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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!