The roots of coincidence

Officially, this cookie is called Meter-long Milk Loaf. That’s a stupid name, innit? Maybe that’s why in most parts of the country it is also known as Kinte Kunta. Which comes from the name of the protagonist of Alex Haley’s ‘Roots’, Kunta Kinte. They also made a mini-series based on the book, it wasn’t hideous, so you may as well go for it. It was quite popular in Hungary back then, to be honest. Not nearly as popular as ‘Escrava Isaura’, the first Brazilian soap opera that made it here. Although I don’t know of any kind of food named after Isaura, the white-skinned slavegirl, but still, she was nearly freed by a group of adorable Hungarian women, who accumulated a smaller fortune to pay for their heroine’s freedom. It’s true. It even made the news on tv.

Now I made a little a research and found out that the baking pot required for this cookie isn’t very well known in the UK (I don’t know about other parts of the world), they didn’t even have a name for it. We call it a deer’s spine baking tin. It looks like the one in the picture. In ideal cases, you have two of these, because Kinte Kunta is made of two kinds of dough: a white one and a brown one. And it’s more convenient to bake both together, right?

So, mix 4 egg yolks with 26 dkg of pounded sugar until it’s almost white. Add one dl of handwarm water, and one dl of oil. Now add 26 dkg of flour and 6 g of baking powder. Beat the egg whites until very hard, and carefully add it to the dough. Now half the dough and leave one half alone. Add 2 tablespoons of good cocoa and 1 tablespoon of warm water to the other half and mix it.

Pour both halves into a deer’s spine, which you covered with butter and flour before, and bake them in a pre-heated oven, for 25 minutes at 180 degrees.

In the meantime, let’s make the creme. Make vanilla pudding with 3 dl of milk (I know, it’s cheap, but I’m always using the standard pudding-powder you can buy in any store), then add 20 dkg of margarin and 20 dkg of pounded sugar. Mix it very well and cool it.

When everything is done, take the two half cookies and slice them up into 1 cm thick slices. Then take the cold creme, and apply on each surface, taking one white slice, creme, then one brown slice, creme, and so on.

In the end, you’ll get a long cookie with a nice pattern. So make it look spectacular! Slice it again, this time obliquely, so the result will look like in the picture.

It’s a good looking, yummy cookie. Make sure to keep it in the fridge because it’s better when cold, and don’t let it dry out.

“Eat parsley or you’ll die!”

Or at least, that’s what my mom said to me on the phone once, in a (hopefully) momentary lapse of reason. So, ever since then, me and Boyfriend have tried to eat enough parsley from time to time. It all occured to me now because the parsley he bought for this dish was fresh and sweet scented and much and I really didn’t want to trash the remains, so I used up all (I even talked him into adding some of it into his famous mash potatoes!). I must add, that the recipe from which my version originates didn’t include any parsley at all.

Ginger Chicken is cooked in a casserole. Slice an onion and 25 dkg of fresh mushrooms (I used champignon, but oyster mushrooms will do fine, too). Add salt, parsley and 4-5 cm of freshly grated ginger, then grind black pepper on top of it mix all well and lay it in the casserole.

Now whiten 80 dkg of chicken breast fillet (in 5×5 cm parts) on 1 or 2 tablesoons of very hot oil or fat and spice it with salt, black pepper and freshly ground nutmeg. When it’s white (and far from being done) lay it on top of the mushrooms and pour the sauce in the casserole, too.

Now mix 3 dl of sour cream with 3 whole eggs, add salt, black pepper, nutmeg, rosemary and pour it on top of everything. Very well. Cover it and put it into the oven for 45 minutes at 180 degrees.

Then, take off the cover, grate smoked cheese as much as you wouldn’t feel ashamed of, mix is with the remaining parsley and put it on top. Now, back into the oven for another 10 minutes. Yummy!

Beigli time!

Anywhere I looked on the net, I simply couldn’t find what the word ‘beigli’ means or where it comes from. I only know that it sounds German (but it isn’t), and everybody in Hungary knows what to use it for: the most typical Christmas cookie that comes in two main varieties: filled with nuts or with poppy seeds (I know, that sounds like spacecake, but believe me, you can’t eat so much poppy that would get you high). Since I personally don’t like the poppy kind, here’s the recipe for the nutty one. Beware that this recipe will make four pieces of unusually heavy cookie bars, but fortunately you can save them for weeks if you keep them tinfoiled in a dry, cool place.

