Have you ever eaten a Chinese steamed pork bun? Imagine a sweet version, and you pretty much have buchty na páře (in Czech) or parené buchty (in Slovak). Instead of spicy meat, the fillings here are usually jam, sweetened poppy seeds, sweetened cheese (tvaroh), or chocolate. Buchty na páře just means steamed buchty, and buchty are, well, what they are – a kind of soft bread roll. (It’s pronounced something like book-tee, say the ch softly like in Loch Ness.) There are also baked buchty, which maybe we’ll cover another time. The dough itself is quite soft, and develops a rather tough, chewy skin while it steams.

That sounds a little unappetizing, doesn’t it? But it’s delicious, I promise! They’re usually served topped with vegetable oil, sugar, and cocoa powder that you stir together as you eat to make a chocolate syrup. Yes, initially I was kind of put off by the idea of pouring oil directly on my food and used melted butter, which for whatever reason seemed more palatable, but ten years in Central Europe and now I’m totally fine with dousing foodstuffs in oil. Of course there’s no reason why you couldn’t use ready-made chocolate syrup or any other topping, really, but at least once you should try saying “slather some oil on my buchty, baby”.

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Buchty na páře/parené buchty
Ingredients

• 1 cup/ 2.4 dl milk
• 3 cups/280 grams flour
• 1 sachet instant yeast (7 grams)
• 2 Tbs sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg

For the filling:

• jam, Nutella, or mini chocolate chips
• 2/3 cup poppyseeds ground together with 1/3 cup sugar

Method

• Heat the milk until it is almost boiling (“scald” it; this makes the yeast work better). Set it aside to cool. Meanwhile, mix together the flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a large bowl. When the milk has cooled to lukewarm, pour it into the dry ingredients and mix. Add the egg and mix well with a wooden spoon or your hands; the dough will be very soft, but it should come together. If it’s too wet to work with, add a little flour.
• Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave to rise in a warm place about an hour, or until doubled.
• Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave to rise in a warm place about an hour, or until doubled.
• In the meantime, prepare your steaming equipment. We have a flat-bottomed steaming insert for our big pasta pot, but any type of steamer works, including the kind that open like a flower. Brush some oil over the steamer, as the buchty can stick during cooking, and put a few inches of water in the bottom of a pot big enough to hold the steamer. I usually turn the water on while I’m making the buchty so they can cook straight away.
• When the dough has doubled in bulk, turn it out onto a (very) well-floured surface and roll out to about a quarter-inch (0.5 cm) thickness. Cut into squares that are about 4 inches (10 cm) square, 3 inches (8 cm) if you want smaller buchty. Larger buchty are more authentic but smaller ones may be more practical if you’re serving them as a dessert. Dollop about a teaspoon of filling into the center of a square, then gather up the edges and pinch to seal at the top, making a rounded sort of package. Continue adding filling and making the buchty until you’ve used all the squares.
• Now you’re ready to steam! Carefully place several buchty into the steamer; don’t crowd them, they’ll expand somewhat while cooking and can stick together. If you haven’t already, turn on the heat and once the water is boiling, put the steamer into the pot, cover and cook the buchty for 8-10 minutes and have developed a firm, slightly translucent skin. Using tongs or a couple of forks, gently lift the buchty out of the steamer and place them on plates to serve. You should cook all the buchty now, but you can freeze any that you don’t want to eat right away, and just steam them again (or even microwave them) to heat them through.

To serve

• Valerian’s family tops buchty with a spoonful of cocoa powder, a heaping spoonful of granulated sugar, and then pours oil over the top. As you eat, you swirl the toppings together, delicious!

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Chicken Paprikas

This is one of the classics of Hungarian home cooking. Everybody has a unique version, so use the recipe as a path to your preferred flavors. The famous Hungarian chef Karoly Gundel recommend mixing the sour cream with cream (1/2 sour cream, 1/2 cream). This way you achieve extremely creamy chicken paprikas but you lose some of the tanginess.

Ingredients

For 4 portions

• 2 tbs oil
• 2 medium onions
• 2 tbs red paprika
• 2-3 lbs/1-1.5 kg chicken pieces, bone-in
• 2 hungarian yellow peppers
• 1 tomato
• 3/4 cup/2 dcl sour cream
• 1 tbs flour
• salt and pepper to taste

Method

• • Dice the onions, pepper and the tomato. Heat up the oil, add onions, salt and pepper. Saute the onions over low heat. When translucent, add diced peppers and then the tomato.
  • When the mixture cooks down, add the paprika, mix well, add the chicken and water. Water should barely cover the chicken.
  • Simmer on a low heat until meat is cooked, about  45 – 60min.
  • When cooked, remove the chicken. Mix the sour cream and flour together and add to the sauce remaining in the pan. If your sour cream curdles, first add a spoonful or two of the sauce into the sour cream/flour mixture before adding it back into the pan. Stir, replace the chicken into the pan and cook very gently for another 5 min.
  • Serve with nokedli (you can use prepared gnocchi) or good fresh bread.

