Delicious
Tonight is the choir social - first Monday of every month is our social wherein we make merry after rehearsal. I am one of the volunteers taking food (others bring wine! yay!). So first with the singing and then with the eating!
In Hungary last month, I ate something amazing, and I’m trying to replicate it tonight. A semi-soft, creamy cheese sorta like Camenbert or Brie, dredged in paprika. Not that stuff from McCormack either. No, the Real Stuff. I was gifted with some gorgeous homemade paprika - two kinds actually. One hot and one mild. And it’s gorgeous stuff. I’ll never go back to the box, which means I’ll have to get the recipe for making it. (I bet it involves drying the peppers?)
Another wonderful dish I ate there was a soup made from ground chicken meatballs/dumplings in a thyme-lemon-garlic broth with homemade pasta. “Gooseneck” pasta is the translation. Good wives in Hungary make their own pasta. In fact, anything really lovely and homey is said to be cooked in “good wife style.” It is easy to factor out sexism when you have a spoonful of this soup in your mouth. I should be so lucky to have such a wife!
And finally, something that I might try to bring home on the plane next time: kólbasz (KOHL-bas, sounds a lot like kielbasa, which is the Polish word for sausage). In fact, a la Bourdain, I would like to do a world tour of sausage and ham. (Ok, Jimmy K, stop laughing!) The ham in Hungary is thickly sliced, has a real resemblance to having come from a pig at one point, and usually is served with mustard or horseradish OR BOTH.
(sigh - ham trance)
Where was I? Right. The second thing I’m taking to the choir social is the standard cream cheese tortilla roll-up, with green chile and red onion. And I have a lovely apricot pecan Collin St. Bakery cake all sliced and lovely.
Of all the media I love using to express my creativity, I think food is my favorite. So rich in potential, so tasty, so many possibilities.