There are flavours that don't take me back to a particular dish, but to a whole summer. To a place, a yard, the people who were there. For me, that place is Luna, my grandma's village.

The summers of my childhood had other landmarks than the calendar. I would climb the cherry tree and sing. I would swim in the Arieș, convinced that the day was long enough for everything we had to do. We would go out for ice cream on Forțaț’. We didn't need much to turn an afternoon into an adventure.

Some adventures we organised ourselves. The night-time expeditions to the cemetery with my friends, for example. An excellent idea while it was still light, and a rather more questionable one once it got dark. Our courage sometimes had very precise limits.

In my memories, Luna is not a still image to be put in a frame. It is a village full of sounds, of roads walked dozens of times, of people, of days that stretched on until we no longer wanted to go indoors. It is that freedom you only truly understand once you have grown up.

Taste has a memory of its own

Food does something photographs don't always manage: it brings back a whole place, all at once. The smell of baked dough, a slightly sour zamă (Transylvanian soup), a spoonful of simple food can open the door to a childhood summer faster than any story.

Today I cook differently. I weigh the ingredients, write down the times, try to understand why a recipe works and how I can reproduce it. I like precision. Still, I know that in our grandmothers' kitchens many things were measured in handfuls, in cups, in “as much as it takes” and, above all, by eye.

The book Povești și bucate de la Luna (Stories and dishes from Luna) made me stop at names I don't want us to lose: zamă de măcriș (sorrel soup), tăiețuri în moare (noodles in sauerkraut brine), urechiuși (hand-pinched dough pieces for soup), rețeșe (pan-fried flatbreads), găluște cu păsat (cabbage rolls with a corn-grit filling). Behind them are ordinary ingredients, seasons, customs and hands that cooked without ever thinking of a recipe website.

From Grandma's village to my notebook

I have chosen to bring these dishes to După gust as well. I keep their names and mention the book that inspired me. Where the old recipe gives no weights or temperatures, I say so clearly. The modern adaptations, including the ones for the Thermomix, have to be tried out before I can call them recipes I have tested.

I'm not trying to recreate the meals of back then exactly. I don't think I could. I just want to make room in my kitchen for flavours that have come a long way and that say more than their list of ingredients.

The cherry tree, the Arieș, the ice cream on Forțaț’ and our night-time expeditions don't fit into a recipe. But every time a flavour reminds me of them, I go back to Luna for a little while.

Part of our childhood, it seems, stays in the way we remember food.

Taste doesn't only keep the recipe. It also keeps the place it comes from.

Discover the recipes inspired by Povești și bucate de la Luna.