Fragrant Nut and Rice Stuffed Peppers and Tomatoes with Chanterelle Potato Caper Chickpea Corn Cheese Casserole

Chanterelle Potato Caper Chickpea Corn Cheese Casserole

30 decagrams chanterelle (rokagomba)
8 medium white potatoes
1 finger-width strip of salted pork belly (szalona), diced
1 cup fresh raw milk
10 pea size knobs of butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons capers
Grind of nutmeg
30 black pepper
1 teaspoon paprika

Four sprigs thyme
Fresh ground rosemary
Two small mild red onions, diced fine
Four cloves garlic
Salt to taste


Preboil whole potatoes in light salt water, drain, cool and peel, then slice finger width. Don’t overcook them.

Saute pork belly in a dash of cooking oil on medium heat till almost crispy, then diced onion and a splash of water. When it’s no longer wet, add a teaspoon of the best homemade paprika you can find. Brown for half a minute, splash of water, add thyme, sherry if so desired, then the cleaned and sliced chanterelles (aka rokagomba at Lehel teri piac), and season with a grind of black pepper and nutmeg. Add water as necessary. Stew on low heat for at least an hour. It should be quite thick by the end, but not burning.

Place a layer of potatoes in your medium enameled cast iron casserole dish, add milk up to their tops, knobs of butter, olive oil, four crushed cloves of garlic. Add a layer of chickpeas and capers. Add a layer of potatoes. Top up with milk and more butter. Add a layer of fresh-boiled corn. Then add your chanterelle stew. Add four potatoes slices to the very top. Dash them with paprika and a few cumin seeds but not the rest. Top up with milk to a centimeter of the brim.

Bake a maximum of 40 minutes, first 25 minutes, high heat, foil on lightly, milk might spill out, top up later if needed, then another final ten minutes or so to brown the top when you add the French Alpine goat cheese (medium soft) or Cowgirl Camembert if you’re in San Francisco.

Serves 3 to 5, depending. Gets better if it rests a day.


Fragrant Nut and Rice Stuffed Peppers and Tomatoes

8 medium red and green homegrown peppers
A dozen vine-ripened medium tomatoes
1 cup parboiled jasmine rice
1 ½ cups mixed home roasted nuts (walnuts and hazelnuts), cleaned and rough chopped
3 allspice
Teaspoon alligator pepper
2 teaspoons cubab pepper,
¼ teaspoon fresh ground cinnamon
4 cloves
Pinch of saffron
1 cup finely juliened medium zucchini or squash or its skin thereof
One carrot, finely diced
Salt to taste

Clean the red and green homegrown peppers, so fresh they’re squeaky, and also vine-ripened tomatoes. Remove their tops and tidy them, then rub inside with a smidgen of sea salt. Set the bunch aside—also keeping back the tomato juice for the stuffing. Keep each pepper and tomato with its hat if you can.

Quick ten-minute cold water soak for the jasmine rice, then parboil. Set aside to cool.

Meanwhile sauté the carrot and julienned zucchini/squash or its skin in knob of butter and dash of olive oil in medium saucepan, later adding your mortared allspice, mixed pepper, clove, cinnamon, salt, saffron mix. Add the leftover tomato juice and innards. Reduce and saute to al dente. Cool and set aside.

Stir in the nuts you have roasted and chopped. Stir in the rice. Lubricate and flavor to taste. That’s your stuffing that you spoon gently into the peppers, don’t press in too much. At some point in the past I exchanged the nuts for oats or lentils, but this felt truer to what the protein should be.

Arrange in the large oven pan as you like. Fill with four cups water and a tablespoon of cooking oil.

Bake 1hour foil on to steam them, half an hour foil off to get them crispy. Top up with water if they’re in jeopardy of burning.

Serves 5 to 6.

These were aromatic and fluffy and really complemented the casserole. Shared over two meals with a bottle of Alentejo that remains nameless since it’s already in the recycling and a bottle of Raicces Syrah.

This meal also improves overnight as the flavors and textures merge together. A fresh bitter chicory and basil leaf salad with honey mustard might also have appeared on the table. Along with a blueberry and plum tart. And cherry rocket fuel to wash it down, presupposing a merry feeling in reaction to this wet bluesy summer.

Pesto for Now and Later

Pesto for Now and Later

I wouldn’t recommend making the below in such a giant quantity that is difficult to eat in one winter if not two. The approach is the same for smaller batches of four bunches basil, liberal cup olive oil, 100 gram pine nuts, pecorino and salt to taste, serving at least ten people.

In the last week of August, at a proper market, you should be able to buy substantial amounts of basil. If you are allergic to tomatoes and die for basil as a replacement in the winter, then this is for you to save money and have killer green pasta at vital moments. Forms the basis of many tapanade. This is your moment to respect leaves.

This year I bought three bucketfuls in Budapest for 20 euros or less (imagine that in your supermarket herb section, eh). You don’t want that which is overflowered. You want large and small leaved varieties with a minimum of flowering and seeds. I bought in total 40 bunches, each composed of about 2-4 entire plants. I bought from four different people and emptied the market for that day.

Prepare 3 liters of glassware/plasticware as this will seal and protect your investment from freezerburn and the general blasphemy of this idea.

150-200 grams pinenuts. Toast these lightly and be very careful not to waste them on a big flame.
1.5 liters olive oil of decent type.
1/2 cup good sea salt.
200-300 grams parmegano, grated at home.
Ground pepper to taste or not at all

Wash and plunge all the basil in the sink/tub. Wash three times at least to rid it of sand/dirt and pests.

