Stories and recipes from my Hungarian family and the history of food in Hungary
Growing up in a hybrid household, words sometimes got scrambled. My Hungarian born father was the primary care giver when it came to food, so I learnt the Hungarian before the English, and often didn’t retain the translation. Kukorica (pronounced cook-a-ritz-ah) is a perfect example. This is sweetcorn, or corn. It took me years to […]
Read More Summer GoldMy father was the youngest of four children, arriving when his nearest sibling was 6 years old. By all accounts, Klári wasn’t thrilled with the arrival of a brother who usurped her place as the baby of the family. But absence makes the heart grow fonder, and they became very close in later years. It’s […]
Read More Magyar ShortbreadThis blog has mostly featured my Dad. He was in many ways the head cook and bottle washer in our family, and it is from him and my paternal family – aunts, grandma, that I learnt to cook. My mother wasn’t always very present in my child and teen hoods. She was a fragile soul […]
Read More Offally GoodAnyone of dual or more heritages will recognise this – the clash of your familial customs with the festive traditions of the home country. Growing up in Liverpool with a Hungarian father meant we didn’t quite follow the script laid down by others. It was only after I started school that I discovered other families […]
Read More FestiveMy original plan was to call this post Meaty Balls, mostly because despite my advanced age, I have a childish sense of humour that finds joy in wines called bastardo. But wiser counsel has prevailed as I don’t particularly want internet searches for this recipe to take folk down rabbit holes best not explored. Naked […]
Read More Naked StuffingHungary remains an agrarian country, less so than 30 plus years ago when it was still behind the Iron Curtain and thereby needed to be a self sufficient as possible, but the growing of food, both domestically and large scale continues. Not for Hungarians the manicured lawns and rose gardens, land is used for food […]
Read More Summer SurplusWhen I was a little girl, my parents were social animals. I grew up in the 70s, when the middle classes discovered dinner parties and cocktails. Barely a week went by without my mother spritzing herself in Blue Grass perfume and my father tackling his 5 o’clock shadow before adding the Aramis, whilst I lay […]
Read More Pogácsa – party onI was inspired to think about this after watching Olia Hercules and Alissa Timoshkina being interviewed by Caroline Eden as part of a #cookforUkraine event at the British Library. A question from the audience prompted reminiscing about life under Soviet rule, and the banning of religious holidays. During the communist rule (1949 to 1989), the […]
Read More Spring Sprinkling“The fire of love’s altar might die down, but the seduction of the stove is eternal. Every plate is the declaration of love, or its opposite: a quiet divorce.” – a fantastic quote from 19th C Hungarian romantic novelist Mór Jókai. Much admired by Queen Victoria, who was also someone who both loved and ate […]
Read More Seduction By StoveI do love a bit of alliteration but I am being slightly disingenuous in translating palacsinta as pancake, as it’s much closer to a crepe. Having said that, it is also similar to the British style of thin pancake rather than the thicker American version. Whatever you compare it to, the palacsinta is a thing […]
Read More Palacsinta, Pancake perfectionI’ve been recuperating from a major abdominal operation for most of January. This has meant not cooking, which is akin to inhumane treatment in my case because I use cookery as therapy. It soothes me. Stress melts away when I potter in the kitchen. But a moratorium on standing too long and lifting heavy pans […]
Read More Ice Cream DreamsIt is absolute brass monkeys here in Liverpool today. Proper snow and ice on the ground of the type that my Hungarian relatives deal with each winter. Except for them it lasts for months, not two days. Hungarian weather is not dissimilar to Tuscany. Long hot summers, perfect for ripening grapes and soft fruits, and […]
Read More Rakött – the Art of the Bake part 2My Hungarian grandfather or nagypapa was a bread head. He loved carbs and would, as the family saying went, eat bread with bread. No meal was complete without bread to mop sauces, dip in soups, or even form the main meal spread with dripping and paprika, and topped with sliced onion. It’s a love I […]
