Hungry for Hungarian

This week, with the help of our Hungarian friend, Mária, we not only learned to make a classic Decsy family meal, but we also had our first experience with homemade pasta.

Mária, whose family lives in Budapest and to the west of the Danube, brought with her a peculiar looking tool reminiscent of a cheese grater with a spackle knife. This tool, called a galuskaszaggató, was how we were going to make our pasta.

Once our pasta dough of eggs, flour, salt and water was the right consistency, we spooned a little at a time onto the galuskaszaggató. While holding the grater over a pot of boiling water, the dough was then pushed through the holes in the galuskaszaggató with a flat, wide scraper until every last nugget had plopped into the water. When the galuska, or pasta dumplings, had risen to the top of the water, they were ready to be strained.


Over the top of the galuska we ladled csirkepaprikás, a typical Hungarian stew with bell peppers, onions and chicken in a thick sour cream sauce. The most important ingredient of paprikás is mild, sweet paprika.

Although the sauce in our paprikás recreation was not as thick as it should have been, according to Mária, not one bite went unsavored.

The perfect compliment to the csirkepaprikás was a simple, thinly sliced cucumber salad with vinegar, garlic and salt. I don’t know what it was about the combination of the two dishes, but they just worked so well together.

For dessert we mixed pureed chestnuts with a little rum and sugar and topped the resulting paste with whipped cream. This concoction, called gesztenyepüré, is very popular in Hungary and was just as easy as it sounds to make. Although it could have used more sugar, and for the heck of it a bit more rum, but it was still surprisingly good.

To wash it all down, Hungary’s most famous red wine, Egri Bikavér, or Bull’s Blood. A blend of at least three of the following varieties; Blauburger, Portugiser, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Kadarka, Kékfrankos and Zweigelt, it is said to have given strength to the people of Eger to fight off the invading Turks in the 1500s.

Adam and I were both pleased to get back on track with an easy and delicious meal and the help of a few friends, and since we’ve discovered a simple way to make homemade pasta, I feel another experiment coming on.