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Podcast: New Books in Food
Episode: Alex Drace-Francis, "The Making of Mămăligă: Transimperial Recipes for a Romanian National Dish" (Central European UP, 2022)
Description: Mămăligă, maize porridge or polenta, is a universally consumed dish in Romania and a prominent national symbol. But its unusual history has rarely been told. Alex Drace-Francis surveys the arrival and spread of maize cultivation in Romanian lands from Ottoman times to the eve of the First World War, and also the image of mămăligă in art and popular culture.In The Making of Mămăligă: Transimperial Recipes for a Romanian National Dish (Central European UP, 2022), Drace-Francis shows how the making of mămăligă has been shaped by global economic forces and overlappin...