British ambassador to Romania Andrew Noble has marked Queen Elizabeth II’s official birthday by cooking sarmale - an extremely popular dish among Romanians. The British Embassy in Bucharest shared the cooking video on its Facebook page.

The Romanian ambassador to Great Britain Dan Mihalache challenged Andrew Noble to cook a Romanian dish. The British ambassador chose to make sarmale (a mixture of rice and minced meat rolled in cabbage leaves), which he says is his “favourite Romanian dish.”

“This is a dish I first encountered when I came to communist Romania in 1983. And then, you didn’t get it very often. Now, throughout Transylvania, throughout the rest of the country, you can find this in every restaurant, and it’s really popular,” Andrew Noble says in the video, just before listing the ingredients for the sarmale recipe.

Once the sarmale are ready, the British ambassador takes them out of the oven. He says they go well with sour cream and polenta (mamaliga in Romanian), and a “good Romanian white wine, or a red wine if you prefer it, or just beer.”

“As I said: so good, they could come from Yorkshire,” Noble says after tasting the sarmale.

newsroom@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Facebook/British Embassy Bucharest)