Allow to dry overnight, roots in buckets.

Pick in the morning, preferably with your loved one, allowing for your thumb to get sore (three hours). Discard big flowers but keep some of the buds/flowers that have not formed seeds. Save all the best leaves.

You should have at least four heaped large 7 liter bowls of leaves as the result.

Borrow a blender or use your own.

To blend this enormous amount add a liberal cup to the bottom of the blender and start pureeing. With a spatula push, struggle, stir and generally integrate the leaves. You can add a cup of water too to help you. Liquidity is essential. Your blender might start smelling funny from the work. Each big bowl should yield a liter. You may salt as you blend. But not too fine. It does not have to be perfect as that’s part of the hand-madeness.

Your paste will oxidize quickly so everything else should be ready.

Add cheese, more oil, pine nuts (which should be crushed some in a pestle), remaining salt to taste.

Store it, preferably freezing it in plastic containers or jars.

Fantastico!

Apply to bread, pasta, lamb, steak at will. But be careful though not to poke through the plastic container or break the glass jars with your knife because it’s too frozen. It should thaw some, but not totally.

If you were a real squirrel and up for it, you could use beech nuts in place of the pine nuts. A real fiddle to do, but think of the organic snob appeal. Beech nut pesto!

Pure or Spicy Chunky Marinara

Pure Marinara

15 kilos tomatoes, washed and peeled
8 pods garlic, finely chopped
¼ cup dry wild oregano
10 tablespoons sea salt
2 cups olive oil

This should be made at the peak of the tomato season when all kinds of heirlooms are available and everything has ripened on the vine and prices are low before autumn begins. Beefsteak, Romas, juicers, from soft pink to bright fire engine red, these are the varieties and this is the time to capture all that flavor and jar it for winter, especially if you can’t abide by store-bought sauce. You will need a few extra-large bowls and at least a 14-liter pot for this amount or two seven-liter pots.

It might take two days of trips to the market to collect the varieties you want. Don’t let the tomatoes sit around but do plan to spend the whole afternoon with them. Plus you should check to make sure you have about a dozen 750 deciliter jars and good, rust-free lids.

Wash the assorted tomatoes and then give them a boiling water bath in an extra-large metal bowl in 5 kilo lots. Let them soak and then peel them over another bowl adding the juice as well. As you finish the batch you can wring out the skins you have discarded in another bowl, extracting more juice.

On medium heat, hit the pan with a cup of oil, allowing it to warm a little and then add the first batch of peeled tomatoes. Keep on peeling the rest of the batch, adding hot boiling water as necessary to get them to peel. Sometimes this takes two rounds.

Watch your sauce that it doesn’t burn accidentally. Stir regularly.

Then fill with all your peeled tomatoes and let it reduce for three hours minimum on medium low heat. Stir regularly. You want to reduce its volume from one-third to a half over the course of the cooking. Gradually the sauce will redden, darken and gain in richness. Add salt as needed.

Peel and chop eight cloves of garlic that will only be added in the last 15 minutes of the cooking time, along with the ¼ cup of wild oregano also at that time, olive oil for flavor, and a final seasoning.

Meanwhile you have thoroughly washed and dried the jars for canning and they are in a hot water bath or in moderately warm oven, waiting to be filled with piping hot marinara.

Close tightly, turning jars upside down to see if any liquid escapes, meaning a dud seal.

Wrap your new family in blankets somewhere in the house to cool.

Perhaps water boil the jars the next day for 10 minutes to be extra safe.

Enjoy absolutely any time in winter.


The advantage of this pure marinara is that it can be used with anything; other than oregano and garlic, it has no other additions or background flavors. The focus here is on the quality and ripeness of the tomatoes that went in it in the first place. Which is somewhat different from the far more complicated and time-consuming spicy and chunky version below, perhaps symbolic of what I was capable of a decade ago confused too many flavors and ingredients. Now it’s a preference for a restrained, graceful, reliable, creative touch.


Spicy Chunky Marinara

14 to 18 kilos tomato peeled in hot water
3 kilos diced onion
1 kilos diced red onion
5 pods roasted and garlic
3 kilos roasted and peeled aubergine
1/2 liter olive oil
10 tablespoons salt
1 bottle dry white wine, preferably Reisling or Chardonnay
3 to 5 large bunches basil
4 to 5 smoked chipotles

Start with boiling pots of water for tomatoes. Dice onion as garlic and aubergine roast. Saute onion, chipotles. Peel the tomatoes, about 70% from the roma variety and 30% from the large fist-sized juicy varieties available in the last week of August for 50 HUF a kilo. Add bottle of wine to onion.  Add your tomatoes. Pot should be able to handle 25 liters of liquid with a good thick bottom. Reduce by 1/3 minimum over three to four hours. Add aubergine and garlic half way through. Basil at the very end. You should get about 12 to 14 liters of silky, thick, scrumptuous sauce. 

Meanwhile scrub jars and lids with scalding water, let dry and put in oven at low heat for half hour minimum. Fill—careful not to putting any foreign material in the jars and filling each jar one by one from the oven—screw on lids tight. Let cool overnight. Boil the jars in the next two days. They should be wrapped in newspaper during boiling and then once done put in a large blanket or coat to cool over the next night. Store. Open when hungry in winter and reheat.