Cabbage rolls and serotonin, about a gastro-cultural main stream by Camelia Burghele, GastroArt Publishing House, Romanian edition

Cabbage rolls and serotonin, about a gastro-cultural main stream by Camelia Burghele, GastroArt Publishing House, Romanian edition -The book is both an anthropological approach to traditional cuisine and a collection of Cabbage rolls recipes (taken from the villages of the region).

Of course, in whatever formula we try to define the 'traditional', Cabbage rolls are a must. Salsals with corn (pash) or rice, with meat cut with a knife, with or without smoked meat, with fried onions, pickled cucumber or raw cabbage, cooked on the edge of the fite or chpohert in earthen pots, always bring us back to the flavor of the dishes of yesteryear. Without being chefs at fancy restaurants in the city center, traditional village housewives knew and applied countless tips and tricks to give them an unbounded saft, tasted and savored at weddings, funerals and every Sunday.

Cabbage rolls are in the middle of a cultural mainstream, oriented towards an immeasurable desire of the city dwellers to know and praise the traditional (we sew chimeși and ii, we use a peasant architectural design and an ethno interior design, we cook and eat "like grandma", we use folk remedies, spells and magic rituals, we hold traditional celebrations, we promote the traditional village culture as the strongest brand in terms of identity).

The volume argues for an anthropology of... Cabbage rolls, in which the pot with cabbage rolls is an ineffable witness between two worlds (village and city) and a fabulous barometer of the development of Romanian society. Revealing an incredible know how of the country cooks, a series of tricks, tricks, tricks, tips and tricks are selected, only good to borrow by today's housewives from those of yesterday, all rendered in the colorful language of the Transylvanian, as they were picked directly from the field.

Through an inspired storytelling, a cultural heritage of taste is founded, starting with a series of cooking stories and ending, apotheosized, with testimonies about savor, saft, zoft (pour les connaisseurs, of course) but also about the great challenge of the peasantry: to make savory food from few ingredients, preferably "from what the garden gives" and, most of the time, without meat. It talks about good kitchen and food management, but also ... the aesthetic qualities of the products (the geometry of the Cabbage rolls, which sit in the pot "like rays of sunshine").

From another angle, the anthropologist is also forced to discuss culinary histories and globalized Cabbage rolls, the attitude of the contemporary and the "forcing of the model" or "wearing of the symbol" (supra - traditionality) but also a series of culinary openings: euro-Cabbage rolls (or mondo-Cabbage rolls?), gastro-diplomation and gastronomic (and tourist) euro-regions.

So, because "if there's no Cabbage rolls, there's nothing", Cabbage rolls have slowly become Euro-Cabbage rolls: with them we legitimize our identity, we tell our story, we are proud of them and we carry them with us everywhere. In the poet's words, in Romania and in Europe, it really "smells like Cabbage rolls over the Carpathian Mountains"...

"When, in the summer of 1919, a great French general landed in Lugoj, the Marse Marse Marseillaise resounded with enthusiasm from dozens of chests. With hearts overwhelmed by the majesty of the moment, the singers of the ancient Ion Vidu choir wrote an unforgettable chapter in history. For while the high face of France was shivering to the "Aux armes, citoyens!" (for non-Francophones, ozarmăsăsitoaien), the people of Timișoara were quick to heed the vigorous exhortation: "Let's cut a cabbage rols!"

Is it just an urban legend? In the end, it doesn't matter, as long as the deeds of the brave people of Lugoj help us to bring glory to covetous Romania and to this wonderful book. Because what the talented and talented Camelia Burghele does here leaves us open-mouthed with amazement. First, she places her native Sălajul on the country's gastro-map. Then, she proves to us, with a measure of proportion, that knowledge and good taste are one and the same (not for nothing do the French say savoir and saveur). This is exactly what happens in the dozens of pages filled with scholarly words, but also with a lot of popular sayings, all finely chopped, salted and peppered with good cheer and then spiced up with good cheer: true science, but without anything sleazy in it, stories full of savory savor and 60 recipes that make you bubble with pleasure.

So have a good appetite!" (Adriana Babeţi)

***

"Romania has the outline of a plump fish. Would it be a heresy to imagine it in the shape of a sausage? Would anyone suspect us of lack of patriotism? They should not. After all, the discussion about the brand identity of this product is an old one, although it doesn't seem to lead anywhere. There are sausages as big as a fist and sausages as small as a skein of thread. There are sarmes and piroști. Not to mention that there is also a collector of Cabbage rolls Cosmin Dragomir, from whose publishing house this book appears.

All that was missing, therefore, was a subtle and charming hermeneut, an anthropologist with a gastronomic bent, who could place the pot of Cabbage rollsin several types of menu and make the necessary connections. We have him now. Camelia Burghele writes persuasively and vividly about this comfort food variety that no housewife with minimal endowment is allowed to miss or ignore. The pot of Cabbage rolls is present at prayers and New Year's Eve, at the bride and groom's table and at the funeral, at anniversaries and commemorations. Whether they are prepared in the same way as at mom's or grandma's home (the mother-in-law is ritually silenced), the texture of the Cabbage rolls carries messages that come from the depths of the countryside and are aimed at the urban strongholds.

