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Cooking in
the Old Country
by Nick Tullius,
5 Oct 2009
Comment: |
The
people of the Banat villages cooked their meals on
cooking stoves called "Sparherd" (translates something
like "economy stove"), which was either built with
masonry all around and cast iron rings on top, or made
of iron/steel (not necessarily cast iron) lined with
brick or ceramics. In addition to the cooking rings on
top, the cooking stove had a baking compartment, with a
door opening on the side ("Ofenröhre"). The latter was
used mainly for baking. The combustible material was
mainly firewood and corn cobs (after the kernels had
been removed).
Typically there was a cooking stove in the main kitchen,
and another one in the summer kitchen. The idea was to
keep the main building cool during the very hot summer
days.
In the
winter, the big room-heating ovens were used for baking
bread, several loafs at a time, but also had a cooking
compartment for cooking and warming up of one-pot
dishes, such as stews, cabbage rolls, etc. These burned
mainly corn stalks (after the leaves had been eaten off
by the cows), but the fire was started with some straw.
Because of their large mass of bricks and masonry, they
kept warm throughout the winter night.
Most
yards also had a built-in large black kettle,
wood-fired, and used for a variety of applications, such
as boiling water for rendering of the pig; melting the
pork fat to make lard; cooking the "Leberwurst; but also
for boiling laundry during the big wash, and cooking the
home-made soap and maybe even cooking large amounts of "Paprikasch"
for a wedding.
Open
fires anywhere in the yard would have been dangerous,
because of all the combustible material around (such as
stacks of straw, chaff, corn stalks), so they were
essentially "verboten".
[Edited by Rose Mary Keller Hughes. Published at DVHH by
Jody McKim Pharr] |
