Category Archives: Kitchen

Preparations and Recipes

Layered Potatoes (Rakott Krumpli)

Kitchen,

DSC00493 DSC00513Layered potatoes is an every day recipe that some Hungarians make.   Not generally available in restaurants

Ingredients:

  • 1 lb. red potatoes boiled until firmly soft in water contained 2 tsp caraway seeds: slice thinly
  • 4 hard boiled eggs, cooled in water, peeled, and sliced
  • 1 pint sour cream of your choice (We like Mexican sour cream)  Add a little milk until it is the consistency of heavy cream
  • Hungarian sausage, peeled, sliced thinly, and browned
  • 1 ounce of bacon, cubed and rendered. Optional.

Assembly:

  • Grease a casserole
  • Layer 1/4 of the potatoes on the bottom of the casserole
  • Layer 1/3 of the sausage and 1/3 of the bacon on top of the potatoes
  • Layer 1/3 of the egg slices on top
  • Layer 1/4 of the sour cream on top of the egg layer
  • Repeat layers in a similar fashion.  The last layer is the remaining potatoes and sour cream.
  • Top with any remaining sausage or bacon drippings
  • Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 50 minutes
  • Hungarian beet salad goes well with this dish
  • Serves four

 

Turos Csusza (Feta Cheese Sliding Flat Noodles)

Kitchen, ,

DSC00478This simple meal is  widely available in Hungarian restaurants, and is much beloved by children.  It often precedes a Hungarian fish soup.   Vary the proportions to taste.  Serves 4.

Ingredients:

  • 7 ounces Hungarian flat noodles (lasagna noodles can be used instead)
  • 3 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
  • 3 ounces Mexican style sour cream
  • 2 ounces Hungarian bacon, cut into 1/4 inch cubes and rendered
  • Olive oil to keep noodles from sticking

Cook noodles until firm tender. Drain.  Pour and mix in enough olive oil to keep the noodles from sticking together.

Assemble on individual plates in this order:

  • Place  1/4 th the noodles on a dinner plate.
  • Add 1/4 of the crumbled feta cheese
  • Add 1/4 of the  sour cream
  • Top with 1/4 of the rendered bacon

Serve immediately.

 

 

Kitchen Garden

Garden, Kitchen

DSC00393

Radish thinnings and limes from our kitchen garden.

Our kitchen garden has been a long time in the making.  We overcame obstacles in the following ways:

  1. Thirteen years ago, we got a Victorian house with a kitchen door that opens directly into the back yard.
  2. Two years ago, we dug up a garden, planted it, and had the soil tested for lead.  It was 1700 parts per million.  The garden grew great, but we did not eat anything out of it. We learned from this garden.   We did see that whatever we planted grew very well during a Galveston winter.  (No freeze in 2011.)   We saw how five kinds of lettuce grew, harvested cilantro for the beauty of its vegetation,  and saw that I can actually grow dill.   Then we let it go to seed, after which we let the weeds take over.
  3. We removed seven cubic yards of soil removed down one foot, lined the opening with landscape cloth, and had good planting mix topsoil (three parts per million lead) added in time for a fall 2013 garden.
  4. We had some surrounding vegetation removed to permit more sunlight into the garden.
  5. We bought 20 packets of seeds locally, and ordered one more  package of seeds.
  6. We studied the seed packets for planting depth, and seedling emergence timing, amount of sun required, made a chart of the garden, and what to plant where.
  7. We executed this plan in one day in early September.  Radishes, famously easy to grow, started emerging in merely three days!  By now, two weeks later, even the last to emerge, sorrel, and chives, are sprouting.
  8. In the meantime we have already begun to enjoy our produce,  thinnings of everything to put into salads!

Prepared gardenOur garden ready to plant

Our garden one week after planting.Garden overall, one week after planting DSC00396

Radishes came up first.Radishes came up first. DSC00395

Two weeks after planting, you can see faint rows of green seedlings which have come up.Kitchen garden two weeks after planting

Our garden is growing very quickly.  Establishing roots and a growing plant look slow, but some of the seeds are the size of a grain of salt!