zacusca

See also: zacuscă

English

Noun

zacusca

1. A vegetable spread popular in Romania in which the ingredients are roasted eggplant, sautéed onions, tomato paste, and roasted red peppers.
   • 2004, Augustin Buzura, Requiem for Fools and Beasts, page 438:

     He took a piece of fish, a mouthful of bread, a few spoons of zacusca and then wished us a good rest with the warmest […]

   • 2009, Richard Hammond, Clean Breaks: 500 New Ways to See the World, page 116:

     Meanwhile your guide begins to unpack the picnic: slices of pork from local Durac pigs; zacusca, a tomato and pepper sauce made to your guide's mother's own recipe; wine from the grapes in her cobbled courtyard; and cheeses – salty cas and ricotta-like urda – recently made by the shepherd's wife.

   • 2010, Florin Grancea, The Pigs' Slaughter, page 16:

     Breakfast was rye bread, beans, pickles and zacusca, a Romanian version of ratatouille, over-boiled so we used it as a spread.

   • 2016, Alice Ann Lake, My Romance In the Carpathian Mountains: A Past Life Retold:

     "Certainly," he answers, and so I get out some bread and the Zacusca (vegetable paste) to get him started, then I begin to make a sour soup with cabbage and potatoes and sour cream, of course.