Holiday Menu

It's unbelievable how a year can passes so fast. Especially for me who is born in January… times go too fast… Anyway it's Christmas time again and although nowadays my current my mood is rather 'halloween' I like this and that about Christmas. First of all I would be very ungrateful to my parents if I would say I don't care about at all. In my childhood we lived a very modest life [not but that I would have a tonnes of money now…]; but despite the everyday financial problems we always had delicious things on the holiday table, a beautiful tree, presents I dreamed of and a small but - at least - a normal and loving family around me. I mean normal: dad and mom and that was all; we never invited relatives onto Christmas due to almost all my relatives are a big#@&f.$… . Better to not write down my honest opinion about them… and they wonder why am I not into the family matters... ~bah humbug There are some nice and normal people in the family but of course they are living too far to meet them or some live outside of Hungary like my French cousin with my adorable nephews whom I can only see once a year although they are the only ones I could see everyday... :((((((

When I was a child magic could find me anywhere around Christmas, now if I want a little magic in my life I have to search for it. Adulthood…
So, what I like about Christmas is of course the Main Course… besides I like some albums and movies, but - I'm sorry - but definitely not the typical kitchy American 'Santa+elf+hohoho+Vince Vaughn+other odd funny faces' comedies what gives me the creeps... I rather prefer the T.Nightmare B.C. or other classic animations or a family movie with adorable animals and beautiful Winter landscapes. Or last year I saw the Krampus movie and liked it, what is not a very festive movie either Haha but at least was funny to me…
As a Winter-born girl "I'm just dreaming of a white Christmas just like the ones I used to know" when I was a child, but thanks to climate-change this will remain a dream in the future too. We are happy if we see some snow till April… but not in April as four years ago on Easter…

As in every family we also have our own holiday menu; leastwise we had the same in the past 10 years for sure. I really can't remember what was on the table before, except one, Fisherman's soup, due to Hungarians usually eat something fishy on Christmas, so we always had this great soup. If you missed the last year's post, here you can read about the soup and other things around a Hungarian Christmas.

With my father's death I changed this or that on the family traditions, because almost everything reminded me for the old – and happy - Christmases what was a torture to endure on the first Holiday without him. So I bought new ornaments for the family tree and put the old ones in a box and I took down in the cellar for good...

The only thing I couldn't change at all [I didn't have the heart], the menu of the Evening; what usually is:
1. Fisherman's soup á la Szeged [or á la Dad, because I have his recipe version, what is more than great!]
2. My thing the Breaded Turkey-breast with smoked cheese and dried plum
3. Dessert A: My mom's best, the Habtekercs, what is a meringue roll, half part baked meringue and half part sweet pastry with walnut and much confectionery sugar [we use powdered birch sugar now] on top ~Yummy

4. Dessert B: Sweet Chestnut Puree [Gesztenyepüré] with preserved cherry, rum and whipped cream on top
5. Homemade mulled wine [with cardamom, allspice, orange zest and black peppercorn]

On the third day of the holiday [26. I call it third day, because Hungarian Christmas starts with the evening of 24, I mean presents and everything] we usually have stuffed chicken with apples and other goodies, but in this year I want to try out something else, but also something traditional Hungarian. I thought about making Harcsapaprikás [Catfish Paprikash] what they usually serve with Túrós Csusza [Hungarian pasta dish with túró/cottage cheese, sour cream and fried bacon on top]. Not another Hungarian 'low-calorie meal' for sure… but once or twice a year I don't care. I eat vegetable dishes and live mostly meatless on the average weekdays anyway so I have the balance. :)

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Here is my turkey recipe, if you are interested in or I don't know, just for. Last year I posted the Fisherman's soup so I thought I will post this dish this time, what is not traditional Hungarian but nevermind... Haha

Breaded Turkey-breast Rolls With Smoked Cheese And Dried Plum

You'll need
3/4 pack dried plums [1 pack=200 g]
one big pinch of ground cloves
3 dl good quality sweet red wine [of your taste]
grated smoked cheese [in Hungary the best choice is the Karaván Sajt]
6 turkey breast fillets
salt
ground pepper
wheat flour
3 eggs
bread crumbs
about 3 dl sunflower oil for frying

Method to make it
Tenderize the turkey fillets with a mallet. Salt and pepper them then put aside.