First of all, make sure that everything you put into the dough is at room temperature! It’s very important, otherwise you will have a very hard time rolling it out.

Put 50 dkg of flour in a bowl, crumble 2.5 dkg yeast into it, then add 20 dkg handwarm margarine, 5 dkg pounded sugar, 4 eggs’ yolk, and 1.5 dl of high quality, fat milk. Knead it into 4 similar pieces of doughballs. No leave it alone for half an hour in a warm place and in the meantime, make the filling.

Boil 1 dl of water with 60 dkg of sugar. When the sugar is in a liquid state (but not yet caralmelized!) take it off from the cooktop and mix 80 dkg of ground walnut, 4 tablespoons of honey, 10 dkg of raisin, 14 dkg of ground biscuit, 1-2 dl of warm water, and finally, grate the peel of a lemon into it. Mix it very, very thoroughly.

Oh darling, let me tell you, it isn’t the easiest task to try to write a recipe in English on the morning of New Year’s Day while listening to The Inspiration of William Blake. Especially when I realize that the 3rd track (Bananas) uses exactly the same vocal samples that Mike Oldfield used on The Songs of Distant Earth. It’s a feeling! LOL!

So now, that the filling is done, let’s roll out the four pieces of dough and fill them. Try to roll the dough into rectangular shapes and make them 2-3 mm thin. Then lay the filling evenly in a makisushi making fashion and furl it up. Take a fork and pierce the top many times so it won’t crack open in the oven. You can put half walnuts on top as a decoration, too.

Now put all four rolls on the pan on baking paper, and plaster it with egg yolk. Bake it in a preheated oven at 160 degrees for at least 45 minutes.

Yummy!

The name says it quite differently.

Székelykáposzta, which literally translates Székely cabbage (székely being the folk living in Transsylvania, among other things, like vampires, dragons and such) is a traditional Hungarian dish, which doesn’t relate to Transsylvanian cuisine at all. It was named by a rather famous (but not very good) Hungarian poet Sándor Petőfi, after he saw senior archivist József Székely eating stew mixed with fermented cabbage in a restaurant.

And that’s what it is, mainly, stew mixed with fermented cabbage.

Take 80 dkg of fine-looking pork’s crop, dice it into 1×1 cm cubes, and put it on 1-2 tablespoon of fat or oil, along with 2 nicely chopped onions, 25 dkg of smoked and cooked ham in similar cubes, some salt (carefully, because the smoked ham and the fermented cabbage are salty, too!) and black pepper. When it lightens up, add 2 teaspoons of red pepper, some ground caraway seeds, and half a glass of water.

Cook it slowly, under cover until it’s tender. Then mix it with 1 kg of fermented cabbage, add water so it almost covers it, put back the cover on it and cook for another 45 minutes.

Eat it with fresh white bread and sour cream on top. For days and days and days, because the more times you heat it up, the better it tastes.

Christmas supper

Phew! My first ever turkey turned out to be almost perfect, the only imperfection being that it had a little assymetric pose so when we took it out of the pan, it lost half of its right wing. Oh, and yes, unfortunately Boyfriend didn’t have time to take pictures because everyone was very excited to taste it (we were 6 around the table) so I immediately started to slice it. Hence, you have to imagine how beautifully evenly golden-brown it became having been spending 3 hours in the oven!

Okay, so this is how I did it. I put the 4 kg baby turkey covered in salt water in the fridge for 24 hours. Don’t worry, it won’t drown. It’s already dead. Plus, underwater turkeys look pretty cool, as you can see in the picture. Which reminds me of my dad who bought 5 living turkeys once, because he wanted to be entertained. He was motivated by what happened the day before, when he visited his neighbour who happened to have turkeys in his backyard. They both watched when one of the turkeys approached the drinking trough, started to drink, fell asleep and drowned. Yeah, turkeys aren’t very bright, you see. But it isn’t the brains we want to eat, right?

A day later I took it out of the water and rinsed it with a kitchen cloth. Then I mixed 20 dkg of butter with white pepper and salt and a tablespoon of olive oil (because the oil holds back the butter from spraying everywhere in the oven). Using a tablespoon, I carefully detached the skin off the meat wherever I could, and then I stuffed around half the butter underneath and distributed evenly. Believe me, it sounds more complicated than it actually is. Turkeys – it seems – were designed to be stuffed this way.

