Gypsy Kitchens: Hungarian Fish Paprikas with Mákos Metélt

Two Hungarian dishes that have excited and pleased us are paprikas (which is not plural and is pronounced "papri-kash") and mákos metélt ("mak-osh met-ult"). Paprikas is, not surprisingly, an earthy preparation of meat or fish with copious paprika and sour cream. It's a popular lunchtime special at low-key "etterems" - maybe even more common than goulash.

Mákos metélt is an interesting lemon and poppyseed pasta that typically is sweet enough for dessert, but can be toned down to main-plate levels very easily. It has a great textural quality, a crunch of seeds against the stretchy softness of egg noodles.

Usually not served together, they are perfectly good on the same plate.
As with many Magyar dishes, mákos metélt is usually a lot sweeter than it needs to be. Most recipes call for about half a cup of powdered sugar, which is excessive. One dripping tablespoon of honey was plenty, and gave the dish more depth than sugar would have. The highlights of the dish are really the lemon and the poppyseeds, not the sweetness. To accentuate the lemon flavor, add some zest or a few slices of lemon peel. We used the traditional flat egg noodles, called “szélesmetélt,” but any kind of long pasta could work – vermicelli, spaghetti, linguine.
It’s a very simple preparation, with almost nothing to do beyond the initial boiling. After melting a pat of butter in a pan, add the juice from two lemons, some lemon zest, honey (say, one to two tablespoons) and a pinch of salt. Bring the liquid to a light simmer, stir in the pasta and distribute the poppy seeds through the dish – which is best done gradually, because they do tend to clump together. Pour in about a third of a cup of white wine, cover and let cook until done. It shouldn’t take more than two or three minutes, but cooking pasta is never as exact as it should be.
A note – undercook the pasta initially, boiling only until limp, not until done. The real cooking process happens in the pan. Don’t be afraid of taking it out too soon, you can always add more wine and steam longer if it’s not ready yet.
Paprikas is almost always made with chicken, but we decided to cook it with fish. Shrimp – the most prominent fish in our dish – don’t lend themselves well to heavy cooking and saucemaking. To give a more flavorful fishiness to the paprika roux we started with carp, which has a lot of fat and can be abused in a pan better than other seafood. If they’re available, the often discarded carp “tips” are cheap and fatty and break apart into the sauce. Think of this process as being similar to starting a dish with pork fat or bacon, where the meat adds a complimentary background more than it does a focal point.
Cook the onions in oil until just beginning to brown, then add the carp (but not the shrimp!). Throw in the paprika at this point, and mix everything well. Continue cooking over medium heat – not letting it burn – until the fish has begun to disintegrate and the paprika has darkened and become fragrant. Make sure to add more oil if the pan gets dry or if anything begins to stick. Add the shrimp and garlic. Cook until the shrimp are barely done, then remove from the heat and stir in the dill and about a cup of sour cream. Make sure to mix it up vigorously so that the carp is as mashed and smooth as possible. Serve immediately.
One thing to note about this recipe: not all paprika is the same. If it’s available, try getting two types – hot and sweet – so that one can temper the other. If all you have is the mild kind, use a full four or five tablespoons. With spicy varieties, it might be better to scale down to two or three tablespoons, unless you’re really craving heat. After tasting them, we decided to use two tablespoons of hot paprika and three tablespoons of sweet. The advantage of a mixture is that you can tailor the spice to taste and still add more flavor using the sweet type.

Here are the recipes:

Mákos Metélt

Ingredients:

1 pound pasta

1/3 cup poppy seeds

Juice from 2 lemons

Lemon zest (however much you want)

1/2 cup white wine (or however much you need)

1-2 tablespoons honey

Butter

-Undercook the pasta in salted, oiled water, then drain. Make sure it is at least two or three minutes away from being done.

-Melt as much butter as you are comfortable with (within reason) in a large pot or pan. Add lemon juice, zest, wine and honey. Stir until honey has dissolved. Bring to a light simmer, then add pasta and some salt.

