Irina Georgescu
Irina is fascinated by the flavours and textures of Romanian cuisine and is excited to write and share their secrets with the world.
Carpathia: Food from the heart of Romania
Irina, is a food writer born and bred in Romania, who has been living in the UK for the last 10 years. She is fascinated by the flavours and textures of Romanian cuisine and is excited to write and share their secrets with the world.
Irina feels very strongly about exploring the world through food, understanding people through what they eat, and putting things in the context of history.
Her dream is to build a life around food, discovering new flavours and changing perceptions with the help of recipes, photography and travel.
Irina's recipes are her own, inspired by her mother, her family and Romania’s culinary heritage.
Her latest book Carpathia: Food from the heart of Romania
About her demonstration at the Surrey Food Festival:
A traditional Romanian vegetarian dish, testimony to the Persian and Turkish influence in Romanian cookery, this pilaf makes for a comforting dish by building flavours from buttery to sweet and smokey.
After the hot Romanian summer, people preserve the glut of fruit not only by making jam and compotes, but also by sun-drying and cold-smoking. They are more versatile this way, and this pilaf is a joy of textures and flavours. The natural sweetness and smokiness of the prunes, the reassuring presence of the buttery rice, and the crispiness of the leeks come together to banish your hunger without the need for meat.
