ANGELICA Vlad hails from Bucharest, the beautiful Romanian capital known as the little Paris of the East.

She came to the Tyne Valley four years ago for family reasons and as a job, started out valeting vehicles for a local car showroom.

But it wasn’t long before she spotted the niche market she could so readily tap into.

“There are so many Romanians working all over this area,” she said.

“There are a lot of Romanians also living here – in Hexham, Stocksfield, Riding Mill and Prudhoe – and they told me they were struggling to find our food.”

So it was that Taste of Romania, brimming with the style of meat, fish, pickled vegetables, beans, grains and cakes that speak of home, duly opened on Hexham’s Battle Hill last month.

“Polish people are happy I’m here too, because the food is similar,” she added.

Romanians just don’t do ready meals. They cook from scratch, but that doesn’t mean they’re tied to the oven every night, said Angelica’s daughter, Alex.

“My boyfriend’s mum – every night she cooks something different for that night and the next night she cooks again.

“But we make a lot of food at once – all the plates are big and full – and that will last us a couple of days.

“My mum is like that. I’m always arguing with her, because she makes so much food, but it is the way.”

Daily fare typically begins with soup, most often with a base of beans, drawn from a packet rather than a tin.

The main course might be fried chicken with mashed potato or perhaps sausages, home-made and fresh.

A favoured accompaniment is m˘am˘alig˘a, a sort of sturdy, yellow, cornmeal porridge. The eastern European version of Italy’s polenta, it is most often cooked to the point it’s solid and then baked, fried or grilled.

Angelica said: “I boil the cornmeal with a little bit of salt and oil. It’s not like bread, but it’s eaten in place of bread, perhaps with sour cream or cheese or fried eggs.

“Basically everyone eats that – we are crazy for it.”

But while it is one of Romania’s staples, it isn’t that easy to get right.

Alex said: “You have to stir it all the time, that is the trick, until it has a nice, cooked smell, but I can never make it – I never know when it’s ready.”

Mum knows best, she said – Angelica is an excellent cook.

If evening meals look like mini-banquets, then special occasions call for a repast fit for a king.

Dining at Christmas or Easter might well begin with salmale (stuffed cabbage leaves) and a pork soup.

“We always buy a baby pig in spring time and make it big, ready for slaughter at Christmas,” said Alex. “Everyone does that.

“Most of the stuff for Christmas is made from that pig, the sausages and bacon and pork meats.”

Angelica stresses that nothing goes to waste. She points to one of the display cabinets in the shop, with its array of sausages and meats, and one huge sausage-shape, labelled Toba, in particular.

“That is amazing, very tasty,” she said. “It is all the pig’s organs – the heart, liver and kidneys – and some meat. We boil it all together with some garlic and use the intestines to make the sausage. We do use absolutely everything.”

The main course will boast a range of smoked and fresh sausages, smoked pork joints and a range of cheeses, including the must-have smoked cheese ‘100 per cent made in Romania’.

And then apple pies, filo pastry treats and a myriad of cakes will bring up the rear, not least cozonac cakes that are the nation’s – and Angelica’s – favourites.

“Cozonac are sweet breads like panettone,” she said. “We used to make that at our house in Romania. We make everything from scratch.”