Bean soup with dried plums is a fasting recipe from Vadu Izei, with a sweet and sour taste, handed down by Maria Bledea, 78 years old.
📍 From the heart of Maramureș
The recipe comes from Vadu Izei, a traditional commune in Maramureș County, set in the valley of the Iza River, made up of the villages of Vadu Izei and Valea Stejarului. It is a rural area where local life still follows the rhythm of the seasons, and where the kitchen has always relied on simple, honest ingredients grown in household gardens and orchards. Dried plums are a natural presence in Maramureș cuisine: the region’s orchards have supplied plums for generations, used fresh, dried for winter, in jams or in traditional drinks. Combining them with beans is a clever fasting solution, in which the sweetness of the prunes balances the earthy flavor of the beans, while the paprika adds a gentle warmth.
🥣 Ingredients
- dry beans
- onion
- bay leaves
- dried plums (prunes)
- flour
- oil
- paprika
- water
👩🍳 Method
Boil the beans with a finely chopped onion and bay leaves. Boil the prunes separately. When they are cooked, place them over the beans.
Make a sauce from one tablespoon of flour, fried in oil with paprika and water. Boil the sauce until it thickens, then pour it into the soup and bring to a boil once more.
The result is a hearty, warming soup that needs nothing else: it contains no meat or dairy, which makes it suitable for fasting days, while the flour-and-paprika sauce gives it body and color. Serve it hot, with a slice of homemade bread, and the sweet and sour taste will do the rest. Like most Maramureș fasting dishes, it is humble and deeply satisfying at the same time.
📖 The story behind the recipe
Recipe from Maria Bledea, 78 years old, from Vadu Izei, collected by the Maramureș County Museum in Sighetu Marmației within the Maramureș – GastroEtnoArt project. It is a fasting soup with a sweet and sour taste, typical of the traditional cuisine of the historical Maramureș region.
Through the Maramureș – GastroEtnoArt project, the museum has been gathering recipes handed down orally from generation to generation, recording both the dishes and the people who keep them alive. Maria Bledea’s bean soup with plums is one of those treasures: a recipe that needed no written list of ingredients, only memory and habit. For the people of the Iza Valley, such soups were everyday food during the long fasting periods of the Orthodox calendar, when neither meat nor dairy was allowed on the table.
Photo source: Bucate de prin sate (bucatedeprinsate.ro)
🔍 What’s next
If you liked this recipe, also try Hrenzăle – raw potato patties fried in oil, another Maramureș fasting dish.
- Hrenzăle – crispy raw potato patties, fried in oil, a Maramureș fasting classic.
- Other fasting soups from the Maramureș – GastroEtnoArt collection.
- More traditional recipes from the villages of the Iza Valley.
