Zsambék Rabbit and Apple Canapés, Beef Tenderloin and Carmelized Sweet Onions, Jugged Zsambék Rabbit, Puliszka (Hominy), Hot Spring Onion and Roasted Nut Salad with Balsamic, Spring Iceberg Salad

Zsambék Rabbit and Apple Canapés

Two rabbit livers
Two rabbit hearts
Four rabbit kidneys
50 grams butter
nutmeg
black pepper
dash of bunny stock
dash of white wine (Légli 333)
salt to taste after frying
one dry, crisp apple
smooge of mustard
one boiled egg, separated and chopped
chopped parsley and lovage
leftover ciabatta

Cut leftover ciabatta very thin and toasted in the pan. Set aside.

In a small skillet, medium heat, melt 30-50 grams butter, add the hearts, wait a beat, then the kidneys, then the livers. You can dust them in flour if you’re worried you’ll burn them. Grind of black pepper, dash of rabbit stock from your jugged rabbit, reduce, dash of white wine, grind of nutmeg, reduce, sea salt to taste right before you take it off and set aside. For pinkish liver, five to seven minutes, since this is game.

Peel one dry crisp apple like Pink Lady or Topaz, cut in thin slices (2mm or so), sauté them in a very light amount butter in the same skillet for about a minute a side, then set aside.

Assemble the canapés on a nice but chipped one-of-a-kind plate from the toast, smooge of mustard (Dusseldorfer, sarf/hot), wheel of apple, thin slices of liver, grind of black pepper, finely chopped lovage and parsley over the plate, peel and separate the boiled egg, finely dicing yolk, then eggwhite, sprinkling over canapes for garnish.

The result is very aromatic and rich and went nicely on the transition from lager to Bikavér. I ate the hearts and the kidneys as I made the finishing touches.


Beef Tenderloin and Carmelized Sweet Onions with Walnuts and Dried Paprika Chili

This is for people who won’t eat rabbit, like teenagers or children who might feel a little threatened by the idea of eating bunnies. The tenderloin was marinated for five days, almost to the point of being high, along with the onions—you don’t have to go that far. I just couldn’t handle more meat at the time and then came the point to cook it. . I served this as an appetizer next to the rabbit liver canapés.

Half a small tenderloin, in thin slices
Five sweet medium onions, peeled and halved
One cup red wine
Six tablespoons soy sauce
One lime
Cracked black pepper
Two dried whole sweet paprika
Four garlic cloves
Handful of ruby-skinned walnuts

Slice the beef tenderloin thinly (half a centimeter or so), peel and halve the onions, place them in a glass bowl, add the red wine (Vida), soy sauce, lime juice, cracked black pepper, deseed and scissor in strips of the dry whole paprika, four garlic cloves, sliced in half, and a handful of walnuts. Marinate for at least half a day. Stir from time to time and add more soy sauce and red wine periodically if it turns into a longer process.

On a medium hot lightly oiled skillet, carmelize the whole onions, turning from time to time. If you modulate the heat well enough and give them a shake they should cook nicely. Then can be covered periodically too. The quality and flavor of the onion is important, as not every Grannie in the farmer’s market has good ones. Set aside when done, about 20 minutes. Wipe and reheat the skillet, reoil and saute the five-minute tenderloin slices/medallions at high heat, careful not to let them sweat but always fry. Adjust seasoning with soy sauce and ground black pepper. It might take a few rounds depending on the skillet. Set aside the tenderloins. Wipe clean again the skillet and fry up the drained remains of garlic, walnuts and paprika with a bit of marinade and splash of fresh wine and add to your now complete dish. The onions were outstandingly nice and juicy too.


Jugged Zsambék Rabbit

A brace of fresh young rabbits, just under three kilos dressed all together, with their offal. These are hard to find. Mine came from Hunyadi ter, prearranged and purchased from the fruitier from Zsambék, a Swabian town to the west of Budapest with a nice summer theater festival and plenty of stout fruit brandy. The rabbits were a lovely pink, clean, dry and had their offal.

