I have to recognise that this year I made "piftie" for the first time in my life although it is a very popular and traditional dish for Christmas and New Year in my birth country. My mother is making this dish for the New Year with regularity and I used to eat it with pleasure.

I almost forgot about this dish since last year when a good friend of mine (who is a fantastic chef) offered me a bowl of this traditional dish and it was so good that it imprinted well in my mind and triggered a desire to try to make it myself. Throughout the year I brainstormed about where I should buy the right ingredients for it. Recently, when visiting a Romanian shop, I saw what I needed: pork ears. You can imagine that I bought and bring them home with great motivation to launch myself in making this dish.

Pork ears and pork legs are perfect but I only had pork ears for my test. It worked very well with only pork ears too. There is a reason why this dish can be made from ears, legs or skin of pork: the natural gelatin. This is the key to create the jelly aspect that transforms it from a normal soup. The turkey is added only for having a meat addition inside the jelly. It exists a version exclusively made from turkey or chicken but you need to add extra gelatin as these birds do not have enough to solidify the soup.

There is a lot of garlic in this recipe (2 heads) as it is one of its main tastes. You can play with how strong you want the garlic taste to be by leaving the garlic in or straining it out. It is a personal choice. I chose to strain it but I feel that keeping the garlic inside could have been a better choice.

This dish is served cold, that's why the original name "racituri" means "cold things".

The Instant Pot helps a great deal with this recipe because it cooks the meat in 45 minutes so well that it detaches itself from the bones. Without an Instant Pot, the second boil takes 2-3 hours on low heat.

Ups! I almost burned this one. But not quite too much.

I made this savory tart with one goal, for my daughter to take for lunch. I knew she loves the bacon so I thought that she won't refuse it.

I made it on Sunday and put it on the table for us as well to taste a slice. My daughter ate the slice until the last bite and asked for more. I couldn't be more happy. We ate a slice as well and the remaining was for her at school. It was her lunch for 3 days in a row and each time she came with the empty lunch box. The forth day, she asked for more of "that good tart with flower" but unfortunately was nothing left. I have the feeling that this will be a tart that I do over and over again :)

This traditional quiche lorraine is a very simple one to make. I had a big tart pan of 32cm so I had to double the original quantities.
I think it is not worth to tell if it was good or not... the love of my daughter for this tart speaks for itself ...

I love meatballs but in the Romanian cuisine they are better known as fried and this is not necessarily the most healthiest. So I had to find a way to eat meatballs without frying them. The solution was to bake them in the oven. Instead of absorbing oil, in the oven they release the extra fat and the result is for sure healthier.

Every year when the summer starts, any Romanian goes out to eat a "mic". In a rough translation this means "small". And yes they are small meat balls. So, Romanians either they go out for a grill in their backyard or near a forest, or they just buy them in a park or restaurant. You find them everywhere and they are recognized as Romanian traditional food. And the truth is that they are delicious. You need to eat them with mustard. This combination works very well.
When I have moved from Romania I started to miss them. I found them again in the Romanian shops in Brussels, some were good, some were too spicy, some where not so tasty ... it was just luck. Later I moved a bit far from Brussels and I stopped buying them. The only available option was to make them myself. How difficult could that have been? I have tried several versions and finally I found the perfect recipe and here I share it with you.

It is a very classical recipe and this is how I do it.