Chimney Bread

There were many unique foods in Transylvania. But one of the most intriguing was this Kürtös Kalács, or chimney bread.

We came across it on our way from Zabola to visit the buffalo farm near Westendorp. The scenic drive took us through beautiful countryside and little Saxon villages. 



It was fascinating to see the remains of some of the Communist collective farms growing potatoes, sugar beet and corn, and people saving hay in the fields. 

Here and there on the roadside there were little shrines. Cattle grazing in the fields and shepherd looking after their sheep and goats. 

Romany Gypsies were selling wild strawberries along the road for 15 lei a punnet. And in the villages people were selling their produce from stalls on the side of the roads: piles of watermelons, farmhouse cheese and homemade breads. There were many stalls selling this kurtos, with cald paine - hot bread - written underneath.

I was really curious to buy some and learn more about how it was made. Our driver was amazed that we didn't know about it, as it's a very common Transylvanian bread. A helix-shaped pastry cooked on a rotating spit over a charcoal fire. 

They were traditionally a family affair, made on yard-long spits to celebrate weddings. But as with made treats of yesteryear, what used to be a special occasion food is now eaten more regularly all over eastern Europe... and beyond. Romanians have brought chimney breads with them as they settle - there are now bakeries in New York, London and - I've just Googled chimney cake and surprise, surprise you can even get it here in Ireland! Today they are made on a more commercial scale in restaurants and bakeries, and tend to be made in electric ovens on automated spits. 

The lady who was selling it invited us into her little tiny bakery here where she made it in the traditional manner. (See our 15 second Instagram video of it being made here.)

Taking her sweet yeast dough, she pulled off a piece, weighed it and she rolled it on a wooden board with her palms into long strip. She then deftly spun the dough around an oiled wooden spit, before rolling the outside in sugar. 

She brought it outside onto the pavement and cooked it over a charcoal brazier, fanning the charcoal as she turned the spit. 

As it cooked, the sugar gradually caramelised on the outside.

Back inside again, she rolled the whole thing in a mixture of finely chopped walnuts, pistachio and a sunflower seeds.

She slid the warm bread - a coil with a hollow centre, hence its name chimney bread - off the timber spit and slipped it into a cellophane packet.

You unravel it to eat it, crunching into its delicious caramelised, nutty crust. It was really delicious.

Slow Food Romanian Style

One of the main purposes of my trip to Transylvania was to meet up with some of the movers and shakers in Slow Food Romania.

Jim Turnbull - founder of Slow Food Romania

Jim Turnbull established Slow Food Tarnava Mare in 2005 on Prince Charles' request. His Royal Highness has been on a mission to highlight the importance of Transylvania’s culture and biodiversity, which has been described as the last remaining truly medieval landscape in Europe. Jim has been involved in development work for many years and has been hugely influential in Transylvania. 

Alexander Roy Chowdhury - owner of Zabola Hunting Lodge, author and food writer, Rosemary Barren, and I relaxing in a wildflower meadow above the forest in the Carpacian mountains.

The ecosystem and biodiversity of this area is unique. The shepherds tend their flocks of sheep and goats in wildflower meadows teeming with butterflies, numerous wild flowers, grasses, herbs and intensely flavoured alpine strawberries, you can’t imagine how beautiful they are at this time of year. 

The small Saxon villages have virtually no shops; every family has a vegetable garden with vegetables interspersed with flowers and fresh herbs. The colour-washed houses, each with a unique decorated gable end, are built at right angles to the road with an inner courtyard, a long barn and a fruit orchard behind.

A kitchen garden, behind the museum in Zabola

Most people still have a few hens, ducks and geese, a cow for milk, several pigs. Sheep are cared for by local shepherds in exchange for fresh cheese and several carcasses throughout the year. 

Every house has a woodshed packed with timber and a cellar packed with preserves. The summer and autumn vegetables are preserved for winter in the form of jams, cordials, schnapps, pickles and chutneys. Nothing is wasted. 

Thick slabs of pork fat, slamina, are cured with salt and sprinkled with paprika, an age-old tradition. 

Many also have beehives which may be looked after by a local beekeeper who moves the bees from place to place in search of wild flower meadows, whitethorn, acacia…

Bees on the move!

In this part of the world tourism is in its infancy but gradually bed and breakfasts are opening in people’s houses. Owners are friendly and anxious to please but are often unaware of the niceties that many travellers have come to expect. In one the plumbing in the bathroom left much to be desired, there were no bedside lights or plugs, and just one bulb from the ceiling, but the welcome was warm and the food delicious.

In another grander establishment there was a bath-robe in the wardrobe, a fridge in the huge room and a flat-screen television but we were locked in to the deserted hotel at night and locked out during the day. We had to borrow extra pillows and loo paper from another bedroom, but we accepted all this with good humour as part of the adventurous experience. We were intrigued to find that even though we spent two or three nights in each place our room was never cleaned or serviced at any stage. However accommodation particularly in the villages is still very inexpensive, as little as €25 a night per room including breakfast. It was fascinating to try to understand the challenges of the emerging tourism industry.

Up to very recently restaurants simply didn’t exist in the tiniest villages but now thanks to Jim Turnbull and a team of trainers, several private houses have opened their kitchens to serve lunch and/or dinner to guests who must book ahead. 

They also came up with the brilliant concept of ‘courtyard dining’ where they set up a table in their courtyard or farm building to serve simple family food. We enjoyed both these experiences enormously. Jim is the leader of the Tarnava Mare Slow Food convivia who hold monthly courtyard dining events in local people’s houses,  the aim of which is to showcase traditional Romanian family food, supplement their income and raise awareness of their food culture and heritage.

