear because during communism, when there was almost nothing, families perfected the art of cooking with the minimum.
La escasez no mató la cocina rumana.
Scarcity didn't kill Romanian cuisine.
En muchos sentidos, la hizo más profunda.
In many ways, it made it deeper.
There's a phrase I heard from a chef in Beirut once, after the worst of the civil war there.
He said that the years when there was nothing to cook were the years he learned everything.
I've never entirely worked out if that's wisdom or something more troubling.
Es las dos cosas.
It's both.
La necesidad te obliga a ser creativo.
Necessity forces creativity.
Pero glorificar la escasez sería una barbaridad.
But glorifying scarcity would be barbaric.
Lo que me interesa de Rumania ahora mismo es lo siguiente: tienen una cocina extraordinaria que el mundo no conoce, y una crisis política que puede empujar a mucha gente a volver a esa cocina de lo básico, de lo local, de lo que se puede producir en casa.
What interests me about Romania right now is this: they have an extraordinary cuisine the world doesn't know, and a political crisis that might push many people back toward that cuisine of the basics, the local, what can be produced at home.
Do you think there's a version of this where the crisis actually accelerates some kind of culinary rediscovery?
People stop buying the imported processed food because they can't afford it and go back to the mămăligă and the sarmale?
Puede pasar.
It can happen.
De hecho, hay un movimiento en Rumania, especialmente entre los jóvenes de las ciudades, de redescubrimiento de la cocina tradicional.
In fact, there's a movement in Romania, especially among young city dwellers, of rediscovering traditional cuisine.
Restaurantes en Bucarest que sirven ciorbă de calidad, productores artesanales de quesos y embutidos tradicionales.
Restaurants in Bucharest serving quality ciorbă, artisan producers of traditional cheeses and cured meats.
Pero eso convive con la realidad de que muchas familias simplemente tendrán menos para comer.
But that coexists with the reality that many families will simply have less to eat.
That distinction matters.
There's the foodie version of returning to roots, which is a lifestyle choice.
And then there's the economic version, which is not a choice at all.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y Rumania tiene las dos cosas al mismo tiempo ahora mismo, que es incómodo.
And Romania has both things at the same time right now, which is uncomfortable.
Hay restaurantes en Bucarest donde puedes pagar treinta euros por una cena de cocina rumana tradicional reinterpretada.
There are restaurants in Bucharest where you can pay thirty euros for a dinner of reinterpreted traditional Romanian cuisine.
Y hay familias en zonas rurales que ya vivían con muy poco y que ahora viven con menos.
And there are families in rural areas who were already living on very little and who now live on less.
The wine.
I haven't asked you about Romanian wine, which I should have, because apparently it's serious.
Es muy serio y muy desconocido.
Very serious and very unknown.
Rumania es el quinto productor de vino de Europa.
Romania is the fifth largest wine producer in Europe.
Tiene regiones vinícolas que llevan produciendo vino desde la época de los dacios, antes de la conquista romana.
It has wine regions that have been producing wine since the time of the Dacians, before the Roman conquest.
Las regiones de Dealu Mare y Cotnari producen vinos blancos con una complejidad que sorprende a cualquier sumiller que los prueba por primera vez.
The Dealu Mare and Cotnari regions produce white wines with a complexity that surprises any sommelier who tries them for the first time.
Fifth in Europe.
That's a fact I find genuinely embarrassing to not have known.
I've been to Romania, briefly, and I don't think I had a single glass of local wine.
Eso es un crimen, Fletcher.
That's a crime, Fletcher.
Y el problema es estructural: durante el comunismo, se priorizó la cantidad sobre la calidad, y la reputación del vino rumano quedó destruida en los mercados occidentales.
And the problem is structural: during communism, quantity was prioritized over quality, and the reputation of Romanian wine was destroyed in Western markets.
Llevan treinta años reconstruyéndola.
They've spent thirty years rebuilding it.
Es un proceso lento cuando empiezas desde cero en términos de imagen.
It's a slow process when you start from zero in terms of image.
That's the communism hangover that nobody talks about.
Not just the political and economic damage, but the reputational damage to things like wine, cheese, agriculture.
It takes a generation to undo.
Y ahora, con el leu cayendo, los vinos rumanos que se exportan se vuelven más baratos para los compradores europeos.
And now, with the leu falling, Romanian wines that are exported become cheaper for European buyers.
Es una de las pocas ventajas de una devaluación: de repente tu producto es competitivo en precio.
It's one of the few advantages of a devaluation: suddenly your product is price-competitive.
Veremos si los productores pueden aprovechar ese momento.
We'll see if producers can take advantage of that moment.
There's a dark irony there.
The political collapse that's hurting Romanian families might accidentally give Romanian wine a boost abroad.
I don't know how to feel about that.
Así es la economía.
That's the economy for you.
No tiene moral.
It has no morals.
Pero lo que sí me parece esperanzador es que la comida rumana tiene una base cultural muy sólida.
But what does seem hopeful to me is that Romanian cuisine has a very solid cultural foundation.
No es una cocina que dependa de ingredientes importados para ser lo que es.
It's not a cuisine that depends on imported ingredients to be what it is.
Sus platos más importantes, los sarmale, la mămăligă, la ciorbă, son de lo que produce su propia tierra.
Its most important dishes, sarmale, mămăligă, ciorbă, come from what its own land produces.
Eso es una fortaleza real en momentos de crisis.
That's a real strength in times of crisis.
You used the subjunctive a minute ago in a way that caught my attention.
You said "para que los productores puedan aprovechar", or something close to that.
I've been trying to get that right for two years and I still second-guess myself every time.
A ver.
Right.
La clave con "para que" es que siempre va con subjuntivo, sin excepción.
The key with "para que" is that it always takes the subjunctive, without exception.
Porque indica un propósito, una intención, algo que todavía no ha pasado.
Because it indicates a purpose, an intention, something that hasn't happened yet.
"Para que puedas entender" significa que quieres que esa persona entienda, pero aún no ha ocurrido.
"Para que puedas entender" means you want that person to understand, but it hasn't happened yet.
El subjuntivo marca esa incertidumbre, esa expectativa.
The subjunctive marks that uncertainty, that expectation.
So it's not about doubt exactly.
It's about the gap between wanting something and it actually existing.
The mood of intention rather than the mood of fact.
Eso es exactamente.
That's exactly it.
"Para que" expresa un propósito que depende de que otra persona actúe.
"Para que" expresses a purpose that depends on another person acting.
"Te lo explico para que lo entiendas" significa que mi explicación tiene ese objetivo, pero si tú entiendes o no, eso ya no depende de mí.
"Te lo explico para que lo entiendas" means my explanation has that goal, but whether you understand or not is no longer up to me.
El subjuntivo captura esa dependencia.
The subjunctive captures that dependence.
Es muy útil y los angloparlantes lo evitan como si fuera un animal peligroso.
It's very useful and English speakers avoid it like it's a dangerous animal.
In my defense, English quietly got rid of the subjunctive centuries ago and we've been making do without it ever since.
Though I'll admit the language has suffered for it, slightly.
"Ligeramente".
"Slightly." Yes, Fletcher.
Sí, Fletcher.
Very slightly.
Muy ligeramente.
Well, let listeners practice this week: find three moments to use "para que" with the subjunctive.
Bueno, que los oyentes practiquen esta semana: busquen tres momentos para usar "para que" con subjuntivo.
So they don't forget it.
Para que no lo olviden.