Around the World in 26 Meals: No. 3 - Hungary
Intro
Another north-south move as we go to Hungary. We’ll do this once or twice more (depending on how you count) before we definitely start moving firmly east - Europe has many countries within only a few timezones whereas Asia often has large countries spanning multiple timezones, so progress will be quicker once we’re there.
So why Hungarian? It’s just a very distinctive cuisine and is a bit unusual for its neck of the woods. Heavy on the sour cream like its neighbours, sure, but also with a focus on spice running through the cuisine in a way that’s pretty unusual in Europe (or the West in general) - the cliché about Hungarian food is, after all, paprika. The only reason I’d have skipped it is if I didn’t have a cookbook for it.
The book
Today’s cookbook is The Hungarian Cookbook by Susan Derecskey, which is a bit of an oddity within my collection both for its age (originally published in 1972) - it is also the first book I’ve cooked from in this series where the author is not from the country of interest, in this case the author an American who married a Hungarian and later travelled throughout the country learning to cook its food. Authors who married into a culture or learned by travelling around a country will crop up again!
A book cover that could use some sellotape to hold it together!
What I cooked (and adjustments)
This isn’t my first attempt at this book and by prior experience I’ve found the best recipes from this book tend to be the meat stews, some other recipes have been difficult and come out a bit middling. So to compensate for going for fairly safe territory I decided to go for the most elaborate of the stews - the seven chieftains tokány (page 108), with the ingredients of beef, pork, bacon, veal, green pepper, tomato and sour cream representing the seven historical tribes of the country. The book states:
“According to legend, each of the seven tribes of Hungary contributed one of the ingredients.”
The obvious problem with that being that the tomato was brought back to Europe in the 16th century, whereas Hungary was formed in the year 1000, with the Magyars first coming to Pannonia in the 9th century. But it’s still a fun story even if it can’t be correct and there’s no reason why this can’t be a Wars of the Roses situation where some symbolism is superimposed onto past events.
Incidentally I’m not going to blithely ignore my mention of veal earlier on, I’m aware veal production is cruel. However there is a method of veal production developed in conjunction with the RSPCA to avoid this, rosé veal, where animal welfare is given a high priority - ultimately being more to beef as lamb is to mutton than the rather specialised and nasty processes typically used for veal. This does make a difference - traditional veal is much more pale and I expect has a different taste or texture but I’m pretty happy with this substitution for the same reason I’m happy eating ordinary pâté than going for foie gras.
For the carb to go with this I opted for galuska (page 21), Hungarian dumplings that are essentially like longer spätzle. I’ve made these before and am a fan, though they’re a bit of a pain to make. But I think it’s a wasted opportunity if I don’t make them when cooking Hungarian!
I wanted to also have a vegetable dish on the side, however the book does no good in dispelling stereotypes of Central European stodge as, aside from some fairly plain looking salads and some kohlrabi dishes - not really a goer given the difficulty of finding kohlrabi in the UK - there was a bit of a dearth of recipes included beyond vegetables cooked in roux or potato-based dishes.
The mysteries of the kohlrabi can wait for another day, when I have a source for them. Image from bonappetit.com.
From what was available I settled on balaton stew (page 167) - a rice and green bean-based dish which sounded quite nice, although I was aware I’ve been using green beans a bit often in these posts. I did have trouble finding out much about this recipe online (the Hungarian is balatoni zöldbab paprikás, which also yielded few relevant results - most results were about the, apparently beautiful, Lake Balaton). As this book also doesn’t have any photos it did mean that I’ve no real idea if I made this correctly.
For dessert I attempted what is described as a jelly roll (page 230) (the Hungarian is ízes tekercs). I’d assumed this was essentially a jam roly-poly but it seems like what Americans call a jelly roll is closer to a plain Swiss roll (ie not a chocolate one). This recipe does seem different from either though - a jam roly-poly is a suet pudding whereas a Swiss roll (or jelly roll) recipe seems to involve simpler eggwork than this. Google suggests “taste rolls” as a literal translation, a suggestion I’ll refrain from taking up, so I’ll just call it a roulade for now.
So far as adjustments go I did my typical doubling of volumes of spice, unlike with the Polish recipes this caused no issue, and the usual subbing in of asfoetida for garlic. Other adjustments made were:
The galuska were kneaded instead of mixed, the dough simply needed far too much work for hand-mixing with a spoon to be ideal. I’ve made it like that before but I think this came out better and the preparation was easier.