Two sweet onions
Three bay leaves
Four cloves
Sprig of lovage
Liberal grind of black pepper
15 white pepper corns
Four small carrots
Four small parsley root
Half a celeriac
Two tablespoons sea salt
30 grams smoked bacon
Three knobs butter
Chickpea or regular flour
Half bottle red wind (Chateau Kajmád cuvee from Szekszard)
Water

In a substantial and good quality pot, sauté the rough chopped onions in butter on low to medium heat, along with the finely diced smoked bacon. Add bay leaves, cloves, grind of black pepper, white pepper corns. Meanwhile you have separated the rabbits’ fore and hind legs and quartered the saddles. I set aside and froze the four hind legs and two choice bits of saddle for a later meal. You will dust what remains in flour, seasoned with sea salt and grind of black pepper, adding more butter if needed beforehand to the onion, braising and sealing the rabbit saddles and fore legs for a few minutes a side and for a maximum of ten minutes. Meanwhile you clean and finely dice the carrot, parsley root and celeriac, a few garlic cloves, sage, few snipping of lovage.

Check to make sure nothing’s burning or singeing, add the vegetables, top up with red wine soon thereafter, top up again with red wine, fill to the surface level with water, and cover, simmering up to a boil and back to simmering over the next two hours, adding salt if needed.

I set this aside in the pantry for two days, knowing that this is the jugging part when the rabbit soaks up all the lovely red wine taste, then transferred to a cast iron casserole on the day I was scheduled to cook for dinner. That evening I baked it in a moderate oven for another 45 minutes, reducing the liquid. Reportedly, it was excellent and even a teenager ate some.


Puliszka (Hominy/Polenta)

3-4 cups boiling water
1 ½ cups stone ground corn meal
sea salt to taste
50 grams smoked bacon
1 ½ cups cooking oil
sheep’s curd (optional)
chanterelles (optional)

This dish goes by many names: hominy grits in the United States, polenta in Italy, mamaliga in Romania, and it’s cousin in Ghana, kenkey.

In a heavy cast iron pot with a short handled wooden spoon, the flame on medium, add the corn meal, then quickly add the preboiled water, adding in portions, stirring out the lumps, to a fairly wet consistency, turn up the flame and keep stirring regularly, basically until it has reduced and the spoon more or less stands up in the hominy. That's the trick and means its done. Set aside.

In a thick heavy skillet on medium high heat, fry up the finely diced bacon until crisp, top up the pan with a liberal amount of oil and add the hominy porridge. Fry well, adding more oil as needed, cutting slices and turning as needed, until it’s golden crisp on the outside. It takes about a quarter hour. You can also add wild mushrooms like chanterelles or some wickedly salty and sour Transylvanian sheep’s curd.


Hot Spring Onion Salad with Roasted Nuts and Balsamic

Eight bunches spring onions (about six to a bunch), cleaned, washed, and topped midway
Two handfuls hazelnuts
One handful walnuts
One handful ruby-skinned walnuts
Sprig of fresh lovage
Small bunch of parsley
Small bunch of fresh dill
Three tablespoons balsamic vinegar
Four tablespoons olive oil
Teaspoon salt
Dash of medium sherry

In a medium wok, sauté the clean, dry whole onions on high heat with a splash of cooking oil about four to six minutes. Dash of medium sherry to deglaze. They should be still a bit crunchy. Wipe the wok and roast two handfuls of whole hazelnuts, adding two handfuls of walnuts about five minutes later as the hazelnuts need a head start. I really like the ruby-skinned ones I sometimes find in the market. Shake and roast as necessary on low to medium heat the next ten minutes. Set aside and cool. Rub off some of the skins if you can. Then chop very roughly with the knife. Scissor in the lovage, parsley, and dill into your onions. Add the nuts. Shake in some sea salt, add the olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and bingo.


Spring Iceberg Lettuce Salad

Three small heads of fresh iceberg lettuce, cleaned, washed and torn
Pinch of brown sugar
Three pinches of salt
Two tablespoons red wine vinegar (homemade)
Two tablespoons olive oil
Splash of fresh squeezed lemon juice


Comment: The canapés were superb, the tenderloin tangy, soft and good, the rabbit was falling off the bone, really sweet and delicious, great juice, the iceberg lettuce a great cooler but almost superfluous in light of the discovery of the hot spring onion roasted nut salad.

