and now.
A traditional Transilvanian meal.
For appetizers, we have
zsiros kenyer. Take bread, add lard, add lots of salt and onion(I used green and red onion, its best with red, but you can use any type of onion). This falls under the Hungarian tradition. Fairly sure bread and lard are common war-time-food, but over here they're common in Hungarian parts of Romania.
For soup, we have Bab Gulyas. Hungarian recipe.
Ingredients: 300g pork and one Ham hock, 2 carrots, parsley, celery, onions, 4 peeled tomatoes, striped beans, chilli peppers.
First you temped the diced onions, then the diced meat and whatever you can peel off the ham hock. After that, add the chopped carrots, chopped celery and parsley roots. Leave for a while, then add the condiments( I used specially made gulyas cream, plus chilli, plus hot paprika, plus pepper and salt). After that add water and the beans, rest of the parsley and peppers. leave until the beans are fully cooked.
Main course, Ghiveci de legume. Romanian recipe.
ingredients: one eggplant, 3 onions and 2 leeks, 2 red bell peppers, 3 bell peppers, parsley, 8 potatoes, 2 spoons of rice, 2 long sausages, 3 tomatoes and 4 carrots. (not that mine in the end used about half of what I say here, will explain below).
In two separate bowls, temper the onions and leeks, and the bell peppers(all 5 of them, diced). Then put the bell peppers on the onions, and add one cup of water and salt. Add the carrots and parsley, sliced. Then, the sliced carrots. then the diced eggplant. Aftweards, add the sliced tomatoes, the rice and the sliced sausage and add just enough water to cover the ingredients. Then leave for about 40 minutes. Leave a while between each layer you add, by the way.
For desert I bought some kurtosKolacs, as I am not good at baking
.
And thus you have a Transilvanian meal, comining traditional Hungarian food and Romanian food. Keep in midn that the recipes used here make enough food for an army. I actually had trouble with the ghiveci as my bowl was not big enough. I had to take out half the ingredients mid-cooking and keep them for later use. Otherwise it would have looked better:P. Not only that, but we never even GOT to the main course, as the gulyas was more than satisfying.
Two of us finished our plate, one girl could only eat about half, and we were both ridiculously full afterwards.
Also a special note regarding Hungarian food. It is Spicy. Traditionally it is spicy enough to burn you eveyr time you bite, but I didnt make it that hot. Still, if your nose is not running at least a bit after eating Gulyas, it is not gulyas:P. Particular to Hungarian food is that the spice is not HOT as it is constant:P. Which is why it is more common for your nose to run than for your throat to burn.
One day I'm gonna lose the war.
)
, in the business of keeping the little Platypus in business
