The Milk Lady

Finding Hungarian cheese in Hungary

From Hungarian Adventures! by Jon Clark

May 28, 2009

I have what can only be explained as an Oregonian’s natural love of the outdoors. Maybe that’s why I never fully explored the two modern buildings that make up a part of my farmer’s market in Szeged, Hungary. Keep in mind that even in the winter, the outdoor portion fills about 100 tables. You can imagine how full it is these days now that spring is yielding it’s fruits (and vegetables). So it is, perhaps, forgivable to have overlooked these two extra buildings across the way. After all, when I did peak in one of them before all I saw were shoes and clothes and those are not good eats.

This particular market, Mars tér, is open every day of the week. Whenever I go there I love to browse the stalls and see what new items have arrived since the previous visit. Right now there is a lot happening: strawberries have arrived and are being sold by the tray full, green peas followed, now there are even cherries! I’ve spent a lot of time there learning the names of the fruits, vegetables, herbs, and getting the feel for how things work. I thought I had everything figured out after getting acquainted with the two major purveyors of sauerkraut and other pickled goodies, but during this time I had been lacking something.

Despite my fresh eggs, duck, vegetables, fruits, handmade pastas, and garlands of paprika and garlic, I was missing cheese, a lot. A couple of months ago I was craving some sharp Tillamook cheddar, and I couldn’t find a good source of cheese anywhere. I did eventually find a cheese shop that imports Dutch cheeses that also has a small selection of French and Italian cheeses, but I was left wondering how this was enough for Szeged. All I could ever find in the super and hyper markets were mass-produced, imported cheeses. Where were the good imports? And where was Hungary’s contribution? “There are great hand-made cheeses,” one of my Hungarian colleagues told me, “you simply have to go out to the countryside and get them from the dairy farms.” Well, that was a good tip, but it still didn’t solve the mystery of what the 170,000+ people in the city of Szeged did to find good cheese. Did they really all head out to the country?

It wasn’t until I was recently invited to lunch at another colleagues home that the subject of cheese came up and I got my answer. She told me that I could buy it from the cheese lady in the Mars tér farmer’s market. It was under my nose the whole time?! “You can find her in one of the modern buildings that are a part of the market,” she said. Was the cheese lady tucked away behind some shoes?! Clearly, it was time to take another look at those buildings.

Well, suffice to say, finding the cheese lady was this week’s all-important mission. And find her I did. Of the two brick buildings, only one is filled with clothes and shoes, the other has stalls for baked goods, various other food stalls, and the Tejpiac, the milk market. She was all alone the first day, last Wednesday, dressed in a white apron embroidered with colorful tulips in the Kalocsai motif, her eyes wrinkled and happy, and her hands showing the signs of years of hard work. I knew I was in the right place. Before her were displayed various hand-made cheeses that I tasted: two kinds of sheep’s milk túró, cow’s milk túró, and a soft-rind cow’s milk cheese that was lightly smoked and similar to Gouda. (“Túró,” Hungarian for “curd,” is a fresh cheese that is a kind of quark, similar to fromage frais.) I also wanted butter but she had already sold out. So I left with a wedge of the Gouda-like cheese, and was told to return the next day.

I arrived earlier the next day to the milk market and saw that there were five other women working there too. But even amongst other choices I felt a loyalty to the woman I had met the day before. Maybe it was because she reminds me of my grandmother, or because she ends each transaction with, “Minden jót!” a wish for everything to be good for you, or maybe it was the trust I had in her from seeing her knowledge and experience reflected in her eyes and her hands. I decided to buy some of the sheep’s milk túró and noticed that she was selling milk by the liter. I was interested in learning more. I began to ask questions such as, “Where is the milk from?”, “What kind of cow”, “Is it pasteurized?”, and “How long is it good for?” She proudly told me that the milk comes from a village about 15 kilometers outside Szeged called Forraskut, that the milk is raw and comes from a Hungarian breed, and that it would stay fresh for about three days. I decided to buy a liter even though I was still a little hesitant about it being raw milk. On top of that while I’ve come to expect surprises here, I was still a bit shocked at the sight sight of a used water bottle becoming my fresh milk container. I was also struck at the price! A liter of milk from her costs 120 HUF/liter whereas it costs closer to 200 HUF from the grocery store.

