The Slavic east and the Balkans · Volume 30, The Living Culture, the Roman Vein and the Rose Valley
Tochitură
Transylvania, Romania
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 1 hour
- Researched
- No outside sources linked
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Transylvania, pork neck and mămăligă with a fried egg, the region's defining plate.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 1 hour.
Ingredients
For the pork
- 800g pork neck, cubed
- 3 tbsp hot oil
- 3 to 4 cloves, crushed garlic
- 1 tsp paprika
- optional smoked sausage
For the mămăligă
- 200 to 250 g per litre water cornmeal
- 1 litre water
To serve
- 200g telemea or caș, sliced a slice of bound cheese
- 4, one per serving a fried egg
- 2 to 3 tbsp, from the pan rendered pan fat
Method
- Sear the cubed pork neck hard in hot oil.
- Stir garlic and paprika through off the heat at the end. Transylvanian versions often fold in smoked sausage alongside the fresh pork.
- Make the mămăligă: roughly two hundred to two hundred and fifty grams of cornmeal per litre of water, simmered patiently for around thirty minutes.
- Serve the pork over the soft mămăligă with a slice of bound cheese and a fried egg on top, the rendered pan fat spooned alongside.
What a modern chef changes
Sous vide pork and egg, a chinois-strained mămăligă quenelle and a smoked bacon snow
About 2 hours, including sous vide
Method
- Sous vide the pork neck low and slow for genuinely even tenderness through the whole cut, then flash-sear it hard just before plating.
- Blend the finished mămăligă in a high-power blender and pass it through a chinois for an ultra-smooth purée, plated as a quenelle rather than the traditional grainy mound.
- Poach the egg sous vide at 63°C for a fully set white and a genuinely custard-soft yolk.
- Finish with a dehydrated, powdered smoked bacon "snow" in place of the traditional chunks, distributing the smoke evenly across the plate rather than in occasional bites.