Before my visit, I had been warned not to expect too much from the food but in reality we had many good things to eat, lots of hearty meat dishes and cabbage rolls, a variety of sausages, cured meats and cheeses. The food is robust, hearty and full of flavour with little in the way of flamboyant garnishes. 

For breakfast it’ll probably be a selection of sausages and cured meats, a couple of local cheeses, thick slices of Saxon bread and a selection of homemade jams: rhubarb, Cornelian cherry, apple and cinnamon, strawberry… Although the jams tend to be thoroughly cooked to ensure maximum keeping time rather than freshness of flavour, we did come across some spectacularly good preserves. I particularly liked the apple and sea buckthorn jam made at Jim Turnbull’s factory, Pivnita Bunicii in Saschiz, in a project set up to capitalise on the local skills of jam-making. He has also coordinated local people to pick wild elderflowers which are pressed and made into a juice that is exported to the UK, enhancing the livelihoods of local people in a sustainable way.

Every house would have had a wood burning oven and many still do. The baking tradition is alive and well but it’s mostly the mothers and grandmothers who are keeping the tradition. The large Saxon loaves of sourdough bread are traditionally made in a large wooden trough with a mixture of wheat flour and sometimes potato to enhance the keeping quality. 

I watched it being made in Hanul Cetatii in Saschiz when the large loaves emerge from the intense heat of the wood burning oven, the crust is black and charred. The breadmaker whacks the surface with a stick to reveal the golden crust inside: a totally unique bread, and an extraordinary process to watch. See a sped up video of it on Instagram...

Main meals are simple and very meat-centric. Robust stews of venison, pork, beef and a particularly memorable lamb, pepper and paprika stew with polenta cooked over an open fire in a wildflower meadow near Mosna.

The meal often starts with a chorba, a ‘sour’ soup of some kind: beef, lamb, pork, bean and sausage, chicken and noodle, meatballs. I enjoyed virtually all of these. 

We also ate mămăligă similar to polenta sometimes layered with cheese and topped with smetana or sour cream and sometimes served on its own. We had no fish, although I believe there are plenty of perch and carp in the lakes.

Desserts were a variety of fruit tarts, pancakes stuffed with jam or fresh ricotta cheese and dill, a delicious combination, or papanash, a sort of doughnut topped with jam and smetana. 

To drink there was a variety of homemade schnapps and cordials, and tea. Though tea in Romania does not mean black tea as we know it but a mixture of dried herb teas, mostly home made. 

Transylvania is fascinating to visit, it has much to teach us in these frenetic modern times. It is at the cusp of change - still teetering between medieval and 21st century. Go soon!

*See Transylvania business co operative Facebook Page for links and resources of places to eat, visit and stay.

** See my first post on Transylvania here.

Transylvania - the last hidden medieval corner of Europe

Transylvania conjures up images of a mythical land of Dracula and vampire legends. Several people I spoke to thought it only existed in fairy tale. The reality is the largest province of Romania tucked in between the Carpathian and Apuseni mountains with a rich and complex history.

Vlad the Impaler's castle in Sighisoara 

From medieval times until the mid-19^th century much of central Europe was ruled by the Habsburg dynasty. In the 12th century Saxon merchants, farmers, artisans from Northern Germany were encouraged to settle along the foothills of the Carpathian mountains. 

Each strip of land is owned by a different farmer.

This area known as Transylvania, ‘the land beyond the forest’, created a formidable natural barrier to protect the cities from invasion by the Turks and Tartars. 

The Saxons built a network of fortified villages. These villages were designed in the shape of a cross each around church, which was fortified with three stout walls and thick gables for protection, and generally built in an easily defensible position. The belfry tower doubled as a look-out to warn of impending invasions of which there were many. The villagers survived by moving their animals, food and forage inside the triple thick walls of the church.

Over a thousand years later Romanians have endured two World Wars and the brutal regime of the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu who took their lands, forests, barns and virtually destroyed their traditional agricultural system. But despite their turbulent history, the landscape has remained virtually unchanged for centuries.

 It is the last medieval area in Europe. Its forests are home to over 50% of Europe’s wild animals: brown bears, lynx, wolves, wild boar, deer, foxes and an abundant variety of furred and feathered game. 

The countryside is alive with birdsong; storks make their nests and feed their young on top of telegraph poles in the villages. 

There are corncrakes and cuckoos galore. The lakes are still well-stocked with carp and perch. The rich meadows and grasslands support over 3,500 species of flora and fauna, many unique to the area.

They are breathtakingly beautiful with a biodiversity we can only dream of in this part of the world. Recent research at the University of Cluj in Romania found 600 different plants in 1 square metre of ground. On our recent visit they were also full of wild strawberries with an intensity of flavour that brought me back to my childhood holidays in Tipperary.

Self-sufficiency takes on a whole new meaning in Transylvania. Virtually everyone still has their own vegetable and herb garden, vines, fruit orchard, chickens, ducks, geese, pigs and a cow for milk. 

Shepherds tend flocks of sheep and goats and make several fresh cheeses in their simple shepherd's huts where they live for several months at a time. 

The procession of animals returning to be milked before sunset in Viscari, the town that Prince Charles made famous.

Horse-drawn carts with the characteristic angular Saxon cart are still a regular feature not only in the villages but on main roads trundling alongside Dacias and BMWs. 

Driving through the small Saxon villages one rarely sees a shop, most people are still virtually self-sufficient but things are changing. The tiny shop will now be selling Fanta, Coke, crisps, alongside Saxon sliced bread, local sausages, cured meat and cheese all of which would have been made at home up to very recently. 

A little shop in the village of Meschendorf

In my next post I will be sharing more about the hidden cuisine of Transylvania.