Served six for dinner and takes a few days to prepare for full flavor effect.

Served with Thummerer Egri Bikavér 2006.

Rosemary Leg of Lamb, Mixed Spring Salad, Red Currant and Kumquat Chutney, Roast Pots

We’re mad as loons and never fear an impromptu lunch that could have resembled a mock Easter. My neighbor turned up on Sunday afternoon with a leg of lamb that was sourced through the British Pantry in Budapest. We settled on the classic dish and abandoned the idea of spiking the lamb with anchovies. After a few hours, we sat down to late lunch. The delicious aroma was detectable outside on the street. 


Rosemary Leg of Lamb

1 leg of milk-fed lamb
20 garlic cloves
8 branches dry rosemary
2 tablespoons sea salt
60 cracked black pepper corns
½ bottle cooking-quality white wine (Kovesdi Chardonnay 2004)
1 tablespoon oregano

It was assuring to see the real thing: a pink and tender leg of lamb, thereafter cut into two joints. The shank and thigh were spiked in two large slits with some of the garlic, dry rosemary, black pepper, and salt, rubbed with same mixture, drizzled with a bit of olive oil and cooked for 1 hour at high heat in a gas oven: roasted first twenty minutes to seal, then marinated a few times with own juices and liberal amounts of white wine, extra garlic cloves, being careful not to let the nice juices burn for the next 40 minutes, pulled out a few times to admire, oregano only going on towards the end so it doesn’t burn either. Joints rested for 20 minutes with a nice jug of gravy.


Mixed Spring Salad

Fresh spring spinach, rucola, sorrel, iceberg lettuce, lovage and green onion salad with toasted sesame, sea salt, hint of brown sugar, balsamic and olive oil dressing.


Red Currant and Kumquat Chutney

2 cups frozen red currants (located as a result of thawing the freezer)
20 kumquats
½ a sweet onion, diced fine
3 piripiri peppers
2 tablespoons dry mint
2 tablespoons agave syrup.
½ teaspoon salt
Dash of oil
Dash of vinegar
Juice of half a lime
Knob of ground ginger

In hot skillet, no oil, add the sweet onion, tossing stirring frequently for a few minutes. Add currants, sauté, add agave syrup, mint, salt, ground ginger, kumquats, lime juice. Cook and reduce for about ten minutes. 


Roast Pots

Parboiled potatoes, roasted off in a mixture of lamb fat and 1/3 cup cooking oil, for about 20 minutes, with a liberal grind of sea salt.


Serves four (with enough leftover for sandwiches).

Served with Pántlika Dörgicsei Chardonnay 2009.


Comments: Some at the table would have liked the lamb a little more done (5-10 minutes more) or maybe some lemon as well, but otherwise it was a success and proved that you can get good Hungarian lamb, right now. I certainly don’t mind a bloody bone or two. It was as delicious as any of the fresh spring milk-fed whole lambs I’ve had the privilege to stuff or grill during Easter in Transylvania. The rosemary, wild and gathered in abundance on the southern coast of the island of Hvar, and black pepper, from Meraat Grocery here in Budapest, are also of great importance to this dish.

Lovage, Onion and Sour Cherry Tenderloin with Six Leaf Salad

Lovage, Onion and Sour Cherry Tenderloin

~½ kilo beef tenderloin, fresh, not frozen, aged day or so in the fridge
4 large sweet onions
1 slice of cabbage
1 bunch fresh spring lovage
30 peppercorns
1 small branch rosemary
½ teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons dry oregano
1 ½ teaspoons salt
30 sour cherries and their juice (fresh, canned or compote)
Cooking oil
Splashes of red wine (Vida Kadarka—too sour to drink)

Clean and cut the tenderloin into four medallions, setting aside any extra for the next round. Rub medallions with the mortared mixture of cracked black pepper, rosemary, oregano, salt.

Heat skillet to medium high and sauté roughly diced onions and cabbage in light amount of oil, stirring occasionally, splashing with red cooking wine, salt, grind of nutmeg, grind of black pepper, set aside when onion soft and nearly done on a plate.

