The last time I visited Romania was in 1972, during the height of the Cold War. Traveling with a college friend through Eastern Europe down to Türkiye, taking trains and hitchhiking when we could, we arrived early one morning in the small town of Sibiu. I stepped off the train with long hair and a backpack. The dozens of commuters standing by the station turned around and followed us during our short walk into town like “Make Way for Ducklings.”

In those days, Bucharest was gray and grim, the perfect setting for a George Smiley novel. Nobody made eye contact, and we were always followed by not-very-under­cover police. So I was pleasantly surprised on my recent return to find that although Bucharest still had too many soul-sucking Soviet-era buildings, there was a lively historic district full of cafés, restaurants and tourists eager to spend money and have a good time. And there was also excellent food.

Romania really comes alive, however, just north of the Carpathians, a six-hour drive from Bucharest in the south. Small Saxon villages (some built in the 12th century) are alive and well, horses are preferred over tractors, and most families plant large gardens to can and freeze produce for the winter. Each plot in these small towns is narrow but extends far back into fields behind the houses, perfect for small-scale agriculture.

Over that week, I was constantly surprised with dishes, from ciorbă (a slightly sour Romanian soup) to caraway soup, pan-fried doughnuts, Romanian moussaka and langoși (fried bread). One of my favorite dishes was mămăligă cu brânză și smântână, a cheese polenta casserole made by Rozi Anghel at Pensiunea Rozalia. In a bright red shirt and with a mop of glossy black hair fringed over her forehead, Anghel is one of those cooks whose expertise shows in her steady, methodical movements, cooking by muscle memory rather than using a recipe.

She started this dish by making polenta with 800 milliliters of water and 200 grams of coarse cornmeal. The polenta is then layered into a buttered earthenware dish and topped with kashkaval cheese (made from sheep’s milk), then sour cream and cheese. If you like, you can make shallow depressions on the top and crack one egg into each divot before baking.

Our first thought was to test instant polenta to eliminate the first step, cooking the polenta. This was a disaster. I am not sure what instant polenta is good for, but it sure isn’t made for eating. What I tasted in Romania is surprisingly light, so we had to sort out the ratio of water to cornmeal—6½ cups water to 1½ cups polenta was just right and similar to the ratios used by Anghel. For the cheese, kashkaval can be tricky to find, but a mix of provolone and mozzarella worked well. (We love kashkaval, so use it if you can find it.) As a topping, we use sour cream—but crème fraîche works well, too.

So if you have run out of creative ways to use polenta, you might give this casserole a try. It proves the rule: Simple dishes are almost always the best.

Christopher Kimball

Christopher Kimball is founder of Milk Street, which produces Milk Street Magazine, Milk Street Television on PBS, and the weekly public radio show Milk Street Radio. He founded Cook’s Magazine in 1980 and was host and executive producer of America’s Test Kitchen until 2016. Kimball is the author of several books, including "The Yellow Farmhouse" and "Fannie’s Last Supper."