The Story behind Our Mititei
by Ovi Catanescu
Mititei are one of those foods that are unmistakably Romanian. They are simple, but when they are made properly and cooked on a hot grill, there is nothing quite like them.
When Maria and I first came to America, however, we didn't know how to make mititei. We didn't even own a grill.
Those first years were not about recreating all the foods we had left behind in Romania. We were starting our lives over, working hard and eating whatever we could afford.
As the years passed, we found little ways to reconnect with the food we remembered from Romania. Sometimes Romanian friends invited us for dinner and served mititei. Our Romanian church also made them for holidays and special occasions. We would eat them there, and sometimes we could buy extra mititei to take home and freeze.
For Romanian immigrants like us, they were more than something good to eat. They were one of those familiar tastes that immediately brought Romania a little closer.
The real turning point came much later, when we opened Ovi's Pub and Restaurant.
We hired a Romanian chef of Hungarian heritage named Eugen Kerestes. Eugen was a good man and an excellent cook, but there was one thing about him I could never understand. He kept many of his recipes in his head and was reluctant to write them down or share them with us.
As a restaurant owner, that worried me. If one day Eugen left, became ill, or simply wasn't there, the restaurant still had to be able to prepare the same food our customers expected. A restaurant could not depend on one person's memory for some of the dishes on its menu.
So I began spending more time in the kitchen, watching, learning, and gradually figuring out his recipes for myself.
There was another practical reason for being there: we had discovered that some of the cooks were stealing food.
Which created a rather funny situation.
While I was trying to stop people from stealing from my kitchen, I was trying to steal my chef's recipes.
I began spending more time in the restaurant kitchen. There was another practical reason for that: we discovered that some of the cooks were stealing food.
But while I was keeping an eye on what was leaving the kitchen, I was also keeping an eye on Eugen.
In other words, while I was trying to stop people from stealing from my kitchen, I was trying to steal my chef's recipes.
We knew most of the ingredients he was using. We understood much of the process. Maria and I also collected recipes from other sources, including the famous original recipe associated with Caru' cu Bere in Bucharest.
Then we started experimenting at home.
But something was still missing.
Finally, we discovered one of Eugen's secrets: he worked the meat mixture for about 30 minutes, until it became almost like a paste.
Eureka!
That was the piece we had been missing.
Mititei don't have a casing to hold them together like sausages do. Yet when the mixture is prepared properly, those little rolls of meat hold together beautifully on the grill.
We had finally understood an important part of the technique.
From then on, the recipe gradually became ours.
Over the years Maria and I continued changing and improving it. We experimented with different combinations of meats, chose better-quality meat and ingredients, and eventually began buying organic ingredients whenever we could.
And today, making mititei has become something Maria and I still do together.
We don't make a small batch.
When we decide it is time to make mititei, we usually start with 40 or 50 pounds of meat.
Maria prepares the mixture. She combines everything and works the meat until it becomes that smooth paste we learned years ago was so important. Then the mixture goes into the refrigerator overnight, giving all those ingredients time to work together.
The next day, our little production line begins.
We have a sausage press that we use for making the mititei. Maria loads it with the meat mixture and works the lever. I stand at the other end, receiving the meat as it comes out.
I don't use a ruler.
My palm is the ruler.
I measure each mititel against my hand, separate it, and arrange the mititei on trays, usually eighteen or twenty to a tray. Then we freeze them.
Some we eat fresh. Others wait in the freezer for family dinners, friends, holidays, and visits.
When we went to Chattanooga, a tray of our mititei went with us. And when we visit Alexander and Jackie in New York this November, another tray will be traveling with us.
Maybe that is what happened to this recipe over the years.
We began by eating other people's mititei because we didn't know how to make our own. We ate them at friends' homes and at our Romanian church. Later, at Ovi's Pub, I practically had to steal the secrets from our own chef.
Maria and I experimented, borrowed ideas from old Romanian recipes, changed the meats, improved the ingredients, and kept adjusting the recipe until it became ours.
And now we are the ones bringing trays of mititei to our children.
Some recipes tell you how to make food.
Others tell you where you've been.
And after all these years of experimenting, we think we've finally figured out what makes our mititei so good:
Good meat. Good spices. Plenty of mixing. A night in the refrigerator.
And one ingredient you won't find written among the measurements:
a little bit of Owl Spit. 🦉
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