It was an ordinary afternoon when I was picking up my son from his grandparents’ house last week. Usually I have coffee with my parents and discuss the joys and sorrows of life. My dad loves antiques and he is crazy about history, and I love to task him with finding me different items from the past. We were talking about antique cookbooks and I was complaining how expensive they are. He showed me few of his cookbooks which date back to the 1800s, explaining who used this or that book, or where and when he bought it. A few times he mentioned his great-aunt who was a housewife and cook in Budapest. She worked also for Kalman Mikszath, who was a famous Hungarian writer, journalist and politician. Then he pulled out a big pile of handwritten recipes, saying: “these are her recipes”. My jaw dropped. Who cares about the old books of unknown people when we have recipes directly from our family? My dad is like that. [Read more →]

Valerian got a funny Slovak cookbook a few years ago, Z Kuchyne starého Prešporka (from the kitchen of old Pressburg) by Peter Ševčovič. Pressburg is the German name for Bratislava, and the book is full of quirky cooking advice from the Bratislava of yesterday, collected from average and not-so-average people, since there are some recipes for living on the street, including how to cook pigeons and alley cats. I’ve skipped right over those to a recipe for a Slovak favorite, even today: vianočka, a kind of sweet braided bread. [Read more →]

“Oven-baked lángos!” When I first saw the sign at the Budapest Christmas fair years ago, I was puzzled. What is lángos about if not deep-fried greasy goodness? But judging from the crowds gathered around the stand, where a clay oven was stoked with wood and slabs of speckled dough were rotated in to bake over the coals, there must be something worthy of attention.

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You know you’re in love when your heart’s aflutter waiting to see if you’ll get a big gaudy gingerbread heart from the fair. What, that’s not the sure sign you were thinking of? At least then you’re spared the anxiety over whether you should save that cookie to gaze upon rapturously with thoughts of love, or just eat it. Sadly, many of the goodies sold at the local fairs just aren’t that tasty. Made for sturdiness rather than flavor, they might outlast your romance anyway. Here’s a cookie recipe that will satisfy lovers of spicy sweetness; you can always write Miľujem ťa or Szeretlek on it to satisfy any other lovers.

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