The traditional cuisine

A plate of "tocana" (ground maize boiled in milk) with sheep cheese, cream and fried bacon scraps, a helping of rolls of soured cabbage stuffed with minced pork and coarsely ground maize, a slice of homemade bread baked in the hearth, a glass of "horinca" (plum brandy), and as last course: a crinkled pie or a pound caked with nuts - these would be some of the specialities of the traditional cuisine in Maramures.

The art of local gastronomy does not excel in delicacies and sophisticated com-binations of foodstuffs and spices (like other Latin cuisines - French or Italian). It is rather sober and extremely ecological, alike the agriculture, cattle breeding and fruit growing that are the principal sources of food.

The culinary tradition relies mainly upon the mobile pastoral dairy the she?pherds install in the mountains during the summer, the period when they graze their sheep. In these "miniature" dairy factories, the principal actor is the shepherd in charge of the sheepfold who is also responsible for the processing of the dairy products. The owners of the sheep used to climb to the sheepfold taking turns in order to collect their share of the product which had been established at the milk measuring. The ewe's milk is used to prepare milk curds, cottage cheese, pot cheese, and a mixture of whey with the sediments from the boiled curds. The young cheese brought from the sheepfold is aged in the homestead.

As the meteorological and climacteric conditions and the quality of the soil had not favour the cultivation of wheat in this region covered mostly by hills, agriculture was based mainly on the growing of maize. Beginning with the 17th century, maize flour used