Read More Bread with breadThere is a basic triumvirate of Hungarian cookery. The fözelék, the pörkölt and the paprikás. Each method can be altered slightly to suit the main ingredient you have in abundance. The fözelék is vegetable or pulse based – I’ve written about it on here – and doesn’t really translate other than as a vegetable pottage, […]
Read More PaprikásWhen I was born, my father had just received his British citizenship and thus was able, after 10 long years, to return to Hungary to see his family. As is the way, I arrived and my grandfather Aladár departed, in the same month of August so I didn’t get to meet my paternal grandfather or […]
Read More NagymamaCake. It’s a marvellous thing. Cheers and consoles in equal measure. Cake has a central role in Hungarian cuisine. Cafes abound in every town, serving sumptious patisserie, to be eaten with delicate precision by older ladies dressed in the purples, greys and blacks of their widowhood. No visit back to Hungary during my childhood was […]
Read More Afternoon delight‘Comfort me with apples” has always seemed a strange one to me. Although it is for the lovesick swain in the Song of Solomon, rather than a person grieving loss, apples are not my go to for comfort food in any circumstance requiring succour. At a pinch I’d allow apple pie or cake but the […]
Read More Comfort food“Happy birthday, happy birthday” – my teen era is defined by Altered Images and Claire Grogran chirruping her way through this the year I turned 13. I’m an August baby. Much of my family is too – my maternal grandfather, paternal grandmother, aunt, cousins and niece all have August as their start date. Even my […]
Read More Birthday CakeRakott. Translates as “casserole” in food terms but rather pleasingly to my mind, also means pleats, like those pleated petticoats worn as Hungarian folk dress by men and women alike. Women wear as many as 40 at a time – denoting their status and marriage prospects, layers and layers of frothy white petticoats that force […]
Read More Rakott – the art of the bakeIt’s that time of year when the courgettes in the veg patch have absorbed all of that lovely summer rain and swollen into marrows. This makes them a little bit watery, dilutes the flavour a bit but makes them perfect for stuffing or if you’re a Magyar, you make tökfőzelék. Yep. It’s yet another variation […]
Read More Marvellous MarrowsWith the timing only I can manage, I’ve chosen to write about spinach főzelék just as the weather here in Liverpool has suddenly remembered that it’s August and has finally stopped raining. In my defence, last week it was proper ark building weather so I thought a lovely comforting bowl of creamy garlicky spinach was […]
Read More Popeye’s favouriteI love cherries. I eat them like sweeties, in greedy handfuls. Spitting out the stones inelegantly, and occasionally tallying them up old school – tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. Usually thief. I like to think that means a thief of hearts rather than an actual robber but who knows? […]
Read More Cherry loveAs the weather in Northern England has finally decided to allow us a little glimpse of summer, it seems an apposite time to write about that stalwart of Hungarian summer drinks – the fröccs. Pronounced (by my father) as Frutch – it’s a white wine and soda or spritz. But obviously, being a Hungarian drink, […]
Read More Fröccs and more…Say what now? főzelék? (pronounced fur-zel-lake) What’s that when it’s at home? Well, that’s kind of the point. You’ll rarely find főzelék in a restaurant, though I hear the new generation of Hungarian chefs are starting to bring this epitome of home cooking into their culinary world. So what is it? It’s a way of […]
Read More FőzelékI’ve mentioned previously the long trek from Liverpool to Hungary undertaken every summer by my family and I. Three to four days in a non air conditioned car, fighting with my sisters, shouting at my father to NOT overtake on a blind bend as we drove through various mountain passes, waving at other GB stickered […]
Read More Longing for LángosI was wittering on Twitter the other day about how right Proust was about his madeleines and how the taste, scent or sight of food can trigger memory. Being a somewhat greedy person, there are rather more of these sensory triggers in my life than just a simple cake. One of them is sorrel. A […]
Read More Sour Times“It’s not enough to have talent, you also have to be Hungarian” Robert Capa We are poor, but we eat well. Antal Aladarné My grandmother said this often. My father also. I would retort, we are poor because we eat well. But it’s true. Eating well in Hungary is mandatory. In fact it’s impossible not […]
Read More Finom, finom, pompás, pompás
Finom - the food of Hungary 