Walking home from the milk market I basked both in the sunshine of the warm afternoon and in my pride of having successfully obtained new products and new information using only Hungarian, at least pseudo Hungarian anyway. At that moment I realized that although I had sought her out for some fresh homemade cheese, she was a source of all kinds of fresh dairy products. She wasn’t simply a cheese lady, she worked with real, fresh milk and used her skill to create many different products. I returned again on Friday to have another crack at getting some butter. She had some, and it was formed in a little wheel! Naturally when Franny was in town on Saturday, I had to take her to see the cheese lady and share in the glorious discovery of the milk market. We left with more butter, some cream and another liter of milk. This time, though, I brought a Nalgene bottle to tote the milk home.

The taste of the milk is difficult to describe. It has a smell that tells you that it came from a cow, and the feel of it on the tongue is heavy. It has a natural sweetness that’s different than the pasteurized milk that most of us are used to. The butter is unbelievably sweet and creamy tasting more like whipped cream than butter. The túró has a taste similar to that of feta, but is spreadable. I’m very happy to have finally found this source of good dairy and am excited to put it to good use.

Bear’s Onions

From Hungarian Adventures! by Jon Clark

May 4, 2009

Bear onions? Why would these be called bear onions? I turned to my usual methods for sleuthing items from the farmer’s market that I don’t recognize. I start with the Hungarian name and try to find a reference on the internet with a scientific name; then I use that scientific name to search for the English handle. In this instance medvehagyma, a word I can translate with my very limited Hungarian to “bear onions,” turned into allium ursinum. This translates to ramsons, or wild garlic, or bear’s garlic. According to Wikipedia, it is a close relative of the chive, and I can smell the resemblance! So what do bears have to do with these leaves that look like they were stripped from a Lilly of the valley? Again according to Wikipedia, brown bears love to dig up the bulbs in the spring when both the plant and animal come out of hibernation.

The bulbs spring forth with the water and sunshine and so do the bears in need of some good fresh nutrients, and what easier plant to find than one that you just need to follow your nose to! And why not? We all know garlic is good for us, and there are studies and articles (here and here) to back this up. Bear’s garlic, like most or all varieties, contains sulfur compounds (divinyl sulfide, dimethyl thiosulfonate, methyl cystein sulfoxide and the latter’s degradation products: methyl allyl thiosulfonate and methanethiol). It was only upon looking up these compounds that I learned what the plant really does for our health. All of those sulfur compounds relax blood vessels and may fight chances of developing various cancers. When preparing garlic and garlic varieties be sure to chop, mince, or crush your garlic at least 10 minutes before cooking it. According to said studies and articles that time is needed to produce the enzymes to do all of this good work. And it’s yet another reason to complete your mise en place!

After I got them home and washed them I noticed the smell had dissipated. If one is worried he or she might be eating a Lilly of the valley instead of ramsons, don’t panic; simply rub the leaf. If you smell garlic, you’re at the right plant! According to a few sources, including Spice Pages, there are no other species that look like allium ursinum that have any hint of garlic as part of their profile, but always be careful when foraging. For my North American readers there are many celebrated relatives of ramsons (including ramps!), but I have found no evidence that ramsons grow in your backyard, unless of course they hitched a ride as good plant species often find ways of doing.

When I first tasted it by itself I was welcomed with a fresh garlic taste and a crisp texture similar to fresh romaine lettuce. Ramsons can be eaten as part of a salad or make up an entire salad on its own; the flowers and bulb may be eaten as well. I found the flavor of flowers to be even stronger than the leaves. As I continued my research on this plant I found numerous allusions to eating the plant leaves as fresh as possible because the perfume will fill the kitchen and not the food when cooked too much. Think about stirring some chopped leaves into a just finished potato cream soup and letting the heat soften them. As a pesto it has a dominant “green” flavor with only a little bit of a spicy edge. Yum!

Happy “bear” hunting!

Lasagna

From Hungarian Adventures! by Jon Clark

March 24, 2009

When I had to make a special dinner last night what came to mind? Lasagna...hmmm, fresh pasta lasagna...hmmm, a tri-color fresh pasta lasagna, that’s it!