The balaton stew had much more water added throughout cooking than the recipe suggested, as it kept drying out during cooking. It ended up coming out sauceless despite this and I’m unsure if this is what was intended.
I’d run out of brown onion unexpectedly so I’d subbed in spring onion for this recipe - not an ideal substitution but I had what I had. No variety of onion was specified but I assumed white/yellow/brown was implied.
The tokány got more simmering time than the recipe suggested. The sauce was still too liquid for my tastes on the first day of serving despite this.
I used red onion in this recipe. Again, what I had in.
For the dessert I whisked egg yolks and egg whites in the opposite order to what was suggested - as I was concerned about losing the air in the whites. This was probably a good call.
Cooking
One recipe, the dessert, needed vanilla sugar - something I couldn’t find in any nearby shop so I decided to make my own in advance rather than attempting to substitute it. Ideally this would be done about a week in advance and with a real vanilla pod but apparently those are £7 a pop now so I guess the second best option will do. A mix of market speculation and storms hitting Madagascar (where the vast majority of it is grown) and destroying crops is why this has got so expensive, apparently.
The method to make vanilla sugar is simple - mix vanilla extract with sugar, spread it out on baking paper and wait for it to dry. Then break up any lumps and mix it altogether - I opted to do all this the morning before the rest of the cooking.
I swear it’s sugar, officer.
For the tokány I cut up the bacon, pork, beef, veal, pepper, onion and tomato (blanched) and make a mix of paprika, salt, marjoram and caraway. As an aside I’m no fan of cups - so the instruction “1 cup chopped onions” hurt something deep in my soul. Are you supposed to just cut onions until you can fill a cup? How is this meant to work? America, you have some explaining to do.
Six of seven tribes represented. Bacon tribe, pork tribe, beef tribe and veal tribe from left to right.
The bacon is cooked, then the onion in the same pan (with the bacon set aside).
The herbs and spices then go in, with some water. Meanwhile some beef is fried and added in (with any scraping from the frying pan) into the stew - essentially the ingredients are layered up and cooked for differing times. The beef gets a whole hour cooking before any more meat is added.
Next up is pork. At the hour point browned pork is added, covered with the veg and left to simmer for half an hour.
And, excitement of excitements, the veal is added. Another half hour’s cooking until beef stock, bacon and sour cream go in, essentially completing the dish.
Obviously pretending I made these dishes one-by-one is a complete affectation, with all of these there’s a lot of dovetailing and things going in parallel. It’s a bit like being back in a biology lab, except I’m enjoying myself and hopefully nothing I’m working with is toxic or carcinogenic. So, arbitrarily, let’s move onto the galuska and pretend I cooked it after the tokány.
Flour and salt are mixed and one egg is cracked into a well in the centre - in this case the well overflowed but that’s really no problem.
Some water and rather a lot of kneading later and we have a dough, ready to be forced through my spätzle press - essentially a variant on a potato ricer. However the spacing of the holes in the press are very important - a lot of the galuska made from this press came out stuck together and needed separating immediately after cooking, if the holes were any closer together they probably would be impossible to separate and you’d just have a doughy mess at the end. There are methods for making these without a press but there’s a lot of busywork in that, even though a lot of force and patience is needed to use the press it is still the easier option.
On previous attempts this dough ended up far too sticky so the kneading is, in my view, a success. It was quite difficult to push through the press but the dumplings were well formed and the process, though lengthy, wasn’t too painful (physically or emotionally!).
As with many dumplings or with gnocchi the galuska are put into boiling water and collected once they float - they are then mixed in with butter and set aside. I was a little rushed so the galuska are of vastly differing lengths - but they all came out tasty!
This is best done near the end of cooking as the dumplings are nicest warm and it’s awkward to reheat them without mixing them in with something, when eating the leftovers they were just mixed in with the tokány.
Time for balaton stew. Veggies are chopped and combined - green beans, parsley and paprika are just chilling out in a little salt here.
The surprise spring onion comes in to substitute for the brown onion I forgot to buy - you can also see some long-grain rice weighed out in both these pictures.
The green veg is gently heated in a frying pan (the recipe explicitly says not to brown them) while the onion is sautéed and the rice parboiled.
At this point a water and vinegar mix is added to the veggies and they are cooked, covered on a low heat, for 45 minutes. Water is added if and when the pan water boils off, which happened rather more often than the recipe implied it would.
