Romanian Cabbage The Hairy Bikers' Cookbook

'Our quest for great food has taken us all over the world on our bikes

'and one place with surprisingly good nosh is Romania.'

'We headed north into the mountains

'and our first taste of Transylvania and its food.'

'The people were like the cooking -

'hearty, uncomplicated and,

'as we were about to find out,

'incredibly resourceful.'

That's fabulous, it is fabulous, man.

We've just pulled into the petrol station for some gas

and Christie came over to have a look at the bikes, didn't he?

Yeah.

With great interest, we've come to have a look at his!

It started off as a Russian Ural, except he's done a lot of work!

Look at these straight-through pipes!

-We said that the rear break was from a car?

-From a car.

-Dacia?

-Dacia.

Excellent, man.

How long to build, Christie?

-Two years.

-Two years?

-Many, many hours.

-All hand-made?

-Many, many.

That's incredible! It's incredible machine.

-It's also the bike that you'd want, mate, isn't it?

-Yeah, it is, yeah!

-Yeah?

-THEY LAUGH

Yeah, it is.

It's fantastic!

You want...

Oh, yeah, man, yeah, please!

Yes. YES!

Oh, yes!

-Good luck!

-I'll need it!

Ha-ha! Yes!

ENGINE ROARS

Si's always got a penchant for choppers.

His favourite bike...he had one,

but then he went skint and had to sell it,

so this is his dreams come true. Hand-made.

Yes! It's fantastic!

It's a tank! It's fantastic!

Nice one, man, it is fantastic, it's fantastic!

Thanks, thanks a lot.

'Romania has some of the most beautiful countryside in Europe.

'But as we headed north,

'we couldn't help noticing the remains of Ceausescu's devotion

'to the great god of heavy industry.

'And yet, around the corner,

'there are just sights that just knock your socks off.'

We've finally made it to Transylvania.

We're here for one reason - Iancu de Hunedoara.

Now, this is his castle, Corvin Castle,

that was his principal seat.

Now, what he did was he was a Hungarian king-maker,

and who did he make king of Wallachia?

Vlad the Impaler.

Or Dracul.

Vlad the Impaler was the basis of Bram Stoker's book Dracula,

and although there is no evidence he drank human blood,

he was certainly one of history's most blood-thirsty tyrants.

But while Vlad pierced these rooms and chambers,

outside the castle, 500 years later, another tyrant was doing his bit.

To Ceausescu, the impregnable Corvin Castle represented

a triumph of individualism over communism,

so where better to build a giant steelworks then right next door?

We're cooking Romania's national dish - the sarmale.

-"So-mali?"

-Sarmale.

Some say "so-mali," some say sarmale.

Let's call the whole thing off.

Let's call the whole thing cabbage rolls

stuffed with pork smoky things, herbs, dill. It's really hot here.

HE EXHALES

Oh, I'm hotter than a welder's clog.

Right, step one - the cabbage.

You've got to get the leaves separated and blanched

without ripping 'em - you rip 'em, they go, you lose your juice.

You don't want that.

A dry sarmale is an unhappy sarmale.

First off - take your cabbage - you want to cut the core out

so that the base of the leaves gets detached.

Now, when you blanching, I don't want me leaves all soggy,

so, you do it that way up, hole-side down.

In the pot, two minutes, refresh.

Gentle, gentle.

-Hey, Si.

-Hello.

-You look like that Nilsen bloke in Cricklewood

-with that bloke's head.

-HE LAUGHS

Look at that -

no holes, beautiful colour, it's ready for stuffing.

Now, I need the thick stalk going off.

Now, what I'm doing is blanching again to make 'em all soft

and more malleable.

There's a top motorcycling tip - me father used to do it -

in the winter, he used to strap and wrap cabbage leaves

round his legs and his tummy

and he looked a bit like the Jolly Green Giant

but he swore blind that the insulation was better than Gore-Tex.

SIMON LAUGHS

Not that Gore-Tex was invented then.

When you strip the leaves off the cabbage

you reach a point where you can't get any leaves off whole, anymore.

So, take the cabbage - shred.

The reason for this becomes apparent in a wee whiley.

We take a jar, of what we call the discontented German -

sauerkraut.

HE LAUGHS

Mix that with the cabbage.

I'm draining the juice off the sauerkraut

cos that forms me cooking juice.

Look at that.

Cabbage fantasy.

Right, I've got me sauerkraut-cabbage mix.

My sauerkraut juice.

In that, I'm going to put four or five bay leaves to steep

and peppercorns.

Water that down as the vinegar from the sauerkraut will be too strong.

This is our cooking liquor.

Next stage - we prepare the filling for the rolls.

And here we've got pork loin, that we're just gonna cut up and mince.

You mince, I'll fry.

Story of my life!

HE LAUGHS

What I love about Romania...

..the speck.

And they call it lardo in Italy.

It's absolute, solid, fat.

And they salt it and smoke it.

So it's kind of like cured - it is the most fantastic flavour.

Usual one - about three onions.

Now the garlic.

Maybe two to three cloves, just sweat that down with the onions.

We're in Transylvania, you know, land of Dracula!

