I didn't make it here for the January blog post of the Think Tank - too much going on! But I'm back at my desk to write again this month. So CHEERS and Happy New Year to you all! Let's get down to business.
When I was a little girl we didn't watch TV much and I didn't have a lot of toys. My parents were never wealthy but we did have all we needed. I used to stand beside my mother when she cooked (sometimes I helped, but more when I was older) and watch everything she did. Because she was still Hungarian she cooked those kinds of dishes for dinner, usually the same 8 or 10 over and over. I watched her over and over and over. She was very methodical. She never changed a thing and so I got to know how to make all of these things without a recipe.
So here is one I love and it is called "Paprikas Chirke" (Chirke is chicken). I am kind of making a big production out of it because you may never see this again, me cooking, on my blog. Ha, ha!
I'm sorry, this isn't for vegetarians (you know who you are).
The recipe isn't hard to follow and you don't need lots of ingredients.
But first get yourself something to drink, you'll need it. I got myself a diet coke with lime.
You need 2 medium size golden onions. Chop them fine.
Next 2 peppers, bell sized, any combination. One green and one red, or you can get a yellow or orange. If you have kids who are allergic to anything green use the other colors. Hungarians love peppers, fat, thin, long, short, mild or hot, anything goes but for this dish stick to the mild.
Clean out the centers and cut them into about 8 long strips.
I get 6 chicken thighs and 6 drumsticks because you need the flavor from the bones and the skin to add the extra flavor to your sauce. OR you can use a package of skinless boneless breasts cut into thick strips as a substitute for either the thighs or the drumsticks so your stew has less fat though. O.K. that's what I am going to do here because it is the new millenium and we are all freaked out about fat in our foods, but people Hungarians were into survival and they needed the extra fat. Check your history books.
See my chicken breasts cut into chunky strips?
You need a couple of tomatoes OR one can of diced tomatoes because they have done most of the work for you of removing the skin and most of the seeds.
I said
Now get a big deep frying/saute pan with a lid and put in about 4-5 tablespoons of canola oil, heat it on medium hot until it is hot but not smoking.
Drop in your chopped onions and stir around until they are coated with the oil.
Let them cook until they become translucent.
Add all the chicken and brown it on all sides. Keep stirring the onions around or they will burn. Pay attention the most at this point.
When your chicken has some patches of brown on them, it's time to put in your Hungarian Paprika.
I usually use about 5 slightly heaping tablespoons.
LOOK!
That was about 3 tablespoons. Then I use 2 more tablespoons.
That's why they call it "Paprikas Chicken".
Throw it all on and no I don't mean the whole can.
Stir until all the chicken is coated. And keep stirring slowly every once in a while.
Stir in those peppers.
Add the tomatoes.
Stir those tomatoes around.
Let those juices sizzle for a minute or two and then add a can of chicken broth and also a can of water before it all burns and sticks to the bottom of the pan and you feel like throwing it all away.
Sizzling going on below.
Next,
For this much chicken I use about 2 tablespoons of salt.
Stir it in and now it should look like this.
If yours doesn't have this much liquid, pour in some more water so it looks pretty much like this. I then try to push all the pepper pieces in under the sauce so that they'll cook through and get soft.
O.K. almost finished. But now, you want to bring the sauce to a slight boil so it is bubbling
and then cover it with the lid and turn it down to low. In that order. Bring it to bubbling, cover with the lid
and then turn down to low.
Now let it cook like this for 20 minutes. Use a timer.
If you like, and I always do, open it halfway through the 20 minutes and see how it is going. Stir it all around a bit. It should look like this while it is simmering. I know it looks exactly like that last picture when all the ingredients are in, but trust me, this is later and it is better.
So the buzzer goes off and it's done. Let's look at it.
I've been waiting 2 years to use this oven mitt as a prop on my blog. This is his close-up Mr. DeMille. Yes, I do this for my own entertainment. I hope you are laughing.
If you click on this picture you'll see the red oil on the top. Some Hungarians were really poor when my parents were still living there and that oil was part of their regular diet. It kept them alive during hard times. My parents used to lecture me whenever I didn't want to eat all my food or my vegetables and if I put up a fuss I got an earful of how lucky I was to be here in Canada, in America, alive, eating all the good foods there were available to me that weren't available to them. So I had a healthy respect for grease instilled in me at a young age. My mom used to dip sweet french bread into this sauce with some of the oil and feed it to my sister and me and we loved it.
But for today I have to give you this advice. This sauce just gets even better when served the next day. So let it cool down and put it in your refrigerator overnight. Then next day when you take it out and before you heat it up, if there is any fat you want to spoon off the top you just do it.
Let's pretend it is the next day, shall we?
I took this out of my refrigerator (the next day) and put it on the stove but haven't turned it on yet.
I have tipped the pan a little to show you how thick this stew is when it is cold. The extra fat is on the top and you can spoon it off. Go ahead, do it. For me it's too late. I have to eat it, it's in my blood.
Warm it up on medium low and make some white rice or noodles while it is heating up. Then serve it with french bread and/or a salad.
Here is the way it could look on the dinner table.
and this is the real Hungarian way with a couple of tablespoons of sour cream on top.
Oh yeah and there's the dipped bread too. I snuck that in there. Go ahead try it, you know you want to.
Are you wondering about what this “Blog-o-Sphere” thing is?
Andes Cruz, a metalsmith I met online and whose work I love, formed a group of friends who blog and she called it the "Blog-o-Sphere Think Tank". We all write a blog post once a month about the same topic, and we all post at the same time, on the 20th. I've been writing with them since October 2013 and the group keeps me blogging even when I am busy doing my thing. I hope you’ll visit all the blogs on the list and see what they have to say and if YOU have anything to say, please leave me a comment. I would enjoy hearing about it.
Please visit my blogging buddies to get more input. There's time, plenty of time.
Andes Cruz: https://andescruz.wordpress.com
Tosca Teran: http://nanopod.me/
Shelagh Blatz www.designsbyshelagh.com/blog
pencilfox: www.pencilfox.com
