Instructions: What did you learn to cook? friends asked after our family returned from five months in Romania. A better question is, What did you eat? With two sons hungry for home, I turned out sloppy joes and hamburgers, pasta and chicken on our tiny gas stove. But thanks to generous hosts, intriguing restaurants and extraordinary markets, we tasted Romania in the smoky richness of eggplant salad, the spicy bite of grilled sausages and the soft comfort of mamaliga, Romanian polenta.

We lived in Timisoara (tee-mee-shwar-ah), a vibrant and venerable city of 600,000 on the countrys western plain. The scars of communist rule and post-communist struggle are evident in the pot-holed streets and Soviet-era apartments blocks, but they cant obscure the beauty of Timisoaras rose-filled parks, glorious churches and graceful squares.

Nor have decades of deprivation dampened the spirit of hospitality that embraced us. A U.S. expatriate and his Romanian wife, Harry and Margareta Morgan, drew us into their lively social circle, and we soon learned our role as guests: Bring a bouquet of flowers and big appetites.

Margareta and her friend Aurelia Popa introduced us to the pleasures of the

Romanian buffet: pork schnitzel, potato salad, meatballs, deviled eggs, stuffed mushrooms, pickled vegetables and baba ganoush-like salata de vinete (eggplant salad), a likely legacy of the Ottoman era.

Luckily for us, the Austro-Hungarian Empire reclaimed Timisoara from the Turks in 1716, and two years later German beer meisters founded the oldest, and, to our taste, the best brewery in Romania. A cold, liter-size bottle of Timisoareana Lux was just right with those bountiful buffets.

The hearty beer was also a must with mititei, literally the wee ones. These skinless, finger-sized rolls of highly spiced ground meat are grilled over charcoal and served with a dab of mustard and a slab of bread. (You can grill your own with the mititei mixture made at European Homemade Sausage in Hollywood.)

Mititei werent on the menu at Restaurant Mioritic, a cozy place near our apartment, but that was our only disappointment. The wide selection of preparate traditionale romanesti kept us coming back. So did co-owner Stefan Ghilerdea.

Remarkably, Stefan had perfected his English (and Spanish) in Hialeah, where he lived briefly in the 90s while working for a cruise line.

Over the months, he steered us to such favorites as sarmale in cuib, stuffed leaves of cured cabbage served with mamaliga; fasole cu ciolan afumat, white beans with smoked pork shank; and tocana miroitica, Mioritics Romanian ragout.

On our last weekend in Timisoara, Stefan and I took the tram to my favorite food destination, the Josephine Market. I did my daily shopping at the neighborhood supermarket or produce stand, but for a real taste of Romania there was nothing like the largest of the citys countless farmers markets.

In a covered area the size of a football field, hundreds of vendors presided over mountains of dried beans, piles of fresh produce, barrels of cured cabbages and ranks of recycled Coke bottles filled with farm-fresh milk. Outside, you could buy river fish from a tank or a fishing pole to catch your own; a live chicken for your pot or baby chicks for your coop. At the bread window, fresh-baked baguettes and horn-shaped corn beckoned.

When we said our goodbyes, Stefan presented me with a true Romanian delicacy: a bottle of tuica, potent, home-brewed plum brandy. Weve been bringing it out for special guests, toasting them with Noroc! - Good luck! - and recalling how lucky we were to discover Timisoara.

Food Editor Kathy Martins husband, Herald writer John Dorschner, taught journalism as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of the West in Timisoara

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