I laid 3 sliced carrots, a large celery root, 2 big onions and fresh thyme on the bottom of the pan and put the turkey on top of that. The legs turned out to be quite long so I bound them together with a piece of tinfoil which Boyfriend spun into kind of a rope. I poured a glass of water in the pan, put a piece of tinfoil on top of the bird (but I didn’t cover it completely, I just didn’t want the top to burn) and left it alone in the oven for 2 hours at 180 degrees (and tried to deal with my anxiety by watching Glee).

Then I removed the tinfoil and poured the juice accumulated under the bird on top of it so the skin could get evenly brown and put it back for another 1 hour.

Boyfriend made his trademark mashed potatoes while I quickly cooked chickpea soup.

Put 2 small onions and 2 cloves of garlic sliced well in 1 tablespoon of olive oil, salt it and wait until the onion gets glassy. Grate 3-4 cm of fresh ginger in it. Then add 1 liter of water, a broth tablet, coriander seeds, cumin, saffron, salt and black pepper and wait until it boils. Then add half a Chinese cabbage in 4×4 cm slices, boil for 5 minutes and put a can of chickpea (clean it under running water first) and boil for another 5 minutes.

It’s easy, quick and nice, but beware, chickpeas make you full in no time, so don’t eat much if you want to enjoy the second meal!

Merry Christmas now, darling. I’m going to cook and bake a few other things today, so keep in touch!

Come what may

Now that we have an oven, I’m going to let you know the best oven dishes I know, darling.

First of all, Boyfriend’s favourite of course, Potato Casserole (or, Layered Potatoes, as we call it here in Hungary). A very easy food to make (if you get access to yummy spicy smoked sausages and Transsylvanian ham).

Take 1 kg of potatoes, 2 onions, 25 dkg of Transsylvanian ham, half a meter spicy smoked sauage and slice them all. In the meantime, make 6 hard boiled eggs. Now take your bigger casserole and level by level lay them down in the pot. Onions first, then ham, then sausage, then potatoes. Now spice it with salt, black pepper, basil, marjoram and tarragon. Then again, onions, ham, sausage, now slice up the eggs and add a layer of them on top of it, then potatoes, spices and 2 tablespoons of sour cream. Continue with the rest of the eggs and the potatoes, spice the top again and cover it.

Into the 250 degree oven for 40 minutes! Add an egg to 3 dl of sour cream and when the potatoes are tender, remove the cover, pour it on top and grill it for another 5-6 minutes.

Eat it with fresh white bread, as much as you can.

Yum yum tom yum: a different kind

No. It isn’t your memory that has a whitespace. I haven’t posted the not-different-kind tom yum recipe yet. It’s because I wanted to make one which is closer to the authentic than my own recipe first.

Tom yum (ต้มยำ) is a Thai noodle soup, one can make it with chicken, then it’s called tom yum gai, or with fish, then it’s tom yum pla, but I like to make it with prawn (in this case, it is called tom yum goong, yes, like the Tony Jaa movie). Since it’s a very common meal in Thai cuisine, there are hundreds of recipes, and of course, it’s best the way everyone’s grandma makes it. I made this recipe by putting two together, and the soup turned out to be pretty good, and it also taught me a very important lesson. As I always cook in my head first, sometimes there are things that sound a little uncomfortable. Never again I should force these ingredients into the food. That is how I felt about the concentrated milk in this recipe and I didn’t feel okay about it in the end. However, my friends liked it more than my other (milkless) recipe, so I think you should try both and decide for yourself, darling.

Put half a liter of water on the cooktop, and add two heads of small red onions and a few cloves of garlic crushed, a few slices of galanga or ginger, a tom yum broth tablet (of course), a thinly sliced lemongrass, 2 small cilantro roots, 5 kaffir lime leaves and wait until it starts to boil. Then add prawn, the more the merrier, but make sure that you turn your cooktop on low heat because you don’t want the prawn to get overcooked and stiff. Mix 3 tablespoons of red curry paste with 2-3 tablespoons of concentrated milk (not the sweetened kind!) and add it to the soup. Add a handful of sliced onions, and another handful of sliced cucumber. You can also add a diced tomato. Now take it off from the cooktop, put 20 dkg of ramen noodles, cover it and leave it alone for no more than 3 minutes.