Of course, no one has the ambition to put Cabbage rolls on Michelin lists. Nor do they need to. It's all about tasting the picturesque on the plate and in context. To see with your mind's eye the kitchen of yesteryear and smell the steam rising from the pot and enveloping the room in an aromatic, appetizing embrace. And Camelia Burghele is not only anthropology but also literature. She sheds light on a myriad of Cabbage rollsntendues regarding the way we adjudicate product copyrights (ehe, our obsessive preoccupation with inflating our muscles of appropriation, at a time when the world understands that food is usually cross-border and identities fluid) and turns to cookbooks of old, on whose pages sometimes lies the seal of a grease stain." (Radu Paraschivescu)

"An "anthropology of sardines" seems to be an overspecialization, perhaps an exaggeration or a stretch, but the author of this volume convinces us that the subject is so vast that it almost deserves a separate discipline of study. The volume is much more than a collection of recipes for Cabbage rolls taken from the collective memory of the traditional village through the stories of the elderly women with whom the author talks; the research frame of reference is significantly amplified by the multiplicity of perspectives from which the research is approached, among which the most surprising, but also the most comprehensive, is that of comfort food and its links with serotonin, which generates painful memories and emotions. Comfort food, a modern concept with broad anthropological departures, is skillfully superimposed over Cabbage rolls, giving my colleague the opportunity to put before the readers those dozens of thoughts, tips and recipes taken directly from the village grandmothers". (Nicolae Panea)

"Camelia Burghele, through this volume, proves once again that the Cabbage rolls are AND Romanian and that in such discussions the appeal to culinary history and rummaging to the ends of the earth in search of the original Cabbage rolls are pointless. Their history is tangled and still not elucidated by specialists. What's more, the subject is highly sensitive and creates diplomatic tensions between different nations.

When statistics show thatCabbage rolls are made in over 50% of the countries in the world, analyzing the cultural diversity surrounding a single dish from a single region should make us rethink the whole sarmalological epic. Camelia Burghele does just that: a modern anthropological analysis of the traditional to which she adds dozens of recipes - variations on the theme. And she does it step by step, from village to village, from house to house. The book is based on hundreds of interviews with elderly people from Sălaj and beyond. Some of them are no longer with us - tens, hundreds, thousands of cookbooks lost in cemeteries. The work of specialists such as the present author keeps alive part of the national identity and demonstrates that the tangible and intangible gastronomic heritage has more than just museum value". (Cosmin Dragomir)

***

Camelia BURGHELE is an ethnologist / cultural anthropologist specializing in traditional therapeutic magic and modern forms of taking over magic-ritual scenarios, but also in the dynamics of cultural processes in traditional Romanian villages (especially in the villages of Sălaj). She holds a double bachelor's degree (Letters and Journalism, UBB Cluj), a double master's degree (UBB Cluj, University of Bucharest) and has doctoral (UBB Cluj) and postdoctoral (Romanian Academy) studies.

She is the author of more than 20 books on ethnology and cultural anthropology, including the 10-volume series "The Villages of Silesia and their Stories" and a series of "tourist retreats in the countryside" - Seven Days in Silvan Country, Seven Stories from Silvan Country and Seven Evenings in Silvan Country (in press), in which she capitalizes on personal ethnographic field research.

One of his latest volumes, De la vrajă la vrăjeală. O antropologie a supranaturalului contemporan, published by Editura Institutul European, Iași, 2017, with the second edition in 2022) with a preface by Nicu Gavriluță, has enjoyed a notable success: "A unique volume in its own way, pioneering and, above all, of maximum topicality, tempting to read" (acad. Sabina Ispas).

She has been active in projects within the framework of "Timisoara - Cultural Capital 2023", and, through Culinaria Banatica, is involved in cultural endeavors and events that support the award of the title of "Gastronomic Euroregion" to Timisoara. She has a series of studies on the anthropology of food based on field research (traditional village recipes), linked to European culinary (or cultural) anthropology.

Member of the board of the Romanian Association of Ethnological Sciences. Protagonist of numerous regional and national TV and radio programs on cultural anthropology. Lecturer / speaker in various cultural projects, she has imposed in the anthropological discourse some defining expressions: the SMART peasant, the collection of babe, the peasant - ecologist

Categories: Ethnography, Anthropology, Cultural Studies
Language: Romana
Publication Date: 2025
Publisher: GastroArt
Cover type: Hardcover
Nr. pages: 340

ISBN: 978-606-8715-29-2

Dimensions:l: 17cm | H: 23.5cm
EXPRESS DELIVERY local, national and international 24/48 hours.