Swiss National Day

Zorra who regularly organises different blog-events is a Swiss expat in Andalucia (Spain). She is sometimes homesick that's why she decided to celebrate the Swiss National Day with red and white food, the colours of the Swiss flag. It is a very easy task for a Hungarian gastroblogger because the most popular spice in the Hungarian cuisine is paprika. It is made by grinding of dried red peppers and according to the taste of the basic material it can be sweet (that is not hot) or hot. Sometimes even very hot but a real paprika eater cannot be surprised by the hottest chilies of the world. We use paprika generously. The dishes spiced with it have to be bright red. We also use sour cream (or créme fraiche) together with it to smooth the hotness, so we can have the colours of the swiss flag on our plates very often.

Pork fillet with paprika and sour cream (Bakonyi sertésborda) 

Ingredients for 3 persons:

6 slices of pork fillet

1 onion

2 tablespoonful of olive oil

1 clove of garlic

250 g mushroom 

salt, pepper

2-3 teaspoonfuls of paprika 

1 tablesoonful of beurre manié

créme fraiche according to taste 

Chop the onion finely and sauté in the oil. Crush the garlic and add to the onion in the last minute of sautéing. Take the saucepan off the heat and add the paprika. Stir immediately and add some water and the sliced mushrooms.  Put the saucepan back on the heat, season and simmer for some minutes. Add the meat slices and braise until the meat is tender. When it is ready, thicken with the beurre manié and cook another 5 minutes. Serve with créme fraiche and dumplings. 

Dumplings:

Mix approximately 250 g flour with salt and 2 eggs. Add lukewarm water until the batter is rather thick. Put small dumplins into boiling salted water with a small spoon. Sieve after some minutes and  heat the dumplings again in olive oil.

Inspired by the Swiss flag and a famous Hungarian dish.

International Women's Day

After having participated in her previous blog-event, Zorra sent me an invitation for the next one. This time she and her Italian fellow-blogger would like to celebrate the International Women's Day and asked the participants to prepare something yellow.
My very first idea had been to cook something with corn but then I remembered the very popular bird milk which is yellow indeed because its cream is made with many egg yolks. While I was planning my post I found the freshest issue of a Hungarian gastromagazine at the hairdresser's and I got to know that this dish is very old, some recipes were discovered from the end of eighteenth century and they were copied into the article in old-fashioned Hungarian, really funny.
We can prepare the bird milk (whose mutation is called floating island in other countries) anytime. My mother cooked it almost every day for me when my daughter was born. It was the sweetest way to persuade me to consume milk, and I did it. As for my daughter: she cannot bear it.

Bird milk

Ingredients for 6 portions:

1 l milk

4 eggs

100 g + 2 spoonfuls sugar

1 teaspoonful flour

1 pinch of salt

1 pod of vanilla

Divide the eggs and whip the whites with the salt. When it is rather stiff add 2 spoonfuls of sugar and whip until glossy. Warm the half of milk with the vanilla pod in a shallow saucepan and put dumplings of egg white into it with the help of a tablespoon. Boil the both sides of the dumplings for 1 minute each, then take them out on a sieve. Repeat it until all the egg whites are consumed. Don't overcrowd the pan because the dumplings grow during boiling. Mix the egg yolks with the rest of sugar and beat until light and foamy. Add the flour, bit by bit the cold milk and in the end sieve the hot milk into it. Boil the cream with continous stirring on low heat until thickens. Don't let it boil. Divide immediately into small bowls and top with the white dumplings. Serve chilled.

Valentine's Day

A Hungarian gastroblogger drew my attention to this blog, which had invited the bloggers to produce and publish posts about any edible hearts. I found many good ideas here, but the main idea was that anything could be heart-shaped, even savoury things. Since the Valentine's day is not really deeply rooted in our family we celebrate it moderately with just a piece of chocolate or something like this, always with a remark that it is a typical, commercial......pseudo-feast. But why not express love and gratitude with something? Something sweet? When I was a young wife and a young mother I was really keen on baking cakes and pastries every weekend. Now I prefer those things which can de prepared in a minute. This recipe is worth the revival: very tasty, sweet and sour in one bite and not a big fuss to bake. Many housewives knows this recipe in Hungary. It was first published in the middle of the 30-ies in a cookbook, which was sponsored by the producer of a famous brand of baking powder. This is a typical recipe of that transitional period when the smallholders began to use industrial products, like sugar, vanilla sugar, baking powder, but the most of the ingredients were available among the products of the farms. In our region, in Hódmezővásárhely, Hungary most of the landowners could afford a house in the town, but from the beginning of the Spring until Autumn they lived and worked together with the employers at the farm which was in about 5-15 km from the town. They produced wheat for flour, had cattles for milk, cream and butter. One surely could find a walnut tree beside the house at the farm, partly to give shade, partly for its fruits. There were several fruit trees, mostly plum and apricot. They hardly ate fresh fruit, but processed it for jam and pálinka, the typical brandy of this country. They collected the fruit in barrels. It was fermented on its own, and it was brewed at the breweries. The winter mornings began always with a small glass of pálinka for the men. It had to last until next Summer. This way of life disappeared with the World War II, but the recipes remained. If apricot jam is not available, one can use raspberry, because the sourness is essential to the proper combination with the sweet walnut.

Rich walnut pie

Ingredients:

300 g flour

100 g butter

100 g caster sugar

200 g sugar

5 eggs

200 g grated walnut

1 small jar of apricot or raspberry jam

2-3 spoonfuls of cream or sour cream

1 package of vanilla sugar

1 package of baking powder

1 lemon

2 pinches of salt

Mix the flour with the baking powder, vanilla sugar and 1 pinch of salt. Rub with the butter, add one egg and one yolk, the caster sugar and the grated rind of the lemon. Knead into a soft dough. If it is necessary add some cream or sour cream. Take aside. Mix the remaining 3 egg yolks with the sugar and the juice of the lemon until light and creamy, and stir in the grated nutmeg. Whip the egg whites with a pinch of salt and carefully mix with the walnut mixture. Take the 2/3 of the dough and roll out to the size of the baking tin. Lift it on the buttered tin and spread generously with apricot jam. Put the walnut mixture on the top and spread evenly. Roll out the remaining dough and cut it into thin stripes with a pizza cutter. Put the stripes on the top diagonally and bake the pastry in the oven at 175 C until slightly brown. When it is lukewarm sprinkle some caster sugar on the top and cut in squares or little hearts if it is Valentine's Day.

Inspired by Éva.