Set a small cooking pot and pour the wine into it. Add the dried plum and start to boil it. When the wine is boiling turn the heat to the lowest. Add the cloves. Cook the plums till they soaked up all the wine and became soft. If the wine gone but the plums are not soft enough add some more wine.
Take a meat. Pour grated cheese on its surface, then grease it with the spicy plums. Carefully roll up the meat, then bind it with a string or use toothpicks to secure the roll. Repeat this with the other 5 fillets.

Set 3 deep plates. Pour flour into the first, break 3 eggs into the second [and scrumbled them with a fork] and finally pour bread crumbs into the last plate.
Carefully take a meat roll with your hands and dip it into the flour, then in the egg and finally the breadcrumb. Cover the meat rolls well.

In a deeper frying pan heat the oil. When its hot enough turn the heat to the lowest. Fry the meat rolls on every side till the breadcrumb is golden brown.

Then dip the rolls well with a paper towel. Serve the rolls cut into half and with mashed potato [seasoned with ground mace].

I know I know I eat evertyhing with mashed potato, but that is my weakness!

Enjoy it!/Jó étvágyat!

[There are many nice covers on this guy's site]

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Oh and I placed the links of my websites below [end of the blog], so you can watch all my works if you are interested in and have some time!

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I wish to you Happy Holidays [or at least have peaceful days]!/Kellemes Ünnepeket! ✌

Cozy Street Lights

Last Saturday I was on Budapest again. I miss that city all the times and it's a tradition now that I visit the capital in December anything would happen. I love those lights on the main streets and there are tonnes of tourists. Well, at least they are strangers not acquaintances I want to avoid because of bad memories or drunken neighbours or other annoying people like in Veszprém. I hate being known here, I mean too many familiar faces whom knew me since I was little and whom I dislike but they like me of course I just don't know why I'm not even smiling when I meet them… anyway, so Budapest is another kind of thing to me. Tourists and travellers from different foreign countries are cheering in one place, so I can merge into the mass without communicating anyone… Well on Sunday I was a tiny bit depressed, not only because I had to go home but from the too much people… I can't help it, probably I have some social anxiety… but nevermind, my bunny was worst than me ever. Once we brought her out to a sunny place with fresh green grass, flowers, chirping birds and some people around in Tihany. I thought after our panel building she will enjoy a natural, sunny place like every normal bunny [due to we have no garden and there are too much dogs on the streets...]. I was wrong. After we arrived home she spent the rest of the day in a corner with face against the wall and kept murmurring anytime I want to fondle her… Poor thing. She was just like her mother indeed… Sunlight, people... ~Eww Hahahha So I behaved the same way on Sunday. I just kept staring my computer and grumped about that I had to be among too much people… Unbelievable… Sometimes I no need for anybody to annoy me, I'm able to annoying myself… But life is full of challenges we have to face it. My biggest was to be a McDonald's cashier with this antisocial attitude of mine… now that was something. Every second customer complained what's wrong with me and that my smile is not honest at all [as if I cared in that place]. Then they put me into the kitchen, what was much more worse [to them]. No surprise they fired me after 3 looooong months and I just jumped for joy to leave and hailed joblessness as an old friend. What I regret that I did not tell the boss what I actually thought about his whole f. restaurant like Christina Applegate did in the Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead:
[Mr. Egg] How's the scrubba-dub-dubbing going? You're almost doing that correctly... but you forgot one very big thing.
[Sue Ellen] Not enough cleanser?
[Mr. Egg] Nope. Forgot to put on a happy face. Next, you get to scrape the spitballs off the drive-through window... with a really fun squeegee!
[Sue Ellen] Look, Mr. Egg. Finish the Happy Fat vats yourself.

But where was I…
So around the Holidays Budapest is also swimming in cozy lights. The air is filled with the smell of the mulled wine and other torturing sweet scents. Well, the shop windows are extra kitchy in this time of the year but the hell with it once in a year I bear it…

Why piglets? But they are cute

Another Nutcracker before one of my favourite shop. This is a classical music and ballet related gift shop on Váci Street.

About lunchtime...
I tried out two new places. 