Land of Vlad the Impaler, more like, at least he's the real one.

Vlad Dracul.

I mean, the truth, it's scarier than the fiction, really, isn't he?

He got up to some larks, didn't he?

-He did, mate.

-Old Vlad the Impaler.

Oh, that story -

see when the Turkish dignitaries came to visit him

and they wouldn't take their hats off

so he nailed them to their heads. No respect and all.

I'm gonna add my rice now.

Like a risotto, I want to colour the rice,

put some water in, this is to part-cook the rice.

Turn me heat up.

Wait until the water's all been taken up and that's this part done.

-How's your mince?

-Here you are, mate.

Specked-up. Pork loin, minced to an inch of its life.

-SIMON LAUGHS

-Fantastic.

Now we assemble the stuffing.

So we've got the pork, speck.

Now, bread - dip in water.

Squeeze.

Tear into small bits.

Add to mixture.

Meanwhile...

I've got the rice, onion and garlic mixture, chuck that in.

Now, with the wizardry of Gandalf - the rest of the concoction.

Thyme.

They're big on dill here

and it's really fragrant,

it goes really well with a smitten of paprika.

I'm not gonna be boring with the measurements

cos you can get it on Ceefax or Internet or book, maybe.

Sweet paprika.

We've got the smokiness coming through with the speck,

but to butch that up, we're doing a little bit of smoked paprika

and either some cayenne pepper or a bit of chilli sauce.

Oh! Season well.

Look at the colours of that - all the colours of a Romanian rug.

Hands in.

Oh, God! Dave, that looks superb.

Mm, very fragrant.

That's the stuffing.

Rolling up me rolls.

Don't over-stuff.

Stuffing in the leaf, roll over,

tuck your ends in.

Oil in me pan.

And this is great if you're a messy cook

because you put a layer of the cabbage and the sauerkraut

in the bottom.

So it means that if it gets a bit hot, it's not gonna catch.

We've got this wonderful kind of streaky bacon here,

ordinary streaky from home. Look at that!

You put a layer of that.

Now we'll put me layer of sarmale.

If you can imagine, we've got the vinegary cabbage flavour there,

but for the juiciness we've got that layer of fatty bacon.

Another layer of sauerkraut and cabbage.

It's a bit like making compost, isn't it?

Another layer of this bacon.

Sarmale.

Cover with sauerkraut.

And just to protect them.

It is, it's like tucking up little babies, isn't it? You know.

Put that on.

That's me cooking juice.

Don't bother chopping this, just take the fronds of dill.

These will just disintegrate,

but you'll get the most fantastic sort of herby flavour.

Lid.

Now, leave that for a couple of hours. Go down the pub.

'It was now 35 degrees centigrade,

'I wish we could have gone for a swim in the moat.'

Smellyvision!

-Oh!

-Oh, man!

-The dill.

-Yes!

Viva la fresh herbs.

SIMON LAUGHS

All we do now, is add a layer of sliced tomatoes.

That's enough.

Add a bit of salt.

Back on the charcoal oven.

To go with Dave's sarmale

what the Romanians eat is a thing called mamaliga

which is fundamentally the same as polenta.

A litre of water.

A big knob of butter.

175g of polenta.

Stick it in.

Right, and stir.

Put some salt, a nice, good bit of salt.

Aye, get those arteries banging.

Oh, aye.

I'll try not to sweat into it, it's always good, that.

Yeah, I'll bet Delia doesn't sweat.

-No.

-No, she's cool, calm, collected in any situation.

Well, that's because she's in an air-conditioned kitchen

-in the backyard, do you know?

-Aye.

It's important that you make an effort with your polenta, so keep stirring it.

And then it will just all start to coagulate and go really nice.

Let's have a look.

-Wow!

-Oh, yes!

Those tomatoes are just steamed down to nothing.

With that, we've got lovely ewe's milk cheese.

Oh, look at that!

It makes you go... Oh! Doesn't it?

Yeah, excellent.

A dollop of the omnipresent smentana.

It's a symphony of a post-revolution repressed state

emerging into the renaissance of democracy.

Look.

Bon appetito.

'We'd made it to Transylvania and were halfway through our quest.'

'After boiling like a sarmale in the heat for four hours,

'all we could think about was a swim.

'Though, the pool wasn't quite what we expected.'

BOTH: # And there let us wallow in glorious mud

# Mud, mud, mud, mud mud, mud, mud, mud

# Mud, mud, glorious mud. #

'No road trip is complete without a visit to your local spa.'

Some local entrepreneur has turned his salt mine into a...

Uh... A muddy hole, really.

A muddy mud bath.

-Dudes, it stinks.

-Yeah.

It really is smelly.

It's a bit like diving into a vat of poo,

but the locals ensure us you feel wonderful afterwards.

Now, we've got to stand here while it bakes...you know.

-Ugh.

-Tell you what, mate,

all those insect bites, all those cuts and grazes,

they are SO sore with all the salt.

It's not good, like, is it, really?

This is the enigmatic part -

when you're covered, you strike a pose in the sun

and bake like a Greek statue, god-like.

Of course, you've got to watch you don't crack.

SIMON LAUGHS

What'd I do?

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