Construction of a Lunch

by Diane

(Caution: this blog entry not suitable for people frightened by the word “lard”)

  • Stomach starts to grumble.
  • Realize that there’s a roll of homemade five-egg pasta dough in the fridge, and if it’s not used today, probably it’s going to go south.
  • Go into kitchen, get out pasta dough. The phrase “buttered egg noodles” crosses the cook’s mind.
  • Since presently still online, return to computer and insert phrase “buttered egg noodles” into Google.
  • Many things come up, including extremely intriguing and yummy-looking menu from Club Barraba’s in Debrecen in Hungary (no longer available in English, unfortunately).
  • Decide that it will no longer be lunchtime in Hungary by the time we get there. Bookmark menu for future reference and start thinking about Hungarian dishes with buttered noodles.
  • Other possibilities further down Google page: beef stroganoff.
  • Type in “stroganoff”. Many potential links present themselves. Click on one at random, recipe at Cooks.com.
  • Utter imprecations of disgust on discovering that recipe calls for “Lowry’s stroganoff mix”. Euuuuuu. Probably about half salt, that stuff, if it’s anything like their fajita mix.
  • Go offline in annoyance and bring up Meal Master. The version of MM in my desktop machine (“Calanda”) presently has about thirty-five thousand recipes in it. Type in string “Stroganoff”, hit carriage return. Forty-three stroganoff recipes come up.
  • Moment of thought: do we even have any beef in the freezer at the moment? Get up, check freezer. Much steak, no stewing beef or round. Steak is wasted on this dish. Much chicken, though.
  • More or less instantaneous association: Hungarian + chicken = chicken paprikash.
  • Go back into living room, type “paprikash” into Meal Master. Sixteen recipes come up. Glance through several of them, find one that looks likely, print it out:

Title: CHICKEN PAPRIKASH
Categories: Main dish, Chicken
Yield: 6 Servings
MM#: 5645

1 Chicken; cut up, aprox 3 lb.
1/4 ts Pepper
1/4 c Butter (or marg.); melted
1 cn Chicken broth
1/2 c Onion; chopped
2 c Sour cream
1/4 c Flour, all-purpose
1/2 ts Worcestershire sauce
2 ts Salt
8 oz Noodles, med.
2 tb Paprika

Lightly brown chicken in butter in a skillet; remove and set aside.

Saute onion in pan drippings until tender; blend in flour, salt, paprika, and pepper. Cook over low heat until bubbly. Gradually add chicken broth; cook, stirring constantly, until smooth and thickened. Remove from heat; stir in sour cream and Worcestershire sauce.

Cook noodles according to package instructions; drain. Combine noodles and half of sour cream sauce; spoon into a shallow 2 quart casserole. Top with chicken; pour remaining sauce over chicken. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour.

  • …One hour almost seems too long at this point. Stomach is grumbling more loudly. However, do brief inventory anyway.
  • No whole chicken in freezer, only chicken breasts. Never mind. No chicken stock. Who cares, we have stock cubes, I can fake it.
  • Almost everything else present. (No sour cream: creme fraiche. That’s OK.)
  • More consideration. Recipe seems a little bland, also a little Americanized. Worcestershire sauce? Really? Wonder what they’d think of that back in Debrecen. Hmf.
  • Go back into kitchen, find Hungarian cookbook Peter was using for his goulash the other day (Gundel’s Hungarian Cookbook, Karoly Gundel, published by Corvina Kiado). Cookbook has no index. Fooey. Has page by page table of contents, though. Better. Find chicken paprikash recipe:Chicken, Veal or Lamb Paprikash

    100 g lard or shortening
    120 g chopped onion
    12 g paprika
    2.1 kg chicken or 2.25 kg lamb meat with bones, or 1 kg boneless veal
    salt
    160 g green pepper
    80 g tomato (fresh)
    20 g flour
    3 dl sour cream

    (Paraphrase, since for method the recipe refers to one on another page:) Saute the onion in the lard, then the green pepper. Cut up the meat small and saute it with the vegetables. Add the paprika. When everything’s cooked, mix the flour with the sour cream and add over very low heat, stirring until the sauce thickens.

  • Sounds more like it. No Worcestershire sauce. No waiting an hour, either. Let’s go.
  • Get chicken breasts out of freezer, put in microwave, defrost. Find heaviest-bottomed enameled cast-iron pot (“Le Cousances” / Fontignac — better than Le Crouset), melt lard. Find two red onions, chop. Start sauteing. Peter arrives to comment on delectable aroma. So do cats. Throw cats out of kitchen.
  • Discover that there are no fresh tomatoes. Hunt for canned tomatoes. Discover that Someone Nameless has used all the canned tomatoes for his goulash the other day. Rats.
  • Start improvising. Slice chicken and chop smallish, add to sauteeing onions. Forget the green pepper, I don’t want it anyway. Add paprika — half-and-half smoked sweet paprika and Hungarian hot. Pot is acquiring lovely brown crusty stuff on bottom. Shame to waste that color and flavor. Deglaze pan with glass of Sutter Home white Zinfandel. Have a glass myself.
  • Mix flour with creme fraiche for later. Gets very thick: add a little heavy cream to thin this mixture down. Add half a tube of tomato paste to pot, think a moment, go rummaging in cupboard, come up with bottle of sundried tomatoes in oil. Fish out enough slices to equal about one tomato, chop fine, throw in pot. Still needs something. Rummage in fridge, find jar of SuperValu Tomato Sauce with Extra Garlic. Yes! Add about half a cup. Stir everything, lower heat, go off to start writing this up.
  • After about twenty minutes, return to find that damn cooktop-burner is running hotter than I anticipated, and bottom of pot has scorched. Very carefully spoon out paprikash into another pan, clean pot, return to original one; all very quietly, so Peter won’t find out and snicker at me for not checking the pot sooner.
  • Go back to computer, finish writing this up. Go back to check pot a couple of times during this process to make sure the cooktop doesn’t pull the same stunt again. No problems. Stuff is smelling terrific. Time for noodles.
  • Fill pot, start water boiling; sprinkle worktop with flour, roll out noodle dough, sprinkle with flour and roll up fairly tight, cut across roll. Make lots of noodles.
  • Noodles into boiling water. Raise heat in paprikash a little so that sauce will thicken properly when creme fraiche / flour mixture goes in. Remove from heat while noodles are cooking, check seasoning. More paprika? Maybe a little more of the hot stuff. Add half a teaspoon of it, return to heat, cook a little more.
  • Noodles are done. Remove from heat, drain, toss in nut of butter, mix well. Set aside.
  • Add creme fraiche to paprikash, stir. Gets thick. Lovely.
  • Put noodles on plate, put paprikash on noodles, find fork, pour another glass of white Zinf, and sit down.
  • Enjoy lunch while considering character business in Wizard’s Holiday — Prince Roshaun is getting slightly out of hand and may need killing. Downside to this: Dairine will be very broken up about it. Still…

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