Kalács and Beigli

10 12 2011

Once a year at Christmastime, my mom (as her mom did before her and her grandmothers did and great-grandmothers did before them) makes what we call kalács (pronounced kolach). Kalács, as it’s known in Hungarian, is actually a sweet brioche-type bread commonly served at Easter, but somewhere along the line, Slovak-Americans and Hungarian-Americans smashed a few different holiday breads together and what was once known as Beigli (and still is in Hungary) is now usually known as kalács in English. The reason for the confusion is that the word  kalács (despite being a Hungarian word) is Slavic in origin. But let’s get back to the deliciousness.

 

While the breads can be filled with a variety of ingredients, the standards are walnuts, poppy seeds and apricots. My mom doesn’t really like poppy seeds, so our  kalácses have walnuts and apricots. So we mix up pulverized walnuts with a little sugar and condensed milk. It’s not too too sweet, but you wouldn’t want to eat a cup before getting your blood sugar levels tested. In a second pan we boil down the apricots until they are like jam.

 

This was my first year making the recipe (under my mom’s direct and strict supervision, of course). As she did when I was a kid, she scraped the dough from my fingers because she was worried I had too much margarine on my fingers and not enough was getting into the dough. Don’t worry though, Internet, she only scraped me with the sharp side of the knife a few times.

Dry margarine-coated ingredients are mixed with egg yolks, yeast and sour cream.

And pretty soon a rollable batter can be turned out onto the table.

We form them into dough balls, which then have to rise. This is fun because while over-kneading is discouraged, you can slam the dough balls onto the table. It’s quite satisfying.

After the dough balls rise a little bit, you can roll them out and spread on a layer of nuts or apricots.

After spreading, it’s roll up time, after which the rolls have to rise for another hour before baking.

Then it’s just a short thirty minutes before  kalács/beigli perfection!


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Categories : Cooking with Györgyi, Family, Food, Uncategorized

Csirke Paprikás

4 06 2009

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Chicken Paprikas is for many people a meal of childhood (regardless of the country you were raised in).  It certainly is true for my childhood.  Despite my father’s general dislike for sour cream, a clear indication he has NO Eastern European genes, my mother and grandmother made chicken paprikas frequently for our family.

If you didn’t know already, paprikas is the Hungarian word for pepper.  Hungarian paprika is probably the best in the world, and the paprika from the Hungarian Great Plain is of the highest quality.  It ranges from sweet and mild to extremely hot.  Though it is one of the foremost symbols of Hungarian cuisine (you can see strings of drying paprika on almost every street corner and market), it was actually brought to Hungary by the Turks.  Regardless, it is central to Hungarian cooking.  It was paprika, after all, which led the Hungarian scientist Albert Szent-Györgyi to discover and extract vitamin C, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize.  And this is all to say that when you make Chicken Paprikas, use Hungarian paprika.

Click here to download and print recipe

Now, let’s get started.

Györgyi, please introduce the recipe:

INGREDIENTS:

IGNORE POTATOES. They felt left out so I let them be in the picture, but they are NOT part of the recipe

IGNORE POTATOES. They felt left out so I let them be in the picture, but they are NOT part of the chicken paprikas recipe

10 Chicken Thighs
2 small onions
2 tomatoes
2 sweet peppers
1 hot pepper (optional)
8 oz sour cream
2 Tbs flour
2 Tbs Hungarian paprika
½ Tbs cumin
Salt & pepper (to taste)

METHOD:

1.  Clean chicken by trimming some fat but leaving the skin.  If you want to make a healthier version of the recipe, you can use boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but the seven founding Magyar kings will be rolling over in their graves.  They may haunt you, actually.  Just make it with dark meat and bones and skin.  You can work out extra tomorrow morning

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2.  Chop onions, tomatoes, and peppers

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3.  Add a tablespoon of vegetable to a large pot and heat on medium-high.  Add the chopped vegetables to the pot and sauté until translucent (3-5 minutes)

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4.  REMOVE POT FROM HEAT (paprika burns.  The taste of burned paprika is not a pleasant one.)

5.  Add 2 Tbs of Hungarian paprika, ½ Tbs cumin, salt and pepper to the pot and stir until all of the vegetables are coated

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6.  While the pot is still removed from the heat, add the chicken to the pot and stir until the chicken is coated with the vegetables and paprika

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7.  Add enough water just to cover chicken

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8.  RETURN POT TO HEAT and cover with lid

9.  Cook for 1 hour on medium to medium-low heat

10.  In a separate container, mix together 8oz of sour cream and two tablespoons of flour.

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11.  REMOVE POT FROM HEAT

12.  Add the sour cream/flour mixture to the pot and stir.

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13.  Cook for an additional 5 minutes.

