Originally Posted by
Romanianflyer
After a couple of hours at the pool (and a beer or two) it was time for lunch. And what better place to go to than yesterday's garden at
La Cassa?
[I]A decent German Weizen, paired with what are perhaps the most traditional Romanian dishes. Pictures is sarmale – cabbage rolls filled with minced meat. In Turkey or Serbia they would call it sarma, in Georgia or Armenia tolma, in Greece dolmades. You kinda get to the point I want to make here: lots of shared culinary influences in this part of Europe!
Although where eg. in Armenia or Greece you find them more often made with vine leaves (and quite often stuffed with rice only), in Romania it's cabbage leaves and meat.
Wow! In Swedish we call it kåldolmar - and they are made of cabbage, minced meat and rice. (No wine leaves in Sweden, of course, but the Swedish king may have brought the recipe with him when with his troops in Turkey). This left me very curious if the sarmales taste the same as kåldolmar!
These are also known in Finland as kaalikääryle and often eaten together with lingonberry jam.