Pusstabrot (Hungarian White Bread)

This is a lovely white bread with a nice bit of extra flavour from the fennel seeds. I really liked it.

Pusstabrot

Slightly adapted from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads

Ingredients

• 1/2 tsp. fennel seeds
• 600-700g hard (strong/high grade/bread) flour, divided
• 2 tsp. coarse sea salt
• 2 Tbsp. sugar
• 1 1/2 c. hot (50-55°C) water
• 2 Tbsp. oil
• 4 1/2 tsp. active dry yeast
• 1 egg white
• 1 tsp. water

Directions

1. Gently roast the fennel seeds in a small frying pan.
2. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely, then grind with a mortar and pestle.
3. Combine ~400g of the flour with the salt, sugar, and ground fennel.
4. Stir to combine, then make a well in the centre.
5. Pour the hot water and oil into the well and sprinkle in the yeast.
6. Use a wooden spoon to stir the liquids from the centre, gradually pulling in just enough of the flour to form a thin batter.
7. Cover and set aside until the batter rises to cover the rest of the flour (~1 hour).
8. Once the batter has risen, uncover and begin stirring from the centre outward, gradually working in the rest of the flour.
9. Work in a bit more flour (100-200g) to stop the dough from being too sticky.
10. Turn out the dough and knead until smooth and elastic (10-20 minutes), working in the rest of the flour as needed to form a soft and supple dough.
11. Round the dough and return it to a covered bowl to rise (~1 hour).
12. Knead the dough for a few strokes, then shape as desired. This recipe will make either one large or two small loaves.
13. Place the shaped loaves on a greased baking sheet, cover, and set asdie to rise for 30-40 minutes.
14. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and place a pan of boiling water on the bottom rack.
15. Beat the egg white with the water and a pinch of salt.
16. Brush the loaves with the egg white mixture and slash as desired.
17. Sprinkle with extra fennel seeds
18. Bake at 180°C (350°F) until done. This may take anywhere from 20-50 minutes depending on whether you are baking one loaf or two and how well-risen they are.
19. Turn off oven, remove steam pan, and let loaves rest in hot oven for 5-10 minutes.
20. Transfer to wire rack to cool.

So, it turns out that you need a dedicated poppy seed grinder to grind poppy seeds. I tried using a blender, both with an without liquids without any luck. Lots of movement inside the blender, but no actual grinding going on. Apparently a coffee/spice grinder works, but my spice grinder can only handle a few tablespoons at a time. Not really practical when you have 250g of poppy seeds to grind! I've been told a meat grinder can be made to work if you use the finest plate and push down very hard. But I don't have one of those either. My grain mill might've worked, but I didn't really want to disassemble it to clean out the wheat and put the steel burrs in. In the end I just ended up using whole poppy seeds. The texture, of course, was different from what poppy seed filling is supposed to be like, but it seemed fine otherwise.

A word of warning: taste your poppy seeds before using them! When you're just scattering a few on the crust of your baked goods it doesn't matter so much. Even mixing a few tablespoons into the batter, the flavour and quality of the seeds doesn't matter that much. When you're making poppy seed filling though, the quality really matters. If your seeds taste bitter, that will come through strongly in the filling. Taste you seeds first! Make sure you have good ones.

Kolaches: top centre and bottom left with poppy seed filling

Poppy Seed Filling

Slightly adapted from Budapest Cooking Class

Ingredients

• 125mL milk
• 100g icing (powdered/confectioners') sugar
• 250g poppy seeds, ground¹
• 1 tsp. lemon zest
• 2 Tbsp. raisins (optional)

Directions

1. Sift icing sugar into milk and bring to a boil.
2. Remove from heat and stir in ground poppy seeds, lemon zest, and raisins (if using).
3. Cool completely before using to fill your baked goods.

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¹ You will need a poppy seed grinder to achieve this. If you don't have one, the filling can be made with whole poppy seeds, but the texture will be quite different. ^Back

Slow Cooker Hungarian Goulash

Goulash is one of those foods that I love, but have always had trouble with recipe-wise. I'm used to recipes with lots of seasonings and spices. How can something so simple, with only a handful of seasonings possibly come out tasty and flavourful! I know it's delicious, but I always find it hard to trust the recipe.

I've made goulash before. I'm pretty sure I've even made crockpot goulash before. But I don't have a really good "go-to" recipe. I usually just Google around until I find something that looks plausible. I've been impressed with the results from the Cook's Country recipes so far -- as long as I remember to reduce the salt! -- so I figured their goulash was worth a try too.