The rice is added and a bit more cooking occurs before some sour cream is mixed in. For whatever reason this seemed to make the beans look a little pale and sad, even though they didn’t taste or feel overcooked. It’s a shame that the vegetables looked nicer during cooking than when they were served though.
And with that, everything is done. I’m not too convinced by the aesthetics of any of this particular meal but, again, a nice appearance is a bonus to me - taste and texture outrank it.
No dog tray today, sorry all.
On that regard mildly to moderately positive reviews. The galuska turned out nice aside from their irregularity in size, it was moderately frustrating to make them this time, mostly due to tiredness and poor technique by the time I was using the press - but I find it’s hard to make galuska any more or less tasty. If I make them well they’re delicious and making them’s frustrating, if I make them badly they’re delicious and making them’s a right pain.
The balaton stew was fine, overall I found it a little more plain than I was hoping given the amount of herbs and spices in it but it was still pleasant. The tokány turned out nice tasting but the sauce was too liquid for my tastes - there are also some fairly similar pork and bacon stews in the same section of the book that, on day one, taste very similar.
However it is worth mentioning that everything, especially the tokány, was much better the next day as leftovers. Revisiting the dish the day after it became clear that it was better than the other stews in this cookbook and I could be a lot more unambiguously positive about it. But was it worth the extra time and expense of adding two extra meats and a lot of stewing time versus a pork and bacon stew? Maybe not, but it was still a better meal for it.
Onto dessert, which I actually did make after everything else! Once again, my partner helped out with advice on the consistencies of my mixes, this is not my natural territory.
The roulade involved separating eggs and dealing with them separately - firstly whisking yolks with sugar and folding in lemon zest and a little oil.
The egg whites are also beaten, similar to how they are when making meringue. These two whisked egg mixes are then folded together and the mixture spread out to bake - after beating the whites this all was time sensitive so there are no action shots of the mixture!
Also at this point jam gets heated. Technically the most demanding part of all these recipes, I hope everyone reading this appreciates the efforts I go to for my adoring audience.
The resulting cake was covered with jam, rolled up and sprinkled with icing sugar. Here’s a fairly bad photo of it cooling (for some reason I can cook and I can take good photos but struggle with combining them).
I have to admit I found this dessert to have a lovely taste but I found the texture a little tough - a slightly unhappy medium between a roly-poly and a Swiss roll. I enjoyed it but less than … well, a jam roly-poly or a more conventional Swiss roll.
What I’d do differently
Truth be told I’m a little unsure on what to change - I’d like to reduce the volume of liquid in the tokány if and when I attempt it again and I would probably also allow a bit more time for cooking galuska.
Beyond that I’m not sure, the lack of illustrations in the cookbook mean I’m even unsure how whether my roulade and vegetable stew turned out as intended or if I fluffed them.
My view on the book
I’m a big fan of Hungarian food but I must admit I have mixed feelings on this cookbook. It gets off on the wrong foot with me as it’s a book published in the USA but where no-one bothered to localise the content when travelling to the UK - recipes with cup measurements have been a bugbear of mine from about twenty minutes into me cooking as a hobby, and baking with them seems frankly terrifying!
In previous posts I’ve commented on their being an ideal balance between presentation and practicality in cookbooks - this one is very plainly presented, which is usually a positive for practicality, but goes so far towards plainness that it actually detracts. As said before the total lack of pictures can mean you don’t know what an unfamiliar dish is meant to end up as - I’ve been using this book for years and there’s a non-zero chance that every single thing I’ve made (save galuska) has been wrong, even if it’s been nice!
As would be expected from this the non-recipe content of the book is a little sparse, which I personally don’t mind, but much of what there is seems to lack relevance to a non-American audience - though admittedly the section on Hungarian wine written by the author’s husband is decently good.
You can tell this book was written in the 1970s and for Americans because it suggests crushed cornflakes are an acceptable substitution for bread crumbs. Don’t judge the whole book by this low point.
However many recipes do turn out well, I’ve used this book a lot and some favourites are in here - but other recipes come out a little flat and bland. Perhaps unsurprising for a cookbook from the 1970s given the culinary reputation of that decade.
In short I find this a curate’s egg - I enjoy parts of it, there’s good content in here but it’s inconsistent. I fully expect there’s a better Hungarian cookbook out there and perhaps it’s time to try and track it down!