BAD DUTCHMAN, NO BANANA!

A friend recently posted about stuffed peppers, a Hungarian dish. Which I know as dolmeh filfil or tultut paprika, and that naturally got me thinking about golubtsi (sarmaki), chicken paprikash, and purkult. This is especially gripping, because I'm seeing my doctor in a few days (a regular appointment), gotta see if the old Dutchman (me) is still kicking (I am), and besides which "old" is a relative term meaning crusty and middle-aged, with only a few bad habits.

During the first year, the doctor thought it was a good idea to have me talk to a nutritionist.  Bear in mind that most of his patients are elderly Chinese who smoke like maniacs and love fatty pork, salt fish, roast duck, little egg tarts at the nearby bakeries ......
I ended up depressing the poor lady, because the appointment was before lunch, at Chinese Hospital, and we discussed all the delicious things within two blocks of the hospital. Fatty pork with salted veg, salt fish with ginger shreds, charsiu pork and roast duck less than one block away in three directions, steamed pork patty with salted fish and ginger (one block), baked porkchop over rice with cheese (seven different restaurants nearby), as well as lovely things at all the bakeries (seven in walking distance). She was nearly weeping when I left (NOT my intention), and we agreed on "baby steps" (cut down on cookies with my afternoon tea). The doctor is from Indonesia, I am a Dutch-speaker, so of course we often talk about Indo food. Much of which we have in common. Delicious greasy bami goreng, guleh ayam, bebek tjabe hijau ...... which sidetracks him from the obligatory lecture about how smoking is bad.


CHICKEN PAPRIKASH, CSIRKE PAPRIKAS

A whole chicken (about 3 pounds), cut into 8 pieces.
Two or plenty more garlic cloves, minced.
Two onions, thinly sliced.
Two to four TBS sweet Hungarian paprika.
Half cup chicken stock.
Quarter cup sour cream.
A very generous pinch of ground caraway seed.
Olive oil, or butter, or bacon grease.
Salt and pepper.

Gild the onions and garlic. Rub the chicken bits with oil, plus salt, pepper, and some of the paprika. Add to the pan and brown slightly. Now add the remaining paprika and the ground caraway, stir to mix, and add the chicken stock and enough water to barely cover.
Simmer for about half an hour, then stir in the sour cream.
Garnish with plenty of chopped parsley.

If I make this soon, I'll have a pipe filled with Lakeland Dark by Samuel Gawith afterwards; a full bodied steamed pressed tobacco containing fire-cured Kentucky and Virginia, not mild in the nicotine department, but very old-fashioned, with an aroma reminiscent both of elderly college men wearing tweed as well as Dutch-style dark shag rolling tobacco.
So it spurs multiple memories. Great with sherry.

Don't smoke in front of a doctor.


Other Hungarische tasty stuff: Holishkes (stuffed cabbage, golubtsi), delkelech (cheese pastries), shlishkes (small potato dumplings), nokrln (little boiled dumplings similar to spaetzle, served with many dishes; nokerly), kokkos (a rolled risen dough chocolate cake with walnuts or poppy seed filling), and a casserole of potato layers, sliced onion, speck, and hardboiled eggs baked in butter and smetana (rakot krumpli). Makkos and diyusz, gulyasz and lekvar.
Plus letsho (sautéed onions, peppers, and tomatoes, with eggs or sausage).
Purkult is a paprika flavoured meat stew.




==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================