Today I just want to wish everyone Happy Easter! It is Easter Sunday for Christians and I'd like to tell you a bit about our tradition.
Two Easters
A good part of Romania, the Transylvania region has two Easters as Hungarians are celebrating Easter now and Romanian Orthodox have their Easter a week later. The dates are decided by the church and sometimes it happens to be one month delay between the two Easters. The official Easter is the Orthodox one and that is when we have an official day off, on Monday.
Having two Easters is very convenient for grocery stores and supermarkets as they have two occasions to sell Easter related products. What doesn't sell at Hungarian Easter, will sell at Orthodox Easter.
Traditional Easter Dishes
The traditional Easter dish in Romania is lamb, regardless of what community we are talking about. Both Romanians and Hungarians have lamb for Easter and the traditional kalács (Hungarian name) or cozonac (Romanian),which is also a Christmas sweet as well.
Kalach, kalács, kolach, kolač, or colac (Russian: калач, Ukrainian: колач, Hungarian: kalács, Serbian: колач / kolač, Bulgarian: колач, Romanian: colac, Polish: kołacz), is a traditional Eastern European bread, commonly served during various ritual meals. The name originates from the Old Slavonic word kolo (коло) meaning 'circle' or 'wheel'. source
I am baking my kalács for both Easter and Christmas as it is better than what you buy at the bakery. I'd be happy to have my kalács ready at the bakery, but what you buy there it's like the sponge and simply not good enough.
Easter eggs are also traditional, I mean real eggs and for some, chocolate eggs too. It is nice to dye them at home and have then the way you want.
Our Easter Lunch
Easter is a family event, so we are celebrating it with a family lunch every year. It is nice to sit together and have a traditional meal. Today I'd like to show you what a traditional Easter meal looks like in Transylvania.
This is the traditional lamb soup, made of lamb meat, vegetables (carrots and parsley), rice and egg. I'm sorry for the presentation, I had no time and possibility to do a nice photo shoot, maybe next time. If you have the chance to taste the soup, don't miss it as it is heavenly good.
For the main course we usually have roast lamb and lamb stew as well.
Today I opted for the roast and I would have the stew too, but I only have one stomach, which is the same size as yesterday, regardless of what day it is. The potato salad with mayonnaise is definitely not for dieters, but the steamed vegetables are, so I only had very little potato salad.
I'm always asking everyone what they would like for dessert and the answer is always poppy seeds, cherry and chocolate. They love it and you can never go wrong with these ingredients. So this time I thought I would make a pie.
This is me finalizing the pie, adding two bars of dark chocolate to it. All I can tell you about the pie is that they were eating it like there was no tomorrow. The first plate lasted one minute, the second was gone in a few minutes.
This is my kalács, the third one, just took it out of the oven. The first two are already gone.
It is not usual to bake on Easter Sunday, because this day is for celebration and rest, but I have a good reason to do that. My dad is leaving tomorrow and I want to send his neighbor a good piece of kalács. She is an old lady, a very kind one who's life is not full of joy right now. I'd like to cheer her up a little bit. They are going to have Easter next week, but I am always sending her kalács and eggs to have a taste of Easter in advance. It is always good to help others.
Posted using Proof of Brain