-Sprinkle poppy seeds into the pasta, stirring. Attempt to distribute all the ingredients evenly.

-Cover and cook until pasta is done, about 1-3 minutes. Add more wine if absolutely necessary.

-Remove from heat and serve.

Paprikas

Ingredients:

1 pound shrimp

1/2 pound fatty carp, deboned and cut into small chunks

1 onion, minced

2 cloves garlic, smashed

3 tablespoons (or more) fresh dill

2 tablespoons hot paprika

3 tablespoons mild paprika

1 cup sour cream

Olive oil

-Lightly brown onion in oil in a large pan.

-Add carp and paprika, stirring until everything is bright red. Cook over medium heat until fish has fried and begun to break apart and paprika is fragrant and darkened (ten minutes, give or take). Stir and scrape the pan as it cooks, and add enough oil so that the mixture doesn't dry out or stick.

-Add shrimp and garlic. Cook until shrimp is just done.

-Remove from heat. Stir in sour cream and dill. Serve

The Hungarian National Melon

Hungary is watermelon country. It's the height of the season and fruit stands have popped up everywhere. We've stopped at a few of them, both out in the puszta and in Budapest, and eaten some of the best and ripest melons of our lives.
The Hungarian summers are warm, sunny and dry, which is perfect for the fruit. Watermelons are a great, early season cash-crop for the farms along the back roads, where they are sold out of trucks or from big bins. Pink umbrellas act as a beckoning sign on the straight roads, set up at pull offs and visible from a ways off.

From this woman, we actually bought a honeydew, which was so ripe that it gave our car a rotting, damp smell. It was perfect and delicious when we opened it.
Watermelon production has been in progress here since the middle ages, when 13th century moors brought seeds up from southern Africa. It's become one of the major food exports of Hungary, along with peppers, paprika, sunflower products and corn - we saw a sudden boom of big, green Hungarian melons in the Czech and Slovak republics as the spring began to heat up.
Here, at a semi-permanent shop, separated from the road by a deep and fetid gutter, we bought our first slice of melon. Also available: honeydew, cantaloup, raspberries and cherries. Cherries - perhaps even more popular at the moment - have a more prominent place in the fruit pastries and pies of the young summer, but that may be because watermelon is difficult to do anything with except eat plain.
The problem with watermelons, of course, is that they are difficult to eat - actually, the thing is, they are difficult to eat politely in public. They make a better rural food, where there is space to spit out the seeds and sticky hands are less problematic. Also, even a quarter of one melon is difficult for two people to consume.

A related non-sequitor: one night, when we were sleeping in a little campground bungalow, someone or something stole an eighth of a sizable watermelon from our porch. It was disappointing to wake up and find that our breakfast was gone, but the theft injected a bit of intrigue into the morning, so it was fine.

A Summer Market

We’ve been waiting for a market like this. This was no Czech or Slovak affair, with a few overwintered root vegetables and a selection of plastic-skinned, Turkish tomatoes. Before those countries, in more promising places, it was too early in the year for nice vegetables. Arriving in the Eger market was like walking into a garden, with fruit and greens galore.
It’s probably just a shift in the weather, and nothing to do with geography, but the first day of Hungary and of the summer felt like summer in a way that we hadn’t experienced in a while. Even in the shade it was hot and dry, and it made us crave something crisper and more refreshing than goulash or schnitzel – a perfect time to wander amongst apricots, lettuces and flower stands. Though the longest lines were at the butcher counters, a general enthusiasm for produce was palpable in the air. It's easy to get excited about new growth, and about the familiar smells of foods that have been absent for months.
It’s cherry and watermelon season here. We bought some bruise-colored, tender, black cherries and stood on a nearby bridge, spitting pits into the Eger stream. Later, we ate cold “meggyleves” (cherry soup) at a café and talked about how wonderful June is.
It was nice, too, finding apples with spots and irregularities. The people who sold their goods here were selling something that they had been a part of – if not growing the fruit, than probably buying it directly from a farm or orchard. Outside, old women sat with a few pints of raspberries, calling out to passers-by.
There was a certain bizarreness to the upstairs food court, where younger people ate fried doughs and men bought ricey blood sausage for their lunches. Up above all of this fresh food, like a slick of oil above clear water, the air smelled strongly of grease and meat and cigarettes.
There are places when the idea of a great European market is based on nothing but fantasy or tourism-brochure outliers. Then, in a sudden switch, polyester underwear and packaged crackers (which make up the bulk of most market's offerings) give way to a blossoming of summer.

