🍲 Brozdi — the traditional wild lovage soup of the Iza Valley — is one of those dishes that tastes like spring itself. The recipe below comes from Chis Ilisca, 83 years old, from Săliștea de Sus, who still picks the greens the way her grandmother taught her. It is a soup built from what the meadows give for free: young wild lovage leaves (leuștean sălbatic), gathered in early spring, before the plant turns bitter.
🌿 The recipe, as told by Chis Ilisca
For a pot of brozdi you need: a generous handful of young wild lovage leaves, flour, sour cream, milk foam, egg yolks, garlic and salt. The leaves are washed well, chopped and boiled in lightly salted water. A little flour mixed with sour cream and milk foam thickens the soup into a silky, velvety texture, while the egg yolks are stirred in at the very end so they never curdle. A clove or two of garlic, crushed into the pot just before serving, gives the broth its signature aroma.
Depending on the season, the same soup can take beet leaves, sorrel or field lovage — every household had its own version, and nothing was ever wasted from the garden or the hayfield.
🏔️ Săliștea de Sus, a town on the Iza
Săliștea de Sus is a town in Maramureș County, seated in the southeastern part of the Maramureș Depression, at the northeastern foot of the Țibleș Mountains, on the upper course of the Iza River. First attested in 1365, it received town status in 2004. With roughly 4,850 inhabitants, it remains a deeply traditional community: wooden churches, sculpted gates and centuries-old customs are part of everyday life along the Valea Izei, one of the most authentic ethnographic areas of Romania.
The Iza Valley is often called the heart of Țara Maramureșului — a land where pastoral life, haymaking and the rhythm of the seasons shaped the kitchen. Wild herbs — lovage, sorrel, nettles, field garlic — were the first ingredients of spring, and soups like brozdi carried families from Lent to Easter.
👵 A memory worth keeping
For Chis Ilisca, brozdi is not just food: it is a memory of the whole family around the table, of the first grass of the year and of the smell of sour cream simmering on the wood stove. She admits young cooks rarely make it anymore, but she is happy to share the recipe so the taste of the Iza Valley meadows lives on.
🔍 Ce urmează: more recipes from Maramureș grandmothers — stay with maramurespesurse.ro to discover the traditional dishes of the Iza Valley, from brozdi to baked-on-the-stove pies.