Gulyás in Hungarian means shepherd or cowboy – somebody who tends cattle. And that’s where the name for the food comes from: while gulyás were off far away from their homes they made food from the available ingredients. For these trips they brought things that kept well: bacon, herbs and spices. In the beginning they ate it with bread and there were no potatoes or fancy stuff involved. The real revolution in cooking gulyás started in the nineteenth century when it found its way to home kitchens and restaurants. That’s when the potatoes, paprika and other things started to be used. In all cases, the gulyás is a thick soup or thin stew made of onions, peppers, tomatoes and spice with added meat, potatoes or other ingredients depending on the region or the person who makes it.

Where do people make mistakes? There are plenty of Hungarian “gulyás-like” dishes which are not gulyás like:

Tokány – tokány is a meaty dish. The onions are steamed and not sautéed, and the meat is cut into strips. It has a thick consistency.

Pörkölt – most mistaken for gulyás. The basis for pörkolt is very gulyás-like, but while gulyás has a thick soup- almost stew-like consistency, pörkölt has a thick, true stew consistency. The basis is just onions, peppers, tomatoes, cubes of meat, spices and a little bit of liquid. It is poured over dumplings (nokedli) or eaten with bread.

Paprikás –is almost like pörkölt, but is prepared a bit differently. Some regions do not differentiate and they make only one kind of paprikás,  the famous chicken paprikas.

Czech Hungarian Guláš – this fake gulyás is a part of Czech cuisine. Basically, it is simplified pörkölt eaten with knedlíky (steamed bread), a Czech speciality. With a good local beer, it is a tasty Czech classic, but it is not Hungarian gulyás. I wonder why they don’t call it Czech goulash?

Czech/Slovak Szegedínsky Guláš – this is a weird meal. It is a pork stew with sauerkraut and sour cream. It is also eaten with knedlíky. I have to say I rather like it. The oddity is that it has nothing to do with gulyás or with the Hungarian city of Szeged.

Gulyás Leves – clear beef soup with root vegetables.

Gulyás, together with Hungarian fish soup (Halászlé), is the barbecue of the Hungarian people. Imagine a burger. You can make in a pan at home, but what a difference when you grill it on a barbecue! Similarly, gulyás is traditionally made in a huge pot over an open fire. Often families will organize a cookout, where everyone hangs around playing soccer, arguing over politics, drinking beer and waiting for the gulyás to be ready. It’s not at all uncommon in the summer months to see groups of people climbing into trains at the Budapest stations, carrying a gulyás pot and three-legged stand to go somewhere in the countryside for a picnic. If you decide to serve gulyás, make gulyás and not something else. It is like asking for a hamburger in a Hungarian fast-food stand and receiving an unidentifiable object and lettuce on a bun. (Which is also a classic here, but that’s a story for another post.)

Here is a recipe and a video on how to cook gulyás, featuring a gulyás master, a.k.a. my dad. Enjoy.

The cuisine of Central Europe is not quite as widely known as French or Italian or even Thai cooking, perhaps because it tends towards the heavy and hearty, which isn’t so much in fashion these days. But when it’s well prepared, it’s homey, wonderful food that deserves recognition.

Since we’re in southern Slovakia, obviously we’ll be leaning towards the dishes typical of this part of the region. I hope you’ll send in your own versions of the imperial classics and your own favorites as well.

To lead off, here’s the recipe for császármorzsa in Hungarian, kaiserschmarrn in German. Loosely translated, it means, yep, emperor’s crumbs. It’s usually served with jam or stewed fruit, but it’s equally delicious with maple syrup, and some places in Budapest top it with a custard sauce. It’s a substantial dish, usually served as a main course even though it’s sweet (I have always had some weird thing about having a sweet as a main course, so I aim to serve a salad or something when we have one of these types of dishes, to at least nod towards a savory item).

Valerian says “this meal was a long time favorite of my family. The origin of this dish is in Austria. According to one of the legends the meal was invented by Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungaria. The truth is that this meal was an Austrian peasant meal and only the name refers to the emperor. ”

So here it is, a family favorite.

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Emperors Crumbs

When I asked my mum how does she makes this meal, she told me that smardli (as we call it in our family) is basically pancake (crepes) batter prepared like scrambled eggs. There are two ways you can prepare this meal: the labor-intensive way on the stovetop and the lazy way made in the oven.

This is a basic recipe  — I think the original was only flour, sugar, eggs, milk and fat — but there are many ways to make variations. You could add vanilla extract, raisins or lemon zest, or experiment even further.

Ingredients

Makes 2 portions

• 3/4 cup/100 g semolina
• 1 cup/250 ml milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 egg yolks
• 3 egg whites
• pinch salt
• 1/2 cups/100 g sugar
• half lemon zest
• 50 g butter for sauteing
• powdered sugar, compote or jam or all three as topping

Method

• Mix together the semolina, flour and milk. Let it sit for an hour or so to let the semolina absorb the milk.
• Mix the egg yolks together with sugar and stir it into the milk mixture.
• Whip the egg whites and a pinch of salt into firm peaks and fold it into the milk/egg mixture..
• Melt the butter and add the batter. Stir the batter with a spatula or wooden spoon until it starts to form little clumps – crumbs. Depending on the size of the pan this can take up to 30 minutes.
• Serve hot with powdered sugar or with jam, or with compote or drizzle with some syrup.