For our 10th meal, I chose Hungary! This date night was a big success. Mark liked every dish, both varieties of alcohol, the music, and the film. Hurray!
To start, we had hideg meggyleves (sour cherry soup). I was a little skeptical about the idea of a cool pink soup for an appetizer (!) but it was actually delicious. I do like tart cherry pie, and this had much the same flavor, although creamier and with notes of cloves and cinnamon. My "food sense" still tells me this is a dessert food, but it was nice.
The langos (fried dough) was very tasty, here enjoyed with sour cream, garlic, parsley, and gouda. I thought it would be like pizza but not really.
Our main course was paprikás csirke (chicken paprikash) with nokedli (little handmade noodles, like spaetzle). Hungary is known for their paprika, so this dish was the star of the show. It was good! A mild, pleasant taste. A bit like a creamier chicken cacciatore.
The nokedli were tasty and very fun to make. Basically you make a thickish batter and bloop little bits of it into boiling water, where it swiftly cooks and forms these interesting shapes.
The dobosh torte!! This was a real labor of love, 4 hours just for the cake. I'm not a big chocolate person, but even I could appreciate this delectable filling, of whipped butter with meringue and melted chocolate folded in. Making these fiddly layers in tins was less enjoyable than making the layers for the medovik on parchment paper.
The caramel for the top was tricky, I ended up needing up triple the recipe quantities to get it to cover the cake. I wish it looked darker, but whatever, okay for the first time -- and it still tasted good!
I special ordered two types of famous Hungarian liquor for this evening, both from iconic brand Zwack. First, their eponymous liquor, Zwack, which Mark loved (herbal, like Fernet, but with a smooth, caramelly finish and a strong anise flavor). And second, a Hungarian plum brandy, which was tasty, but STRONG. This was my first time buying liquor online, shout out to WineChateau.com!
During dinner, we listened to Hungarian folk music, which was awesome -- as Mark said, it sounded like Renaissance festival music.
Then after dinner, we watched Kontroll (2003), about fare enforcers for the Budapest subway system. It was actually amazing!! Like seriously, really good, genre-defying, a dark romantic comedy mystery with horror elements. Great.
They also gave instructions for cooking a dish which started out exactly the same way as my chicken paprikash recipe, so that was fun. :)
When? September 20, 2020
Who cooked? Lauren
Hungary Stats
- Population: 9,707,499 (94th in the world) -- surprisingly small, about as many people live in Michigan State!
- GDP: 283.6 (58th in the world)
- Life Expectancy: 76.7 (58th in the world, US is 38th)
- Founding Date/Age in 2020: 895 / 1125
- Official Language: Hungarian