In the meantime, put 3 tablespoons of lime juice, 3 tablespoons of fish sauce and hot chili in everyone’s plate. Serve the soup on top and laugh loudly when everyone starts to sweat around the table.

Oriental noodle soups are meant to be eaten using chopsticks, not spoons!

Godzilla alla cacciatora

Chicken cacciatore (or pollo alla cacciatora) is the ultimate quick supper in my kitchen. That is, quick to make and even quicker to eat.

I made this typically summer evening dish on yesterday’s cold, wet winter eve, while Boyfriend, Bestfriend and I rushed threadless.com because there was a $9 sale of which I read in Ragnar Tørnquist’s twitter feed. Yes, it’s so easy to cook that you can even buy cool tees in the meantime!

Okay, so put 2 well-sliced onions on 2 tablespoons of oil, salt it and wait until the onion gets transparent. Then stir-fry 80 dkg of chicken breast neatly diced into 2×2 cm pieces, salted and peppered well. While the meat gets white, spice it with some nutmeg and a little rosemary. Add a few cloves of nice garlic and let it boil slowly under cover until the meat is tender.

Then add 2 sliced tomatoes, a bloodred bell pepper diced and 25-30 dkg of green string beans. Also, mix in 3-4 tablespoons of tomato purée (no, ketchup won’t do this time). Low heat, another 15 minutes.

Eat it with some high quality rice (no salt or spices, let the rice taste natural).

Now you only have to wait until your übercool tees arrive from far away America. Like this one, what I ordered yesterday. Godzilla rulez.

Boyfriend’s Favourite

I don’t know how to make Chili con carne. But I know how to eat it, and shallow thing or not, it satisfies me. And it also inspired me once, when I tried to make it without seeking any help. This is what it’s become.

Take 60 dkg of ground pork’s crop, stir-fry it together with a nicely diced onion on a tablespoon of oil until it gets a very light brown colour and the onion makes a little bit of water in the pot. Salt it and pepper it, add a few cloves of garlic, then oregano, basil, marjoram (a little bit of each), a teaspoon of red paprika, some hot chili, a tablespoon of ketchup, and if available, some sweet chili sauce. Mix it well, add one tomato sliced well, let it boil for 5 minutes. Then add half a kg of canned beans of your choice, and a few tablespoons of sweet corn (I use the canned kind here, too), cover it and leave it on middle heat for 10 minutes.

When I serve it, I grate smoked cheese on top of it and eat it with fresh toast.

Makes Boyfriend happy as ever.

A hard day’s night

So I will not whine, but this wasn’t the best day this year. But all’s well if ends well, and the day ended very well, with a big plate of Pollo estofado de las Palmas. Yummy! And tangerines afterwards.

So, you make this dish on any bad day for supper and believe me, it will miraculously heal the evening. First, prepare a nice aromatherapy bath. 10 drops of ylang-ylang, 10 drops of jasmine, and a few tablespoons of honey into the water, and be good and light up a sandal-wood insence stick of better quality. Massage your eyes and forehead with a piece of natural sponge, and maybe use one of Aldo Vandini’s divine creme showers. Then drink a cup of hot Genmaicha tea (玄米茶) in the tub, and trouble will melt like lemondrops, as Judy Garland promised. Yes, I admit. I am a hedonist.

After the wonderful bath, into the kitchen! For 2 persons (and it is exactly for 2, so don’t hope for leftovers), take half a kg of chicken breast fillet, slice it into very small pieces (small like a thumbnail). Salt it and pepper it well, then stir-fry on 1 tablespoon of very hot oil. When it is all white, add 2 onions, sliced well, a few cloves of garlic, a handful of laurel leaves, a teaspoon of noble sweet red paprika, mix thoroughly, then pour 2-2.5 dl of dry red wine in it. Cover it and let it boil for half an hour on middle heat.

In the meantime, fry 4 bigger potatoes, sliced into very small (1.5×1.5 cm) cubes on 2 tablespoons of very hot oil. Stir continuously, until the potato is almost ready.

Now add the fried potatoes to the meat, mix them and let them boil for another 5 minutes, under cover, on medium heat.

Sleep well.