Fire up the skillet to max, oil lightly, add medallions, five minutes a side, adding 30 sour cherries about midway, splashes of red wine, splashes of cherry juice, and near the very end, the stalks of the lovage.

Add again the onion and cabbage mix, simmer for a minute.

Deglaze again with red wine and cherry juice, leaving some gravy.

Serve on a large rustic plate.


Six Leaf Salad

Liberal handful fresh spring spinach
Liberal handful fresh spring sorrel
Liberal handful fresh rucola
1 smallish fresh spring iceberg lettuce
1 smallish romaine lettuce (optional)
Mixed green onion tops
1 bunch lovage (lestyán) leaves, the stalks going into the tenderloin above
Sea salt to taste
Pinch of sugar
2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
3 tablespoons olive oil
Splash of cherry juice
Splash of apple vinegar
2 tablespoons lightly roasted sesame seeds

Wash, drain, dry and tear up the leaves on a large serving plate/salad bowl. Toss in sea salt and sugar with your hands, add olive oil, pomegranate, cherry juice, vinegar, sesame, etc.

The stress here is on the freshness of all the leaves, which took me a few early mornings on Thursday and Friday at Hunyadi tér to coordinate. Likewise, the tenderloin was a special inside the market hall, bright red, unfrozen, fresh and looking very appealing.

Serve with Vesztergömbi Cabernet Franc 2008 (Vino Veritás)

Enough for a greedy man and a hungry woman on a Friday night.

Bread/starch optional.

Good for an evening stroll thereafter.

Tropical Pork and Shrimp, Banana Parsnip Fufu, Kumquat Salsa, Spinach and Sorrel Mousse

Tropical Pork and Shrimp

800 grams pork haunch
10 shrimps
12 young carrots, washed
4 young parsley roots, washed
1 small cabbage, rough cut
coconut milk
lime juice
¼ cup medium sherry
three large sweet onions, diced rough
five garlic cloves
three flakes of cinnamon
50 corns Kumasi pepper (cubab)
teaspoon cumin seeds
2 Kumasi cloves
2 cups water
tablespoon salt
five kumquats
one pasillo chili, deseeded
four hot anchos, deseeded
two poblanos, deseeded
thumb of grated ginger
grind of nutmeg
palm oil (optional)
fresh turmeric (optional)
lemon grass or keffir lime (optional)

This dish works with flavors of Oaxaca, Ghana, and Portugal so locating it more precisely than as a derivative of several tropical cuisines is beyond the ken of the chef. Nonetheless, once made along with the rest of the menu, you’ll see the point as spring commences.

Dice the pork, remove any excess fat, set aside. Peel and dice the onions roughly. In a large, good-quality pan, preferably with a lid, sauté the onion on medium heat, add cooking oil as needed or some of the excess pork fat. Mortar the pepper corns, cumin seeds, cloves, and some salt, add to the onion once browning, then a few flakes of cinnamon (a hint, not dominanut), careful not to scorch, splashes of medium sherry as necessary, add garlic cloves, then your pork, turning up the heat, browning and braising, all of the deseeded chilis broken roughly, splash of sherry, washed spring carrots, parsley root, grind of nutmeg, water, bring to a boil, then turn down and simmer for at least two hours, adding the cabbage in the last hour, and towards the very end flavoring with quarter cup of coconut milk and juice of half a lime, salting to taste.

The question of when to add the shrimps depends on your plans. You can decide to add your shrimps now for immediate eating if the pork is nice and soft, or if you plan a quick heat up later (otherwise they’ll be overcooked and tough) for your lunch guests.

Or once cooled, store the stew for a few days to gain flavor, then add your shrimp when you complete the stew with the rest of the lunch menu.


Banana Parsnip Fufu

¾ kilo parsnips, peeled, diced rough
¼ kilo yellow potato, peeled, diced rough
1 banana
three knobs butter
salt

In a medium pot with a rolling boil of salted water, plunge in the parsnips and potato, boiling properly until just done (breaking apart with a stab of a fork, about 12-15 minutes), breaking in the banana a few minutes before this point. Mash and whip, adding butter and salt to taste.