We Hungarians are fond of soups and broths and everything between. So some young fellows thought they can make a good business with only selling soup. They thought well. I don't know which was the first 'soup bar' but there are more then 10 now accross the city. You can find them near to universities and colleges, so the hungry students always can eat something cheap, hot, fresh and tasty thing in their breaks. Some bars sells sandwiches and sweets beside the soups. These are small shops, so there is no place to sit down, but usually there are some smaller stalls before the bars. The daily menus - among others - always contains one or two traditional Hungarian soups or broths.
I tried out one of the popular place simply called 'Leves.' [Soup.] under 14 Vámház boulevard. I chose the Spicy Malaysian Chicken Soup with sippet. It was ~Mmmmmm 

I chose this Asian style soup, because I prefer most of the Hungarian soups as I make at home. For example I happily eat Goulash soup anywhere but if it comes to Chicken soup or Fisherman's soup I only like eat my family version /indicative mood/. Haha But for a foreigner tourist these soup bars are great opportunities to taste many kind of traditional Hungarian soups or anything for half-price as in a restaurant.
 

Next station was to us [friend and I] the place called 'Paneer' under 53 Király street. No, this is not an Indian restaurant, although it's a vegan place and everything around the cheese. It's a Hungarian street food bistro.
You can choose from the popular cheeses [Cheddar, Ementaler, Camembert and Trappist], various side dishes and sauces or there are various cheeseburgers as well. They bread or grill the chosen cheese or what just you want. Daily desserts from cream cheese and there are various creamy-cheesy soups as well on the menu. Sadly there wasn't any lactose-free cheese, but I felt I must try out this place anyhow…

My friend chose a Cheddar cheeseburger [in homemade ciabatta] with fries and barbecue sauce while I chose the classical combo: breaded cheese [smoked Trappist] with salad and – homemade - blueberry jam. Their bread is homemade as well. We call the bread [to cover meat or cheese] as 'panír', yeah probably that's got the idea to name the place like that.

I wanted to try out their daily dessert what was Oreo-Mascarpone cake, but I was totally full, due to I ate a rich soup before [and the leftover fries from my friend's plate…].

Nice and clean place! You can eat as much cheese as you desire in any form without feel yourself a mouse. Hahaha

I made some videos after dark

The background music is "Spiritual State" by the late Japanese instrumental hip hop artist, Nujabes.

Good Day!/Szép napot! ✌

When The Dreams Come True... Literally

I consider myself a rational person, but I can't understand either how do dreams works sometimes…
I can vividly remember to a current dream of mine from the start to the end even after weeks or months, instead of many people. I could write a book from that surreal stories. I even have returning dreams when I tell to myself [in my dream] what will happen next because everything is the same as x time ago when I dreamed this… I know it sounds lunatic a little, but this is about me so there is nothing surprising in it… Hahhaha
Sometimes I write a song in my dreams, a complete song and I even sing it in the dream, then I wake up and I remember everything except the tune… pity.

About the mystery of the dreams, I also have some stories:
Somewhen in 2000 one of my friend just dreamed one night that a particular guy from the class just lost his arms in an accident what happened before the school, then he had got new arms from plastic. That was all and she was not into horror movies nor anything weird. Then a couple of days later there was in the news that the first double arm transplant just went success, I don't remember where, in France perhaps and the patient was male [just like in the dream]. This freaked me out then, but later other friends told me their dream stories as well and about one month ago I've got mine. I dreamed that I had a child… now call me a jerk if you want but I consider this dreams as nightmares… so I hold the baby in my arms what later - when the scenes changed - turned into a little girl and I was… happy. That was all but enough for me. But on the next day! a long lost friend just called me that she is in the city again and wants to see me. I didn't see her such a long time. When we met I couldn't say a word. She was 5 month old pregnant. Then I asked her: Will it be a girl, right? … Yes! How did you know? … I don't know, ask my subconscious, it seems it knows more than me…
Or my female colleague [you know the antifeminist ladybug] told me that when she was young she once dreamed about a little boy in striped shirt who is sitting on a strange desk. She forgot about this dream later of course. Then she had a husband and 10 years of tryings they had their son. When the little boy turned into 4 his grandmother bought him a blue striped shirt among others. Now the father had an odd desk in his workroom where the kid preferred to climbed up sometimes. So one day my collegaue just arrived home and found her son on the 'strange desk' and suddenly remembered to that dream from a long time ago…
Interesting, but these were positive examples. But when nightmares comes true…

A someone whom I knew on Budapest told me once that she dreamed her little niece's death by a sudden sickness and was horrible when one year later it just happened on the same way as she dreamed...
and why I really started writing this post today is that my mom called me before that she dreamed the Indonesian earthquake last night… that she was in Indonesia, although she never was there in real life but she saw the people, heard the people and suddenly the quake just started… Then in the morning she heard the tragedy in the news... Now that is what I call mystery. She is not interested in Asian culture, she rearly watches tv and she doesn't think about earthquakes day by day either…

