Finally Fall: Edition I Have No Idea What Hungarian Traditions Have To Do With Fall, But Just Go With Me On This

Hi all.

As I sit here and type this, there's a beautiful breeze blowing right on me through my open window.  Not just a cool breeze, but most definitely a COLD breeze.  And by cold, I mean that we've finally hit below 75 degrees at night, which here in the desert qualifies as mitten and scarf time (truly, that's only a slight exaggeration).  Anyway, all this makes me so happy because YAY!  Fall is finally here and the A/C is off!

Hallelujah and bring on the Pumpkin Spice Lattes!

Normally what I like to do on the first day of the weather change is open all my windows, put out the fall decorations, and then bake something yummy smelling, like pumpkin bread, while I sit on the couch drinking tea and watching Sleepy Hollow. ( If you're thinking I'm a dork, you're not only right BUT you've also seriously underestimated me when, in my previous entries, I wrote about how much I love October.)

So suck it.

I kid.

Anyway, turns out that this year it doesn't matter because my dang stove broke.  The timing in this is terrible.  Really, it's just these next three months that I really need my stove and the rest of the year I pretty much ignore it.  However, Murphy's Law and blah blah blah and none of this really is relevant except to explain to you that this Finally Fall Edition 1 was supposed to contain some kind of Fall Comfort Food and instead I'm doing a post on Hungarian Chicken Paprikash, because it can be cooked on a stovetop.  And because it was my mother in law's birthday and she's from the Old Country- and I wanted to attempt to cook her something outside of my comfort zone.

I'm one of those people who never really seem to learn from their past mistakes.

Anyway.

Hungarian Chicken Paprikash.  Here's the ingredients you will need:

That's 8 slices of bacon, 1/4 cup finely chopped onion, 3/4 all purpose flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons paprika, 1 1/2 cups of sour cream, 2 to 3 pounds of chicken, and for the drop noodles you'll need 2 1/3 cups flour, 1 tsp. salt, 1 slightly beaten egg, and 1 cup of flour.

I don't know why the milk made it into the shot.  I think I was confused.

Now, before we start I need a few words.  First, please don't expect much from this FF post.  It's been a month and I was rusty.  In addition, the photographs in this post are about as unappetizing as you can get.  I forgot that I wouldn't have as much light to work with this time of year as I had over the summer when I was doing FFF.  You can blame astronomy and my little point and shoot camera.

Second, just a quick word about my mother in law and her background.  She was born in a work camp in post-war Europe.  Hungary became a displaced nation after Hitler marched through, so her family saved what they could and came to the United States through South America (where they were able to obtain Visas).  They came to Los Angeles, worked and went to school during the day, took English classes at night, and made a life for themselves.  I love that I married into this story- doesn't it make me so much more interesting to tell people this, as opposed to relating my own mutt-style cultural heritage?

Mr. C says he remembers being young and going to his nagymama's (neh-mama is Hungarian for grandma) house and watching her and his great grandma  spend their entire day in the kitchen cooking and talking.  They made their own noodles and dried them in the back bedroom.  Meat would hang out in their workshop.  This is what they did all day long- cook and talk.  They also smoked like a couple of chimneys, but it was the 70's and yes, the life of a housewife was that glamorous.

Anyway, my whole point in telling you this is that cooking was not a chore- it was their day.  I'm kind of fascinated by it and that's why I took this on.  My mother in law had given me a little Hungarian cookbook, complete with the cutest little drawings of a Hungarian girl in native dress posing here and there next to the recipes.  So it was this recipe that I followed for Csirke Paprikas Galuskaval- or just plain Chicken Paprika with Noodles for those of you who can't get that tongue rolling thing down.

First step was to fry the 8 slabs of bacon.

Easy enough.
Then, you add in the 1/4 cup of chopped onion and fry that up too.

Still on the bucket list- learning to take a good picture of frying food.  This entire post is filled with blurry shots like these.

Okay, the next part I found a little um, difficult.  The recipe book said to "disjoint and cut chicken.  Slit the heart, and remove the blood vessesls.  Then, cut away and discard the tough lining from the gizzard.  Refrigerate the liver, and place heart, gizzards, and neck into saucepan."

Wow.  Now I was looking at the drawings of the little Hungarian girl in a whole new light.  For instance, I now know that in the upper left corner she's carrying a chicken in her bag.  I don't know what I thought was in there before.

And down there at the bottom she's chasing the chicken with the intent of ripping out it's heart, slitting it, and then cooking up it's innards in some bacon grease.

I would've never made it in the old country.

So, I just skipped that part like I never read it and chopped up my 3 pounds of boneless, skinless, chicken breast that I had bought at my neighborhood Costco.   

Then I put the flour, salt, and paprika into a bag,

along with the cut up chicken pieces.....

and shook it all up until the pieces are all covered (totally like Shake n' Bake).

 By this time I've removed the bacon and onions from the fry pan and set them aside.  (You did do that, didn't you?  I forgot to mention it, but you should know that you do have to do it. So go ahead.  Okay? Okay.)

Okay, so now fry up those chicken pieces in the bacon grease.

Then you cook up those pieces over medium-low heat until they're nice and tender- about 10 to 15 minutes.

You can cover the pot if you want.

While that's going, bring 2 qts. of water to a boil in a large pot.  This is when you start making the noodles.  Yes, you read that right- you are going to make the noodles. 

Crack the egg into a bowl and add 1 cup of water. 

Okay- this is where I got tired and started getting lazy about documenting the process.  You're going to have to fill in some blanks here.

Working with a third of a cup at a time, mix the flour into the egg.

That's what it looks like after the first third.  I must've been talking to my MIL or something during the rest of the process, because I have nary a picture of what the dough is supposed to look like before you move it to the cutting board.   I can only tell you that it's supposed to be thick, but only slightly thicker than the consistency of Elmer's school glue.  Can you picture that?

Okay, so Mary showed me how they did the next step Old Country Style.

Take the dough, glop it onto the cutting board, and stand over the pot of boiling water.  Then take a knife and start slicing the dough into the water, dipping the knife into the hot water each time to clean it off and heat it up for the next slice.

Sorry.  Action shots are not my thing.

Can you just try to imagine what I'm talking about?

Once you get all the dough into the water, it'll look like this:

Kinda like cooked brains.  The Hungarian Cookbook girl would've been all over this.

Cook those up for about 10 minutes, and then remove from the water with a slotted spoon.

In the meantime, go back to the chicken.  Add the bacon and onions back in, along with 1 cup of water, 1 1/2 cups of sour cream, and 2 tsp. of Paprika.

Stir it up.  It'll turn a nice, creamy, pink-ish color- much unlike the yellowish-gray that you see below.

Again, you'll just have to trust me when I tell you that in real-life, it looked a lot more appetizing than this.
Serve it over noodles and present it to the birthday girl:

Feel relieved when she likes it.  Or at least when she says that she likes it.

Then give her a carrot cake for dessert.

Sing to her.

And be glad that someone in your family has an interesting history to share with you and your children.

Have a good night!