So Long, Budapest. Hello, Berlin!

    Thank you to everyone who has been following my Budapest Food Blog. I am happy to point interested readers in the direction of my new project, Laurel's Berlin Food Blog.
Happy reading, eating, and blogging!
<3
Laurel

Christmas Creep, Hungarian-Style: Beigli

poppy seeds, cookbook picture 

After first trying beigli in a Hungarian language class, I was hooked. It's bread (so of course I love it) with a walnut or poppy seed filling. I had been buying it occasionally from the market, but I wanted to see if I could make it myself. It's traditionally eaten at Christmastime, so consider this a practice batch! 

Pear and Almond Tart

Pears are in season and they're everywhere, with their great variety of textures, colors, and tastes. As much as I like eating a good pear, here's something else you can do with them: make a pear and almond tart.  

Soup Season (Part Deux)

Sour Cherry Soup

 Let's talk about cold soups. How many can you name? Get stuck at gazpacho? I would have too, before I moved to Hungary and discovered cold fruit soup. It's usually served cool, not icy cold, and sometimes it has a dollop of whipped cream on the top. It is not, as you might guess from the whipped cream, a dessert. After first trying it and loving it I would order some variation of "sour cherry" or "forest fruit" soup everywhere I saw it on the menu, from little cafeteria-style fast food places to proper sit-down garden restaurants. I even got excited when I saw it on the menu for school lunch! The method of it's creation remained a mystery to me (as well as exactly what some of those "forest fruits" were) until I decided, recently, to make it. Here's the recipe from my Hungarian cookbook:

simmer simmer simmer

Being a bit late for cherry season, I decided to make the "forest fruit" variation, so I found a box of frozen fruits at the grocery store label "forest fruits". What did it contain? As far as I can tell, raspberries, strawberries, and red currants. The fruit, sugar, lemon peel, cinnamon, cloves, and salt are all tossed together in a pot and simmered for about ten minutes. While that comes to a boil, whisk the sour cream and flour together to make a thickener (remember the roux from the Jokai bean soup? same idea here). 

Sour cream based thickener

You stir the thickener in about a table spoon at a time, and then volia, soup! Only it's not cold yet, so you must make this soup a few hours in advance of when you'd like to eat it. And don't forget the whipped cream!

About that recipe...

By popular demand, here's the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day recipe, as reported by the New York Times. Of course you don't have to have a pizza peel, baking stone, and cornmeal, but it does add a very professional touch. I seem to do pretty well in my Budapest kitchen without those things though.

Soup Season (Part I)

Just outside my kitchen window

Also know as sweater season, soup season is here. This is just my feeling on the matter; in Hungary it's always soup season. At school every lunch consists of a soup followed by a second course. I show my students a picture of a bowl of soup and ask, "What is it?" "Lunch!" they say.
With the aid of my trusty guide and companion, The Traditional Hungarian Kitchen, I made the famous "Jokai Bean Soup" in my very own kitchen (and you can too!).

Bread in the Morning (for lazy people)

In the first few days of autumn the new morning chill makes it even harder to get out of bed at 6am. Solution: make bread in the the morning. The warm, toasty smell wakes me up almost as well as coffee (there's also the threat of burned bread if you don't retrieve it from the oven). But doesn't bread take forever to make? Not really. I've been using the artisan bread in five minutes a day recipes for about a year, which entails making a large batch of wet dough, and then keeping it around in the refrigerator and tearing off hunks whenever it's time to make bread. Honestly, I don't even measure the ingredients any more (which is VERY BAD, I know, but it makes you feel like a kitchen cowboy/girl).

Lump of dough