I have a basil plant and it has a name: Rupert Basilbear. (You can blame Franny for the last name, and yes, I feel like a dork.) Anyway, I harvested some fresh basil and added it to a very large portion of some market spinach, which I bought a 1/2 kilo of on Saturday and am scrambling to eat. After blanching the spinach in salted water I added it to the basil, garlic, salt, and some olive oil and blended it until I had a spinach pesto. Green? Done.

For the color white I chose to count the fresh pasta which was a 1/3 all-purpose flour (finomliszt for those of you who are keeping track of the Hungarian) and 2/3 durum mixture. Included with this layer is the cheese mixture, for which I caramelized one large onion with crushed red pepper and after chilling it to room temperature I added 250g of ricotta, and 200 grams of finely chopped mozzarella and mixed it thoroughly. White layer? Check!

Last up: red team. Now I almost went with tomatoes for this one, but there aren’t any in season of course. I could have chosen some canned sauce, but resolved to wait until summer (when I will down a kilo of fresh tomatoes a day) to draft tomatoes onto this team. I decided to try something new, but stay within cold weather traditions. I started with a base of cream and butter for the sauce and added fresh paprika until I had a bright red cream sauce ready to complete the tri-color. As expected it tasted like roasted peppers....delicious!

To assemble: I started with paprika cream sauce, laid down pasta sheets, put some caramelized onion cheese mixture on top of that, and finished the pattern with spinach pesto. I built up a five layer lasagna and put it into a 175 C oven for about 40 minutes and cooked it to perfection. All of the flavors worked together really well. The salty caramelized cheese mixture was balanced by the roasted pepper sauce, which was put in check by the fresh green taste of the spinach pesto, and to hold it all together the pasta sheets were chewy and delicious.

I was really happy about this dish for a couple of reasons: 1) the prep work (pesto making, onion cooking, cheese mixing, sauce making, and pasta kneading) took an hour and a half, which was good quality me time, 2) I had Franny to help roll out the pasta sheets by hand (the pasta machine is in Kalocsa) and help with the assembly, and 3) olive oil being the only exception, all the ingredients came from the market or are local. The eggs, garlic, spinach, and even the paprika came from farmer’s markets while the cream, butter, flour, salt, and basil all came from Hungary. Buon Appetito!

Hungarian Transitions

From Hungarian Adventures! by Jon Clark

March 20, 2009

First a little geography: Hungary is located in central Europe and is surrounded by 7 different countries, one of which being Austria which was the seat of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Austria and Hungary also have something else in common: the Mangalica pig, which I’ll talk about later. Hungary acts a little bit like a bridge between eastern Europe and western Europe. A lot of the cultural ties lean to the west, and many Hungarians consider their country to be either western or central European. References to the east are often not well received. The country is completely landlocked, but boasts one of the biggest lakes and network of thermal water sources in Europe.

The culture is as diverse and complicated as its history. Without going into too much detail, the wake of the Treaty of Trianon is still felt in daily life here. I could also add that the losses of every major conflict since the Battle of Mohács in 1526 have resulted in an interesting sort of pessimism, but I digress. The point being that the country of Hungary, while being 98% Hungarian, boasts cultural areas well outside its current borders. One of the most famous regions is Transylvania (in Hungarian, “Erdély”) in Romania. The Transylvanian region alone, which I had the pleasure of touring the northern half of last fall, was not even historically considered exclusively Hungarian but very diverse and the birthplace of many staunch food traditions within the current political borders.

Even inside the current borders there are many different areas of Hungary that hold different traditions, recipes, and variations because of locale. For example Szeged is situated on the river Tisza, which provides fish and ideal weather conditions for processing pork. Over 100 years ago the Pick company began processing pigs into salami, sausages, and lard. Of course their new state-of-the-art facilities don’t depend on the outside humidity and temperature, but they have remained in their original city providing Hungarians and the world quality pork since 1869. Fish from the Tisza played an integral role in the creation of Szeged’s famous fish soup. Different regions grow more fruit or special crops, others depend on mountains or the Great Hungarian Plain for their food and shelter. Every nook and cranny of this country, whether it be city, town, or village, hides little secrets waiting to be discovered by the curious.

