From September 18th, 2012
Classes are on Tuesdays, 11.00 – 14.00 (approx.)
Blanchir Cooking School
Bp., XI. Kemenes u. 4
(near the Gellért Bath)
http://www.blanchir.hu
Cook Hungarian, Speak Hungarian!
A special Hungarian activity program for beginners or anyone who wants to get a little more out of learning the language.
Experiencing Hungarian has never been more fun and friendly! In small groups (max. 10) you will learn some useful everyday Hungarian with a professional language teacher; have the confidence to exchange conversation, and reward yourself with a little know-how in traditional Hungarian cooking, from the gulyás to the Gundel Pancake! We also take a visit to the local market and buy our ingredients.
You get to eat what you cook and over lunch practice your vocabulary whilst you chat about Hungarian traditions, culture, gastronomy and listen to some Hungarian music, from folk to jazz.
More info:
cookandspeak@gmail.com
06 20 536 57 36
2010
Layered potatoes, Márai, and The Food and Wine Lover’s...
After a long break we met again, and by popular request we made layered potatoes. While the potatoes and eggs were cooking we indulged in some salami- and sausage-tasting, with télisalami, and Csabai and Gyulai sausage. The tasting was coupled to a little theory, in the form of Carolyn Bánfalvi’s excellent book The Food and Wine-Lover’s Guide to Hungary, which is a real treasure trove, a splendid guide in English for enthusiasts of Hungarian gastronomy. Each chapter is prefaced by quotation from Krúdy, and gives a thorough and riveting presentation of the history of Hungarian cuisine, restaurants, coffeehouses, markets, wine regions and gastronomic festivals. A mini culinary dictionary and sayings about food and drink round off the book, which combines hard work, optimism and an approach I found extremely friendly. Read cover to cover it provides a picture not just of Hungarian gastronomy, but also of the culture and customs. By the time we had eaten the salami and sausages and browsed through the book, the potatoes and eggs were cooked. We chopped them into rings and laid them in layers in a buttered oven dish, together with the Debreceni sausage and the remains of the Gyulai, poured sour cream over it, put a little bacon fat on top and popped it in the oven. While it baked we read Márai, the quotation from Szinbad Goes Home about layered potatoes:
“It’s a crying shame that none of the Budapest restaurants put layered potatoes on the menu any more. (...) Last time I ate layered potatoes was in the provinces,” said the sailor, and looked at the ceiling as if he held the world in such contempt he deigned not even to look at it. “In Budapest, it seems, they don’t even know that as well as rings of hard-boiled eggs you’re supposed to add smoked ham and sausages. And the whole thing has to be baked to golden brown, of course!”
We followed the advice, and had no regrets, because lunch was delicious. As a side dish we had fermented cucumbers and pickled paprikas.
Fish Soup, Elemér Balázs, and the Hungarian ABC (at last)
Last Tuesday, by popular demand we cooked fish soup – my preference was for the Baja version, which doesn’t have to be passed through a sieve. We also skipped the bit where you scale and gut the fish, because like the housewives of Budapest, we bought the ingredients for the basic stock and slices of carp on the market. Dorota was put in charge of the fish, after all she came to Budapest from the Masuria region, famous for its lakes. Cooking was truly simple and rewarding, and of all the sessions this gave us the most free time: the stock with fish, onion and paprika cooked for nearly an hour. Well, since in previous sessions we’d already written and read the ingredients, and we even understand poets like Petőfi, I thought it was high time to demystify the Hungarian alphabet. We got through the program quickly and painlessly, and now all the participants can read words like ‘nokedliszaggató’ (a thing used to chop noodle shapes) and Hortobágyi húsospalacsinta (Hortobágyi pancakes). Then we looked at Toplista – Gasztronómia 2010, a magazine full of places to admire, and tasty morsels to sample: easy to start, but all the more difficult to stop. We checked who knew which of the markets, restaurants, coffeehouses and chocolateries in the magazine, and which of them was a must for those spending several years in Budapest.
The fish soup, sieved but with slices of carp and offal, was ready, and the only difference with the official version was that we ommited the matchstick-shaped pasta, because participants voted for bread. Meanwhile we were wafted to stratospheric heights by the music of Elemér Balázs and Rial Núria.
Paprika Chicken and the Pilvax Coffeehouse
The next session fell in the week before 15 March. Since the cooking group now included Poles, it was only natural that while the menu for the day (paprika chicken with noodles) was cooking away, we mentioned the Magyar saying about Hungarian–Polish friendship, very likely to be heard at this time of year. Luckily my friend Jola from Poznań is a great enthusiast of the “cook Hungarian” idea, and sent over the Polish translation of Petőfi’s poem “Szabadság, szerelem” (Liberty and love). After looking at a contemporary picture of the Pilvax Coffeehouse on the internet, our intrepid cooks acquired new important words. Although they might not learn the whole poem, they’re sure to remember the crux of it: liberty and love... Meanwhile the paprika chicken was done to perfection, and Laci, the chief cook worked his magic on the noodle dough, so that too came out a treat. Although the group was concerned at the start that the ingredients (onion, paprika, tomato, ground paprika, meat) seemed to be strangely similar to last week’s gulyás ingredients, the worry that Hungarian cuisine might be monotonous and boring proved to be unfounded. Over lunch we listened to another Dresch album, Rare Bird.
Gulyás soup and Culinaria Hungary
The atmosphere of the place soon helped us all to feel at home, and for the first meeting we chose to make gulyás soup, so we immediately took over the kitchen – beef, after all, takes time. The fun part was that while still keeping an eye on the simmering pot, on the little whiteboard propped up on the kitchen shelves we wrote down the ingredients – in Hungarian. Once our gulyás had got to the stage where we could leave it for a while, we sat at a round table to browse through the book Magyar Kóstoló (Culinaria, Hungary), paying special attention to the chapter about gulyás. We learnt a few useful expressions, and over lunch listened to some Dresch, while chatting about how foreigners feel in Hungary, and what differences they notice in the behaviour and customs of their compatriots and Hungarians.
