Cooking a Chinese Dinner in Romania

Sweet and Sour Chicken with Mixed Vegetables Stir Fried in Soy Sauce

How did I end up cooking a Chinese dinner in Romania? This all happened quite unexpectedly. I was in Romania at the end of May on a volunteer trip with Habitat for Humanity and became friends with a couple of local university students who were acting as translators for the group. Over drinks at a bar (it was a very hip and swankly bar called Diesel right at Union Square in Cluj-Napoca) one night, I shared that I enjoyed cooking and food very much. It turned out that Romina was also a cooking enthusiast (in addition to being a Tae-Bo instructor, English-Romanian translator as well as university student majoring in English and Swedish)! As we chatted, she suggested that it might be good fun for us to get together one evening and for me to cook a Chinese dinner for her and her flat mates, as they have never had Chinese food before! Of course, I couldn't refuse - what an excellent excuse for me to shop in the local markets and what a rare opportunity for me to get into a Romanian kitchen! Romina started to make plans and subsequently also invited Alina and Vlad (two other translators for the group) who were very keen on the prospect of having 'authentic' Chinese food.

Chinese food is very rare in Romania. In fact, I didn't notice any Chinese restaurants in the capital city, Bucharest (although admittedly, I wasn't looking for them). While very excited about this, I was quite concerned about how I might pull off a Chinese dinner, without knowing what sort of ingredients I might find in the markets or grocery stores. Moreover, the burden of the knowledge that this would be their first taste of Chinese food weighed on me, as I had to devise a menu that would give a fair representation of Chinese food but without being too alien in tastes that it might be offputting. After all, Chinese cuisine is one of my favorite (and one of the tastiest, dare I say) cuisines in the world and I wanted to make sure my Romanian friends had a favorable impression of it! Budget was, of course, also another consideration. I was on a tight budget as I hadn't anticpated spending much on this trip and did not bring a lot of cash. Balancing these considerations, I set out to explore the local food stores.

In Cluj-Napoca, I noticed a small Chinese fast food style restaurant and went in to check out . What did they have on their menu? Not quite the same offerings as American Chinese food restaurants, but close enough! They featured various stir fried noodles such as lo mein equivalents, 'Singapore' fried noodles, egg fried rice (of course) and various stir fried dishes including stir fried chicken in soy sauce. (I don't think they actually called anything General Tsao chicken.) Ok, so this gave me an idea of the expectations of Chinese food my dinner guests might have. My next stop was then the local grocer followed by the fresh market to figure out what ingredients were available locally. There were pretty limited options in the grocer so that made it easy for me to decide on the menu - stir fried sweet and sour chicken and mixed vegetables in soy sauce!