After moving here and getting my kitchen, I quickly set out to learn as much food vocabulary as possible, which put me face to face with the culture and the language. Many times this approach has left me very confused, though ultimately (after a bit of head scratching) it has been every enlightening. One such case was translating kömény: it means “caraway,” but it also means “cumin.” After looking it up in English to Hungarian AND Hungarian to English dictionaries, I was left stumped because the English would say “cumin,” but then I’d look up the Hungarian and find “caraway.” Through a bit of research I found this particular translation problem to not belong to just Hungary but northern European countries. The reason for this is as follows: caraway grows very well in the north in countries, such as Germany, who use the spice, while cumin grows better and is used in southern countries, like Spain or northern Africa and the Middle East. When the spices crossed paths on trade routes cooks in either region took the seed to look so similar to the one they had been using the two had become culturally confused. Despite the screaming differences in the flavor and size, the shape of the whole seeds won out and either region ended up with a very loose system calling the new spice an exotic variety of the old.

With these translation hurdles overcome, I’ve been free to roam the country and Hungarian cultural strongholds outside the borders for new food finds. One such example was when I was lucky enough to attend the Mangalica Festival in Budapest where I toured the assemblage of different vendors and soaked in the smells and tastes of different cuts of Mangalica meat like szalonna and kolbász, as well as cooked foods like stuffed cabbage. That was a great experience.

Living in Hungary has also given me the opportunity to experiment with ingredients that I normally wouldn’t use in Portland. Just today I bought a half-kilo of Mangalica zsir (lard) for 390 HUF: that’s comes out to $1.75 at today’s exchange rate. But before anyone gets too jealous, remember that I’m living on a Hungarian teacher’s salary. I consider prices like these as part of my comprehensive compensation package for teaching here. I’ve been experimenting with anything and everything pickled: from the usual pickles and onions to baby watermelons. I recently started using semolina to make a Hungarian version of cream of wheat (in Hungarian, “tejbegríz”) and I have very much enjoyed using the most beautiful market eggs with the darkest yolks I’ve ever seen to make anything from fresh mayonnaise to omelets.

I’ve experienced my share of culture shock as well. There is no corn syrup and few other corn products. There are no Uwajimaya or Fubonn markets - Oh! How I pine for herbs like cilantro, soups like pho, or dishes like curry! I’ve experienced a surprising lack of cheese in grocery stores, which I’ve learned can be solved by going to dairy farmers. For a while all I could find was trappista sajt (“trapper’s cheese”), which is the most common variety found in Hungarian stores. I personally find it disgusting and tasteless. As you can imagine, I was very happy to find a Dutch cheese store in Szeged that sold Gouda, Swiss, brie, cheddar, and Parmesan cheeses!

I only eat out about once a month. Right now it’s too expensive for more frequent restaurant exploration, though if/when I have more money I’d love to conduct more research. There is an absolutely wonderful restaurant in Kalocsa, though. The town is about 120 kilometers west from Szeged, not far from the Danube River. If you ever find yourself in the area, this place is near the bus station at the intersection of the main street of town. It’s called Vincenzo Étterem, after the chef who is the most delightful host and who will spend the entire evening (sometimes until well after the restaurant is closed) chatting with you in a seamless mosaic of German, Hungarian, and English while simultaneously changing out his vast record collection (anything from jazz to traditional Hungarian) AND pouring shots of Pálinka. Pálinka, by the way, is the national drink. It’s an eau de vie, usually made from fruit such as peaches, apples, apricots, plums or pears, but can also be made from spices such as caraway or from pomace.

It’s certainly been an adventure so far, and there’s so much more to come. I’m always working on new recipes and seeking out the newest foods. In the meantime, I’ll continue to shop at the farmer’s markets and the local butchers and see what I can dig up. Jó étvágyat!

Caramel

From Hungarian Adventures! by Jon Clark

March 19, 2009

One of the points of culinary culture shock has been the complete absence of corn syrup. While not an ingredient I enjoy at all because of where it comes from and what it represents, it is an important tool in the candy making arsenal, certainly for caramel. Out of necessity I’ve created my own technique for ensuring a caramel that does not become grainy without the insurance of corn syrup. I’ve also developed some different recipes in the process.