Ovčí Syr Stands

Ovčí syr means, literally, "sheep cheese." Signs litter the roadsides of Slovakia, particularly in the mountains, with nothing but these two words. The rest of the products sold at ovčí syr stands are only implied - there is often "žinčica" (a sheep's-milk whey drink) and sometimes frozen fish or even vegetables - but not promised. These aren't grocers, they are cheese mongers, and they don't pay much attention to anything else. Above is one of the more modern and product-rich ovčí syr shops that we've been in. The display cases and selection were unexpected and impressive.
The whole thing was squeezed into this little, wooden cabin next to a winding road near Levoca. This type of market feels like a holdover from earlier days, when travelers on popular routes needed a quick bite of cheese on their way from place to place. It's rare to see ovčí syr places in towns or cities, though they do exist. Usually they are on the outskirts, near roads and passing cars and - most importantly - the animals themselves. When we pulled in, a boy on a bicycle stopped by to ride in circles near our car, staring at the license plate.
The smoked "oštiepok" that we bought there was imprinted with the Slovak coat of arms, but this type of cheese is pressed into myriad molds. There are more traditional designs shaped into simple balls, a popular subset of easter egg patterns and some oštiepok are sold in cutesy little-lamb forms. It has a strong smokey flavor and aroma, without much room left over on the tongue for the taste of cheese. It's bouncy and makes an audible squeaking noise in the teeth, which is fun but unsettling.A more representative stand, with it's own flock attending closely in the meadows behind, was this little hut. Nestled in a pothole-ridden pull-off, it was popular and staffed by a disinterested woman. The guy before us in line began drinking his žinčica before he'd even paid.
We bought two different types of uniquely Slovak cheese there: "korbáčiky" (which means "little whip") and "parenica." The parenica is the one that looks like rolled bacon, and is a smoked and steamed cheese that's tough and almost fibrous in texture. It's not bad, but the taste is more akin to cured meat than to dairy. The korbáčiky is a softer and more cheesy type. It's greatest quality, of course, is the novelty of the consumption process. It's strange to untie a cheese and untangle individual strands.

Ovčí syr signs are comforting. They are a reminder that not everything in Europe has been homogenized and that the ubiquitous Tesco, Billa and Lidl supermarkets haven't completely cornered the market on groceries. If there is a romantic image of the Slovak Tatras, it is of the mountain shepherd standing beside his flock. A Slovak man about my age recently asked me if coming to Slovakia was like "stepping back a hundred years." I told him that no, it wasn't. Our campsite has fast wi-fi, people watched the NBA finals, radios play a mix of Katy Perry and "Born This Way," Japanese-fusion cuisine is available.

Really, I should have agreed with him a little more. Sheep cheese stands don't exist like this in America. Perhaps they exist, but they aren't normalized. Men don't step out of their trucks to visit with a local shepherd and buy a package of fresh bryndza. The past feels closer at ovčí syr shops because they are a continuation of an unbroken tradition. Even if there are big plastic signs now, beckoning people in from motorways, and even if the cheese is refrigerated and sealed in plastic, there are still shepherds in these mountains that make a living selling their cheese on roadsides.