Hungarian Goulash
Slightly adapted from Cook's Country February/March 2015
4 lbs. stew beef
1 tsp. coarse sea salt
12 oz. jar roasted red peppers, rinsed
1/3 c. sweet Hungarian paprika (don't skimp or substitute on this!)
2 Tbsp. tomato paste
1 Tbsp. distilled white vinegar
5 Tbsp. water
2 Tbsp. canola oil
4 lbs. onions, chopped (recipe says 6 c., I got closer to 10 c.)
4-6 carrots, peeled and chunked
8 oz. sliced cremini mushrooms
3 Tbsp. flour
1 bay leaf
1/2 c. lactose-free sour cream (or whatever type of sour cream you prefer)
2 Tbsp. fresh parsley

1.  Season beef with 1/2 tsp. salt and place in slow cooker.
2. Blend (or process) the red peppers with the paprika, tomato paste, and vinegar. You may need to use some of the water to thin it out enough to blend smoothly.
3. Heat the oil in a large pot or Dutch oven. Add the onion, carrot, mushrooms, and remaining 1/2 tsp. salt. Cover and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Add the pepper mixture, flour, and bay leaf. Stir to coat the vegetables then allow to cook, without stirring, for at least 2 minutes.
5. Scrape the bottom of the pot and deglaze with any remaining water that was not used in the blending step.
6. Add the vegetable mixture to the slow cooker and stir to coat the meat.
7. Cover and cook on low for 7-8 hours (or 6-7 hours on high).
8. Turn off slow cooker and let stew rest for at least 5 minutes. Skim any fat from the surface.
9. Stir 1/2. c. of broth from the stew into the sour cream to temper it. Then stir the broth-y sour cream into the stew.
10. Adjust seasoning to taste. Sprinkle with parsley and serve! (Preferably over egg noodles or spaetzle.)

Csirkepaprikás Tarhonya (Chicken Paprikash with Tarhonya)

So I tried making chicken paprikash for the first time today:

It was delicious!

Who'd've thought that a pot of paprika and sour cream smothered chicken could taste so wonderful! I'm used to all the really delicious stuff containing lots of different spices and seasonings; this recipe didn't even call for garlic! And yet, it is still so very good.

I will admit that, before tasting another Hungarian dish that used paprika as one of the main ingredients, I really only thought of that lovely red powder as a garnish. Paprika is the stuff you sprinkle over deviled eggs or potato salad, right? It looks pretty but doesn't have much flavour of it's own. Unless maybe you get smoked or hot paprika, then you have some noticeable flavour and aroma, but still... I didn't really consider it a key component, just a mild, supplementary seasoning.

Once I'd tasted a few paprika-heavy dishes, I started to reconsider, but I'd still never really done anything myself that focused mainly on paprika. TF said he liked the idea of trying out a chicken paprikash recipe this weekend though, so I figured we'd give it a whirl.

This recipe is dangerous! It's delicious, fattening, and easy. Sauté some onions, toss in a bunch of paprika -- high quality paprika is crucial here! -- add your chicken and water. Cook, thicken up the sauce with some roux and sour cream while you bone the chicken. Toss the meat back in the pot and voilà! Really, dangerously easy.

The page I got the recipe from also had instructions for cooking tarhonya, which I'd never hear of before, but sounded pretty tasty. I decided to give that a try as well since paprikash really needs a substrate and tarhonya sounded both more delicious and more interesting than just boiling up some plain egg noodles. (Not that I have anything against egg noodles, they're wonderful, but it's always fun to try something different.)

I was expecting to find a package of pasta that was actually labeled "tarhonya" when I went to my local eastern European grocery store. If they had anything with that name, I certainly couldn't find it though. They did have a pasta section filled with neat little parcels of adorably tiny egg noodles. I found some that looked roughly the shape and size of the ones pictured on the recipe page in the hopes that they'd do the trick.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a picture of them before cooking, but here's what they looked like after:

They cooked up quite nicely and made for a perfect substrate for the saucy csirkepaprikás. The little, slightly irregular nuggets of pasta cooked up into savoury round beads of deliciousness, roughly the shape and size of Isreli couscous, but much firmer. They have a really nice mouthfeel and a bite somewhere between al dente pasta and brown rice. I thought they worked really well with the chicken and they'll definitely be my go-to side/substrate for it in the future!

The same brand of pasta was available in a bunch of different shapes. As I said, I got the one that seemed closest to what I'd seen in the online photos, but I think it'd be interesting to use the same method with some of the other shapes and see how they come out.

I also braised a little cabbage to go with this. Just so that I could at least pretend it was something like a balanced meal. The cabbage wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't anything to write home about either. Especially not after the sheer wonderfulness that was the rest of the meal. I just wanted to have a vegetable to go along with the rich, creamy sauce and buttery tarhonya.

This made for a wonderfully satisfying and tasty dinner and we had (and still have) plenty of tarhonya to go around, but I think I'd make a double batch of the paprikash next time. We did end up with leftovers, but not as many as I would've liked for such a delicious dish. Then again, there were three of us eating, and we sent some of the leftovers home with A, so we probably actually had ~8 servings of that succulent, saucy chicken all told. It just disappeared really fast!