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14.  Serve with dumplings, noodles, potatoes, bread or nothing at all.  ENJOY!

Note:  As you can see from my plate, that Györgyi took the chicken off the bone for me and made mine kind of saucy, but only because I like it that way and that’s how I ate it as a kid.  She would eat it with the chicken on the bone, very little sauce, and served with a side of dumplings.  It’s your preference, people!  That’s the beauty here!


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Categories : Cooking with Györgyi, Uncategorized, Video

How to Cook Gulyás Leves (Goulash Soup)

21 05 2009

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Since arriving in Budapest, a lot of people have asked me about the food.  What I eat, where I eat, and how to make the traditional Hungarian recipes.  While the first two parts have been easy to answer and document, the third, how to make, has gone unanswered until now.  Therefore, I’m going to start posting one Hungarian recipe how-to a week.  Of course all I am responsible for is the transcription, because Györgyi, the actual Magyar, will be doing the cooking.

Almost everyone I know (especially in NE Ohio) has a Central/Eastern European grandmother, cousin, butcher, friend, next-door neighbor, fish monger, etc., and has some working lexicon for the region’s food.  The former Eastern Bloc states have quite a rich culinary history, and combined with the storytelling tradition of Central and Eastern European immigrants in America, it’s no wonder that the food of the region bares a sense of nostalgia for a lot of people.

Gulyás Leves (Goulash Soup) is one of the most quintessentially Hungarian recipes, and therefore a good place to start. Gulyás (pronounced goo-yash) is the Hungarian word for a cattle herdsman.  During the Middle Ages, herds of cattle were moved through the Hungarian Great Plain (Hungarians were some of the original cowboys, after all), and during the trip, one cattle was killed to feed the men who prepared the soup in a kettle over an open flame.  Later, when the Holy Roman Emperor and Hungarian King Joseph II started to bring reforms and Germanic traditions to Hungary (even changing the official language to German, for a time), the people of Hungary began to fiercely hold onto their national traditions. Gulyás Leves became one of the foremost symbols of the Hungarian culinary tradition, and is still popular and fashionable today.

Unlike what some people think, Goulash is not a stew.  It’s not thick.  Instead it is a richly flavored, but fairly simple to make soup.  Including preparations, the total cooking time is around two hours.

Here is what you need:

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1 cup of dry red wine, 1 onion, 2 tomatoes, 2 sweet peppers, 1 1/2 pounds of beef shank, 2 carrots, a bunch of parsley, a small celery root, Hungarian paprika, beef stock, olive oil, cumin, salt and pepper.  (And flour and eggs if you want to be really bad and make dumplings.  I know you want to be bad.)

I will include a pdf version of the recipe so you can easily download and print it.

click here to download and print recipe

Now, let’s get started

1.  Roughly chop 1 onion, 2 tomatoes, and 2 sweet peppers

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2.  Cut meat into small chunks, removing excess fat

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3.  Pour 1 tbs of good olive oil into pot and bring to medium heat
4.  Add vegetables to pot and sauté on medium to medium high for three minutes
5.  Add meat to pot and sauté for another three minutes

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6.  REMOVE PAN FROM HEAT
7.  Add salt, pepper, dash of cumin, and 2 tbs of Hungarian paprika to pot

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8.  RETURN TO HEAT
9.  Add ½ cup of red wine & ½ cup of water to pot (or enough to cover meat and vegetables)
10.  Cover and cook on low heat for 1 hour stirring occasionally

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11.  While simmering, peel and dice carrots, celery root, and potatoes
12.  After 1 hour, add diced vegetables (and parsley tied together so you can take it out at the end)
13.  Add 1 cup beef stock and enough water to cover and come above contents in pot
14.  Stir, and re-cover
15.  Simmer for an additional 30-45 minutes

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16.  If y ou’re going to make dumplings (flour, eggs, water, salt), do it now.

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17.  Taste soup, you may need to add more salt
18.  Remove from heat and serve alone or with dumplings

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Now remember, ultimately this is a cowboy meal.  So if you don’t have red wine or beef stock or a parsley root, the world isn’t going to end.  If you want to cut your vegetables into neat and equal squares (mom), more power to you!

Enjoy and jó étvágyat! (bon appetit).

click here to download and print recipe


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Categories : Cooking with Györgyi, Food, History


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