Poor people over there too. I feel sorry for them and of course for every country what suffers from earthquakes [among others] from time to time.
In Hungary, if there is an earthquake somewhere usually are smaller than 2.5 magnitudes, so we can consider ourselves somewhat lucky. The biggest before the 20. century was about a magnitude 4.5 in 1763 and took about 60 lives. In and around Veszprém there was only one sensible earthquake in my life in 1985 a magnitude 4.9. It was a long time ago but I still remember how terrified my family was, except me of course who was only a couple of years old and thought the whole happening is a fun and according to my mom I laughed continuosly while the whole area just gathered on the streets in panic... Fortunately noone died or hurt seriously.

But these kind of dreams are unbelievable. Screw your predictable subconscious dear Freud! ...or maybe we women actually can sense the future. Another reason why men should listen to a woman's remonstrance ;) but look at the history... or look what happened after noone listened to Cassandra either; a whole empire fell just because she regected Apollo's love so he cursed her that noone will ever believe her... ~Oh that stupid girl... Apollo, my dear! Spare me, I luv ya!

Good Day!/Szép napot! ✌

Recipe Part VII – Chicken Sour Soup with Tarragon

This time I will share with you a very delicious creamy soup recipe. This is an old traditional Transylvanian dish, what is very popular in Hungary too, maybe because we were one once…

The specialty of this soup is in the tarragon+sour cream duo. Usually we not prefer soury soups [except me] but this is a very good exception.

This is not my father's recipe version but still in the family.

Chicken Sour Soup with Tarragon [not the original slow-cooker version]

You'll need 

3 chicken breast fillets [cut into bitesize pieces]
1 carrot [peeled, diced]
1 turnip [peeled, diced]
1 knob celery [peeled, diced]
1 tbsp unsalted butter [Must be butter not oil! Butter gives a special flavour to the soup.]
1 medium red onion [or onion, chopped into small pieces]
3 big pinch of tárkony/tarragon [I use dried but fresh is obviously better]
1 1/2 L low sodium vegetable stock 

salt
1/4 tsp ground white pepper
1 1/2-2 tbsp sour cream [20%, of course can be lactose free]
1 level tbsp flour [can be all-purpose but rather not, rice flour doesn't work this time]
200 g green peas
juice of half a lemon
1 tbsp mustard [avoid the Dijon kind, too different taste, use something mild or common]
100 ml unsweetened whipped cream or vegetal whipped cream [30-32%]
2 dl good quality white wine [optional, sometimes I skip it, too much for me, it's a soup with a strong flavour anyway]

Method to make it
In a medium-sized cooking pot melt the butter on low heat then add the carrot, the turnip and the celery. For 2-3 minutes leave to simmer the whole, but stir it continuously. 

Then add the onion and the meat. Salt the meat carefully and add the white pepper and tarragon. For another 2-3 minutes braise the whole, but stir it continuously. 

Add the vegetable stock. Bring the soup to boil. [The soup doesn't require extra salt if the vegetable stock you added was salty enough for your taste.] After it boils turn the heat to low, then put a lid on [but leave a little space for the gases] and cook the soup till the vegetables and the meat are almost soft [about 40 minutes], but taste it sometimes that is the best. Then add the green peas. About 15 minutes later when the peas are soft as well add the lemon juice.

Mix the flour with the sour cream in a smaller bowl then add a little from the soup, about 3-4 tablespoons [for heat equation]. Stir it well, need a smooth texture at the end. Then take a hand whisker and while you stirring the soup fastly, with your other hand add the mixture to it slowly in small dozes. Then stir the soup well.

Add the mustard and the whipped cream. Stir it well then shut down the heat. Done. 

Variation
Use duck breast [without skin] instead of chicken. Salt and white pepper the duck breasts and cut them into bitesize pieces. Chop some smoked bacon into cubes then fry it with the butter on low heat. The rest of the method is the same as before.

Very great soup. I usually eat this as it is but you can it it with fresh bread or what you want. Restaurants often serve it in freshly baked round bread called, 'cipó'. ~Yammyammyamm

[Photo from nlcafe.hu]

Enjoy it!/Jó étvágyat! ✌