[Sca-cooks] Hungarian foods

[Varju at aol.com]

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In a message dated 9/10/2001 11:37:49 AM Mountain Daylight Time,
mark.s.harris at motorola.com writes:


> So, does someone have a good recipe for "real" goulash? And what
> are these "gulyas, porkolt, paprikash"? Any reason to believe
> these might or might not be foods from before 1600 AD?
>

Well, for modern Hungarian dishes like gulyas, porkolt or paprikas I highly
recommend George Lang's _Cuisine of Hungary_.  A VERY basic rundown on what
each of these is follows (just be aware there is a lot of variation):

gulyas: a  thick stew of diced beef, bacon, onions and vegetables  (usually
tomatoes, green peppers), plus a "garnish" of potaotes or galushka (small
dumplings)

porkolt: diced meat that is browned with onions, garlic and paprika, usually
in bacon fat, then vegetables like tomatoes and green peppers are added, and
often tomato puree is added

paprikas: diced meat that is browned in bacon fat with onion, then has
paprika and  added, some recipes include a tomato or tomato paste, this is
all cooked together, and just before serving sour cream is added to thicken
the sauce

A related dish is toakny which ia diced meat browned in bacon fat with
onions, then cooked in water or wine, the sauce is usually thickened at the
end with sour cream.  It can have paprika, but not always.

Based on the ingredients you can tell none of these recipes is period, at
least in the recipes we can find.  Tokany has the most potential, but we
really don't have any way of knowing. There are two cookbooks that are
supposed to be period in the Szechenyi Library in Budapest, but to date they
have not been translated into English or even modern Hungarian.


Noemi
who has given up on period Hungarian food and has gone to German recipes