"Maman, GATEAU!" - This is what my son said when he saw this salad. He was so excited to see it, so he quickly grabbed a small plate and a spoon. 

I put a little portion for him and watched him trying it for the first time. Such a disappointment on his face after the first bite... no sweet cake... this was a salad...

Decoration may trick your sight but not your taste buds. This is a salad, a very popular one in Romania. In my childhood, a New Year's Eve without boeuf salad was not a New Year celebration.

Almost all Romanian wives know how to do it, and everyone does its own version. But the boeuf salad should be on the table for the New Years's Eve!

The great part of making this salad is that it exists in a vegetarian version, in beef version, in a turkey version, in a chicken version and so on. If you are confused about the word BEOUF in the name, yes it is coming from French that means beef. But actually, it doesn't matter if you do it with chicken, turkey, beef or no meat at all, it is still called the beouf salad. 

It always includes boiled vegetables and pickles. There is no such thing as a beouf salad without pickles. The pickles are the most important ingredient that gives the specificity of this salad. The quantity of pickles should be substantial as it gives the taste. My mother was always including in this salad pickled cucumbers and pickled Romanian peppers. These peppers are specific to Romania and they are called "Gogosari". You can easily recognise them for their round shape. Unfortunately, here in Belgium, they do not exist, so I used just fresh red bell peppers instead.

Another interesting aspect is that the meat inside is there just to make it more nourishing but the taste is totally faded away by the vegetables.

The salad is also put together with mayonnaise. If there is one thing that I hate about the classic recipes for this salad, well that is the amount of mayonnaise that it is put inside. And yes, it is an important ingredient because it links together all the vegetables, it preserves it for some days in the fridge but this doesn't have to mean that I eat mayonnaise with vegetables ... I want to eat a salad with a minimum amount of mayonnaise. Therefore this is my version, not flooded in mayonnaise.

Are you in the mood for something green, straight in the middle of the winter? What about this salad with Greek influences?
Serve it with some tzatziki or just enjoy it as it is.

This is one of the most simple and known recipe of autumn salads. I remember my mother doing it very often when I was a child and it was always a pleasure to find it ready in the fridge. This salad is a mix of vegetables and fruits. The apples gives a sweet and sour taste to the salad. The carrots are also giving sweetness and celery comes with aroma. The mayonnaise I keep it to the minimum to avoid that fruits and vegetable change their color.
I made a big salad, so if you want smaller quantities, just divide.
The recipe is also very permissive, meaning that you can adapt it as you want, on your own taste. You can put more apples, or carrots or celery. If you like more mayonnaise put more. I don't.

This is a salad that I miss so much here, living in Belgium. In Romania you find this in any food shop, already prepared. Here is difficult to find even the raw ingredient.
So, what I have done was to buy 1 small box of 100g of roe carp from Romania and bring it here. I made this salad with it. It is so delicious and so tasty that I cannot compare it with any other salad. I'll need to search again in Belgium for a source to buy it ... maybe Romanian shops in Brussels ...

The eggplant salad has a recipe that I know since childhood. I was enjoying it then as I do now. It is simple to make but its taste may be different depending how you cook the eggplants and their initial quality. The best way to achieve an amazing taste is to cook them is on a metal sheet / grill put on top over the gas stove. The eggplants are put on the metal sheet until the skin becomes burned. They should be turned from one side to another so you get almost all the eggplant skin burned. This gives a smokey flavor to the salad later. Alternatively, they can be cooked on a plancha on the grill.
When I moved to my house I realized that I have no gas stove but an electric one. Cooking eggplants on an electric stove can be done in a pan but it is slowly and takes ages. Another option is to put them on a tray and cook them in the oven for 1-2 hours after they have been pricked with a fork. These 2 last options reduce a lot from the flavor of the eggplants and there is no smokey taste in them.
What I usually do is to make a big set of eggplants on the grill and a part of them I freeze for a future use.

During my Easter trip to Romania, I stopped to visit one of my best friends. Near a chat, a laugh, and a great pleasure to see each other again, she put on the table a salad and some bread. While my attention was more on our conversation I was not quite realizing that I grabbed a spoon and put some salad on a slice of bread and taste it. Suddenly, my full attention switched to the green salad I was eating. "What is this?" was my next question. A soft creamy texture, a sour taste and a combination of flavors. She explained me that the amazing salad I was tasting was nothing else than guacamole. Huh? I knew about it, I've seen it before but never occurred to me to try it. So, I returned home with a recipe in mind that I put on my priority list to cook. Here it is ...

This is a recipe I know from my mother and I remember perfectly from my childhood its taste of vinegar combined with the sweetness of the peppers. But I think it passed years since I didn't do this recipe. It was the time ...

When I tasted them, I had a revelation. How could I have ignored this food for such a long time? Even my husband rewarded me with a long "mmmmmm" after the first bite.