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The Hungarian cuisine has gradually created its own world of gastronomy.
The wide variety of pork dishes can be explained by the fact that the Kiskunság was a
territory occupied by the Turks. The ransoming Turkish soldiers took all domestic
animals except for pigs - as they were Moslems. The onion gives the typical flavour
and the basis of many Hungarian dishes. The essential oils are released by frying in
oil. The character of the dish is determined if the finely chopped onion is slightly
fried or fried in oil until golden yellow as it results in different tastes. The red
paprika wasn't at all known in the old Hungarian cuisine. Its use spread slowly. The
taste and colour of the paprika are optimally released if added to the finely chopped
onion fried in oil. This is the so-called stew base used for making Hungarian dishes
like stew, goulash, paprika, beef-stew. The pulpified mash of garlic is added to
The above mentioned dishes and the special technology of making stews - simmering with
little amount of liquid until frying more times - gives the dishes a unique and highly
enjoyable flavour.
Seasoning should be moderate - with all kinds of spices. Proper seasoning emphasises,
the individual taste of the dishes. It would be a mistake to believe that typical
Hungarian dishes are extremely sharp. We don't add them to the dishes because they are
highly nutritional but because they give the dishes a highly enjoyable taste. The
Hungarian cuisine uses more sour cream than the average but sweet cream is also
frequently used for making the food more delicious. Sour cream is in harmony with the
taste of chicken paprika, veal and lamb. But our cabbage dishes (e.g. stuffed cabbage,
layered cabbage and pork stew with sauerkraut - "székelykáposzta") diced pasta with
curd cheese, pasta squares mixed with minced ham, noodles with ham and a number of
sweet cakes can hardly be imagined without sour cream.
Many soups, sauces, vegetable dishes are made with sour cream, and it is also used as a
decoration.
The Hungarian cuisine offers a wide variety of soups both in respect by way of
preparation and ingredients. Some soups and vegetable dishes are thickened with roasted
flour. This way of preparing dishes is typical only of Hungarian cuisine. Fine flour is
mixed with the same amount of oil. Flour is put into hot oil and fried to the required
degree. This mixture is taken off the cooker, thinned with cold water and stirred
until smooth. This emulsion is then added to the previously soft boiled soup and
vegetable dish ingredients.
Our salads are made with salty, vinegar dressings and eaten like pickles with meat
dishes.
The pride of our gastronomy is the wide range of various noodles. Sweet and salty
noodles are made of kneaded dough and also added to different soups. Salty noodles
(cabbage and pasta squares mixed with minced ham) are typically consumed as the
finishing course in Hungarian cuisine. Various dumplings are made of potato batter.
The crepes, strudels, the cottage cheese patty, the golden puff gnocchi made of raised
dough and doughnuts are all tasty, nourishing desserts.
The ancestors of people living on the Hungarian Great Plain were mainly herdsmen.
Cooking in stew-pots - even today a favourite way of cooking - originated from that
time. The herdsmen pasturing their animals in the Puszta could only have a hot meal if
they cooked it for themselves.
Goulasch, cellar beef stew, well seasoned beef pörkölt with red wine and potatoes, fish
soup, mutton stew, etc. are dishes typically cooked in stew pot, on an open fire. The
Kiskunság is part of the Hungarian Great Plain and the Cumanians who settled here
liked to cook potatoes, mashed potato with smoked sausage and and potato pancakes.
Cabbage is prepared in many different ways: It is chopped up into small pieces and and
soured or whole cabbages are stored in pits to preserve from frost. The granulated,
dried gnocchi made of flour and eggs, - the 'tarhonya', of Turkish origin, well-known
throughout the Great Plain, - was made by housewives at home in a round-bottom hutch
grooved from a tree trunk. The diggers and herdsmen were far from home usually for
months and they took the dried pastry in a linen bag and they could prepare tasty
dishes in a short time (gnocchi soup, potato with gnocchi, thick gnocchi, rind of
bacon with gnocchi) .The millet seed mush, German wheat mush and Jerusalem artichoke
were the food of the poor at the time, they are not consumed nowadays but stuffed
cabbage with crushed barley - the 'szárma' - has survived.
The Hungarians learned the word for oven (kemence) and the construction of the object
itself on the Southern Russian steppes. Crested oven - the large earthenware oven
shaped like a rick - was widespread on the Great Plain. It was heated with brushwood,
reed and turf. Meat and cakes for festive days were baked in the oven. Meat, ham,
sausage, and bacon were smoked in an open chimney built to its side. Restaurants are
using it more and more frequently for baking home made bread, baker's ware, goose
liver, pig, poultry, whole meats and fish. Roasting the spit can be a programme by
itself but it can also accompany a riding show, vintage and any other outdoor or
waterside event. The young lamb, pig or chicken is seasoned, drawn on the spit and
rotated above glowing ember greased with fat or bacon. According to folk experience
the best spits are made of sloe wood or willow wood. Anyone can roast a smaller fish,
pork en brochette, spare rib stake by him- or herself.There was ox -roasting at places
where big crowds gathered together. The big spit with the ox is put on two branches
which are put in the proper distance from each other It is fried over glowing ember
for at least 24 hours sprinkled with salty, spicy water. In so doing only the upper
layer of the meat will be fried which is then cut and the following layer can be fried
until the whole ox is cooked through. The fried steak is served on a large slice of
fresh home made bread.
Péter Kun, chief of the Karikás Csárda
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