Recipes from a Transylvanian Village

A taste of old Transylvania — Hearty soups, rustic stews, and sweet dumplings from a Romanian grandmother’s kitchen.

“…what this book lacks in a heavily curated, well-balanced recipe selection, it makes up for in honesty. And this food is honestly what my grandma loved to eat, and these recipes are honestly what she insisted must be in this book.”

In Recipes from a Transylvanian Village, chef Haan Palcu-Chang tells the story of his Romanian grandmother through the dishes she loved most: humble soups, rustic stews, handmade dumplings, and old-world desserts. These are the foods of the Transylvanian countryside—simple, seasonal, and deeply comforting.

Part cookbook, part family memoir, this collection preserves a disappearing style of home cooking from rural Romania, where recipes were never written down, only remembered and passed from generation to generation.