This process started last fall, October to be exact, when I wanted to make caramel apples. I’d made caramel many times before, while in Portland, but I had resources there that I don’t have in Hungary: a cast iron skillet to use as a heat diffuser, a thermometer, and corn syrup. The attempt failed horribly not only had the sugar, butter, and cream combination become grainy as it set up on the apples, but it hadn’t reached the proper temperature either and it simply sloughed off the apples. A couple of days later I tried again getting the temperature more or less right, again just using my eyes, nose, and intuition, but it still came out grainy, and harder than I liked, I called them toffee apples.

I didn’t try again until December when I wanted to make caramels for my colleagues and my Christmas hosts. But this time I had my Pyrex probe thermometer at my side as it had been sent in a package in December! The caramel turned out perfectly and I thought I had my recipe figured out. I had thought that I could make caramel at any time now that I had mastered the art of caramel making in Hungary. That was until yesterday…the problem resurfaced when I tried to make caramel for my girlfriend to take to her family in Germany: it became grainy and disgusting, what’s more is that I had topped it with some Hawaiian black salt, what a loss!

Determined not to lose this battle I added more water to my recipe and decided to create a syrup first. Then transferring the syrup to a clean pan was the only way to ensure an absolute lack of seed crystals waiting on the sides of my cooking vessel waiting to ruin my caramel. I then finished caramelizing the sugar inside the new pan insuring that any stray crystals were dissolved before adding the cream, butter, and salt mixture. This has worked as I’ve now made two beautiful batches of caramel, one batch of regular and a harder chocolate caramel.

Check out the recipe in my Developed in Hungary recipe box.

Lángos

From Hungarian Adventures! by Jon Clark

March 11, 2009

I took a train from Szeged to Budapest and bus from Budapest to Heves and then bus to Tarnaméra and and the whole thing back again, but it was the destination rather than the journey this time that made it all worthwhile. In Tarnaméra lives Eta, who back during Margie’s birthday weekend in Budapest, invited us to her house for lángos. So here we were sitting in her house a couple of weeks later watching Carla mix the dough.

Eta took the dough skillfully mixed by Carla, divided it into balls, and stretched them out in to the oil, one by one. When perfectly golden-brown and delicious they were removed. Eta then used paper towels to pat the excess oil off of the lángos before serving them.

After garnishing the lángos with minced garlic, sour cream, and cheese this delicious fried bread was ready for expeditious consumption! Eta was a fantastic host and entertained us in her home for most of the day.

Follow the link to the recipe I adapted from the experience:

Lángos recipe

Köszönöm Eta!

Comfort Food: Sauerkraut Soup

From Hungarian Adventures! by Jon Clark

March 11, 2009

This post is dedicated to my family who love to eat strange, but delicious, foods.

This is an aftershock of Eta’s lángos party in Heves, Hungary, and another sign of how I’m learning Hungarian food. The second dinner she served that night was a nice sauerkraut soup with sausage and frankfurter slices. It was time to make my own version. So I set of to the Mars tér farmer’s market with my girlfriend Franny and bought a half kilo of sauerkraut from one of the wonderful vendors, of which there are at least three, who pickle things. I say things because their products can range from whole cabbages to slices of watermelon! I couldn’t pass up the pickling onions or the sauerkraut-stuffed pickles.

My family, as weird as we are, love two things: pickled foods and spicy foods. Growing up we would usually consume an entire jar of homemade pickles when we went to Grandma’s house, and we’d probably have a sauerkraut roast for dinner too. Of course we would have other dishes that prepared me for a life in Hungary such as cabbage and potato soup, so sauerkraut soup is not a stretch where I come from.

Instead of posting an even longer description of the process I’ll simply post my recipe:

Sauerkraut Soup

Jó étvágyat!

Chestnut Puree with Coconut Whipped Cream

From Hungarian Adventures! by Jon Clark

March 11, 2009

I’ve been teaching American English in Hungary since September 2008. Chestnut puree, or gesztenyepüré in Hungarian, became a personal dessert favorite ever since introduction by my host teacher Trixi.

Chestnut puree topped with whipped cream is the Hungarian equivalent of America’s store-bought pumpkin pie: someone does all of the work for you all you have to do is cut it and top it with massive amounts of whipped cream. Cutting it really means grating it though, and one may whip their own cream. I mixed whipping cream and my homemade coconut cream to create coconut whipped cream then I dusted the grated gesztenyepüré and with cocoa powder. Nagyon finom!