Hungarian Dinner Night-Midterm Exam
Thursday nights have turned into a thing of great happiness. All summer (mostly--one night we went to the pool) Rollo and Sigrid (mka Matt & Carol) have been hooking Izzy and I up with a baby fix and in return I coach Carol on Hungarian cooking. She is on a mission to find her Dad's cuisine. He is the last of his generation and doesn't cook. She wants Zander to know about paprika. I understand. We cook traditional Hungarian food, study Hungarian cookbooks, drink and eat. Then we hang out, knitting, talking about writing, watching movies or Who wants to be a Super Hero? till Rollo and Pete remember they have to get up in the morning.
All the pre reqs have been covered...Chicken paprikas, stuffed peppers (the German vs Hungarian Pepper War deserves it's own story) sour cream, cabbage, noodles, poppy seeds & pickles. We have gotten to the end of my repertoire of food I can cook "with my eyes closed" and have moved into uncharted waters. (Saving the kifli party for Fall.)
Petey and I took Hauviette and Heloise's sausage making class at the Cook's Symposium last year and got the mechanics down. I finally got Kitchen Aid to ship me JUST the stuffing tool and last night we got to work.
THE MISSION: Peter's family sadly, is down a patriarch--and because sausage making is apparently a guy thing. Nobody bothered to write down Great Uncle Steve Boros' recipe for kolbasz. This would be okay if they hadn't been parsing it out like crack for the last 20 years. Now the Church Ladies up in Flint have their recipe. But they won't share (it is a fundraiser) and anyway... it isn't quite right. Just not as much punch as Uncle Steve's. I think our most enlightening moment last night was when we stopped thinking like foodie snots and start thinking like old men. Ingredient issues surfaced almost immediately. First example: The coarse cracked pepper needed to be GROUND FINE--like 1960's table pepper. Secondly, the Penzey's half sharp Paprika was way too powerful. Pete scrunching up his nose and saying. "That's wierd." was not what I wanted to hear on Test #2. The Szeged brand was closer. Though I have to confess--Pete's mom insisted it should be SWEET paprika which I stubbornly avoided. Still tweaking that factor.
It took us three test runs to realize the stealth allspice (which was decided upon after studying about a Brazillion online recipes) needed a spoonful of sugar. The sugar was miraculous. We got juicy... and it evened out the blend. Then on Test 3b we had a parika accident and while it was yummy--it wasn't Uncle Steve Brand. Test 4 was closer still and as test batch five lay sizzling in the pan we called Tarrach. I could tell by the smell as it cooked that we had it. SUCCESS!! Gleeful high fives around the kitchen. Like some giddy 12 step graduates...we are no longer dependent on the sausage pushers in Flint. We are THE SOURCE! We can produce our own!
The remnants of the various batches have all been merged into one big sausage so we could practise with the casings and the machine. It will be appetizers next week. Stay tuned for the final draft of our Kolbasz Recreation Adventure when we prepare Batch 5 Recipe (cooked properly-- not fried in a pan) in prep for the upcoming Day of Sausage Making (the DSM) for Punkin Day '06.
