as part of my plan to cook meals from different parts of the world this year, i made a hungarian meal for a couple of friends this week. i managed to get the stamp of approval from chris, whose dad is from hungary. not too shabby for my first attempt, i suppose. i made goulash (which, contrary to popular belief is not actually macaroni, ground beef and spaghetti sauce - that’s actually beef-a-roni, people), chicken paprikash, some viennese cucumbers (ok, so it was an austro-hungarian meal) and a linzertorte. some things i learned along the way:

1. hungarians have the highest suicide rate in the world
2. hungarian wine is like $50 a bottle
3. you can buy a large amount of paprika in bulk at whole foods for 2.99
4. if you buy one large amount of paprika, then forget you have it and buy another large amount of paprika, then you just have a whole ton of paprika
5. goulash can be a soup or a stew and the recipe actually calls for 1-5 cups of liquid. quite a variance.
6. many hungarian chefs refuse to put tomatoes in their goulash. we used tomoato paste. the color comes from the massive quantity of paprkia.
7. this pot is awesome, tested as well as all-clad and le creuset (according to cook’s illustrated) and is super fantastic if you get it at half off like i did
8. linzertorte is the oldest known cake in the world
9. there is a crust that is harder to work with than my pie crust - linzertorte crust. in order to get the lattice effect, you had to freeze it for a while, then use two icing spatulas to lay it on top of the tart. i did learn a new method to make lattice top pies look like they’re woven, when they really aren’t. there was no way you could have woven this crust.
10. hungarian sausage livens up any party. unfortunately, we had none.

in the works - february will be italian. been dying to try homemade ravioli and tiramisu. march will be irish - shepherd’s pie? stew, maybe? its more about the accompanying beverage in ireland anyway, right?