This turned out far better than I expected and really complimented the pork as well as the “coco yam leaf” mousse. 


Kumquat Salsa

Deseeded, julienned kumquats (20 or so), fine cut bunch of spring onion, two handfuls of julienned sorrel, fine cut endive, dash of salt, dash of brown sugar, finger of grated ginger, mint if available, fresh or dry haberno/piri piri (optional), juice of half a lime, splash of olive oil.


Spinach and Sorrel Mousse

Half kilo mixed spring spinach and sorrel, washed, blanched, cooled, drained and then diced roughly with the knife, two fine diced garlic cloves, shake of olive oil, grind of salt, whipped well with the fork. It makes an approximation of “coco yam leaf” to go with your fufu.


Served with Soproni Demon in place of Guinness Export Stout. Tramini or Kadarka would also work.

Serves four.

Curry Bangers with Pineapple Rice and Pineapple Salad

Curried Bangers

6 Wilkinson plain pork sausages
3 medium onions, medium julienne
3 tablespoons madras curry powder
50 grams butter

On low heat, melt butter. Julienne onions, medium size, and sauté on medium heat for five to ten minutes, add water if needed, stirring occasionally, then add curry powder, brown it a bit, add more butter if needed, then add sausages and sauté for about 25 minutes, again add water if needed.


Pineapple Rice and Pineapple Salad (from one pineapple)

One third of a pineapple, diced
Tablespoon palm oil
1 turmeric root, peeled, and finely diced
15 black pepper corns
Heaped cup of basmati (soaked 10 minutes in cold water)
1 ½ cup water

On low heat, melt palm oil, add diced turmeric root (or equivalent amount of powder), peppercorns, being careful not to burn, add rice, and just over 1 ½ cups water, cover. Bring to boil, then turn down low. Once water has evaporated, leave with lid off for five minutes


Pineapple Salad
One red onion, diced
Two-thirds of a pineapple, diced
Three chili pepper ground in a pinch of salt in the mortar
Pinch of brown sugar
Pinch of dried mint and dried basil
Juice of half a lime
Teaspoon of peanut/soybean oil
Half a radiccio, fine julienne.

Dice everything and toss together accordingly.

Serve with your curry bangers and pineapple rice. Soproni Demon is nice with it.

Ham in a Bag

The home is in. It’s the new, improved place to be.

But has home ever truly gone out of fashion for the domestic mystics out there? Does it matter if home might as well be razed, with mushrooms growing in the hall, no buzzer to speak of, an excuse for a door, behind which is the cache of all that remains of what is you, much reduced in circumstance by the tides of love and labor?

No, so long as there’s a hearth, there’s a home.

The idea for this project was to provide a nice ham over the Christmas holidays, but not one from the usual sources, either from the farmers in the Budapest outdoor markets or from the butchers in the bigger markets: oversalted, rubbed with some preservative I wouldn’t want on it, and so smoked that there’s hardly any ham flavor left. Now I'm trying it again in preparation for Easter, having about three weeks to for the salt to do its magic.

I did a little research in Mrs. Beaton and Larousse, and although I lacked a brine tub, I thought a dry salt in a plastic bag would suffice for my purposes.

Compare what’s in the can, preserved, or dried, or anything that’s sold as cured, smoked, or salted, and you can actually avoid all that by doing it yourself with just salt.

The same applies to the accompanying bread recipe. It’s a search to secure the best, cleanest foods possible.


Ham in a Bag

One 3.7 kilo haunch of pork or piglet, supposedly mangalica, but it wasn’t (Feny utca)
Six kilograms of sea salt
Three clean large plastic bags or salting tub
15 juniper berries
20 bayleaves
Three tablespoons rosemary
Seven tablespoons mortared mixed black and white pepper

Salted for 15 days, hanging from a coat hanger in three plastic bags, checked on occasionally, then soaked overnight (should have been air-dried a few days), cut at the knuckle, boiled for four hours (first broth thrown out after an hour, 2nd broth saved to the very end and used to make pasta and soup), served with homemade mustard, homemade horseradish and homemade bread. The flavor was mild and lovely.

And advance apologies for no pictures. If you're reading this and your mouth is watering, well, you don't need pictures.