ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Wednesday, October 16, 1996            TAG: 9610160004
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 8    EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD
SOURCE: BARBARA HANSEN LOS ANGELES TIMES

TASTES OF HOME COOK SHOWS TRANSYLVANIAN CUISINE HAS SOME BITE

Adrianna M. Botta constantly searches for ingredients that recapture flavors of her homeland. This is not easy. Botta comes from Transylvania, a tiny eastern European region where cooks are real artisans. They grow their own fruits and vegetables, preserve their harvests for the winter, bake bread in outdoor clay ovens and are accustomed to pure, unprocessed foods.

Botta prowls import shops, searching for products that meet her standards. She buys German and French butter, Russian-style feta cheese and pickles with no preservatives.

She knows who carries sausages most like those at home. She selects the purest cold-pressed olive oil, although it costs much more than other brands. She even goes to specialty shops for paprika, pepper, cornmeal and flour. ``It makes a difference in the taste of the food,'' she says.

Botta makes her own yogurt, using organic milk, and ferments it in the sun in a bowl lined with sour cream. ``This way,'' she points out, ``you don't need a starter.''

She strains the yogurt to make yogurt cheese, which she serves topped with sliced bananas and cinnamon. It does indeed taste different from other yogurt, more mellow, creamier.

Her coffee tastes different, too, because she brews it with a dash of cinnamon and powdered vanilla.

Botta and her fianc, Karoy, a sculptor, live in an airy small house, where Botta tends an herb garden that includes lovage, a celery-flavored herb much used in Hungarian cuisine.

Transylvanian cuisine reflects a variety of influences: Romanian, Hungarian, German, Slavic and, in the south, Greek and Turkish.

The main meal of the day is lunch, a serious affair of many courses. It might start with an appetizer such as eggplant caviar or a cold cut assortment accompanied by a tiny glass of plum brandy. Next comes soup; on Sunday, it is always chicken soup with farina dumplings.

The next course would be meat, accompanied by plain or garlic mashed potatoes or rice. The meat dish might be Wiener schnitzel, fried chicken, grilled pork fillet, boiled beef with fruit sauce or boiled veal with pickle or horseradish sauce. Salad is never eaten before but always with the main dish. Botta might serve marinated beets or a combination of cucumber, tomato and green onion.

Transylvanians drink wine, preferably red, with their meals. For dessert, they have fancy cakes or pastries baked at home. On holidays, there might be a poppy seed or walnut roll or cherry strudel.

Botta prepares a variety of dishes that capture the flavor of her Transylvanian homeland. For a snack, she cuts potato dough into canape-sized rounds, which she sandwiches with Roquefort cheese. Salami, pickles, olives and cheese - ingredients much like those of an Italian antipasto - go on top of sliced country bread for another appetizer. She stuffs tomatoes and yellow bell peppers with rice and chicken livers, bakes them with a topping of eggs, sour cream and tomato pulp, and serves them on lovage leaves from her garden.

She dresses up these canapes by dipping the edges in parsley or paprika, which is heavily used in Transylvania.

``I even put paprika in my milk,'' Botta jokes.

Recipes for:

ROQUEFORT BITES

TRANSYLVANIAN NOSH

BAKED PEPPERS AND TOMATOES

SAVARINS

LENGTH: Medium:   73 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  LAT. 1. Adrianna Botta, with her great-grandmother's 
          cookbook, is trying to recapture a disappearing cuisine. 2. A 
          Savarin is a Transylvanian variation on a French pastry. color.