Milchautomat

Since we can't possibly carry 50 countries worth of reference books around with us (and we do not, will not, cannot own kindles, ipads or iphones), we have developed a habit of having book after book shipped home during one block of travel to be picked up before the next. Last time we were in America, a stack awaited us in Vermont, where Merlin's father had flipped through Swiss Mountain Inns. "You have to let me know if you come across a self-service milk machine" he told us (paraphrased). Well, when we saw the sign above on the side of the road, we knew we had to make a U-Turn and check it out.
A few feet further was the next signpost, reading "LUST AUF MILCH?" It's amazing how readable German seems sometimes. We parked across the way and began to walk along the edge of the road. I brought my Klean Kanteen, so that we could maybe fill it up with milk just to see how it all works. Being as it was about 70degrees, neither of us were terribly in the mood (cue scene from Anchorman), but we also needed to be prepared to take advantage of any opportunity that arose.
After poking around someone's property, we found the milchautomat. Its design wasn't particularly subtle and we ran around to check out its innards.
Sadly, the marker board alerted us that milk was only available about five. Kudos to them for keeping things fresh - and for providing some paper towel to keep things clean as well. The machine itself was smaller than I was expecting, with a small spout that hung from the bottom. It had a start button as well as a stop button. Prices were only by the liter, so it seems smart that they'd give someone the option of paying that minimum, but ending things sooner. Also, I imagine that some people fill multiple small bottles. The machine was a Brunimat, the Swiss brand that first introduced milk vending machines to Europe in 1994. Apparently, they also have milkshake machines- a much more welcome concept on a warm pre-summer day.

Bern, Noticed

Bern is not Switzerland's largest city (Zurich) or its most well known (arguably, Geneva), but it is the country's de facto capital. I'm not exactly sure what separates it from being its capital sans the "de facto," but I keep seeing it referred to that way. We haven't been to either of the other aforementioned cities, so there's no way to make a comparison or a stern statement about Bern's supremacy - but, I do think it probably deserves a little more notice than it currently gets.

On a Saturday morning, we planned to visit some museums. There's the apartment Einstein lived in when developing his theory of relativity. The are world class art museums. But with the weather and the city being so darn pretty, we just wound up wandering around. In the span of an hour, we saw teenagers brown bagging it at the Rosengarten, a juggling mime, an accordion player, 20-somethings advertising "FREE HUGS" and a quartet of yodelers who chose their street locations with acoustic savvy. We couldn't tell if this was just an average weekend for Bernies or if something special was infusing the goings on with festiveness. Either way, the city just oozed character.
We climbed up the highest cathedral in Switzerland to get a good look at the whole Saturday scene. Bern consistently ranks in the top 10 cities, worldwide, with the best standard of living. Looking down on this family naptime alongside the river Aare, I could believe it. Seriously, though, there's under 4% unemployment and over 73% of the population have a university degree or higher. Momma Switzerland must be proud. No wonder its her 'de facto' favorite.
Just our luck, a Saturday market stretched through half of the city's streets. Billed as a "Fruit, Vegetable and Flower Market," it also included dried meats, baked goods, tapenades, jams and lots of cheese. The cheese carts were odorrific and showcased French and Spanish prizes alongside the abundant Swiss selection. We decided to direct our eyes and noses toward the flora, where vendors gathered magnificent bouquets while making small talk.
It was second nature for them to just grab a sprig of this to compliment a bunch of that and hand over something luscious and beautiful to a happy customer. It's moments like this that make you wish you had a home with a table and a vase so that you could fill it (and the fridge) with all the market had to offer. People rode their bikes away with paper cones filled with lilacs strapped to the back or loaded apples into the carriage next to their baby. Some men napped in parked cars with the trunks popped open in anticipation of their wives' return with full arms.
Like everywhere else in Switzerland, the best views of the marketplace were most likely aerial. This little Swiss Mister seemed to have picked out exactly what he wanted most, while his booster chair/father shopped for asparagus. Spargeln (as its called in German, the language spoken in this region of Switzerland) has been everywhere. Between them and the lilacs, it definitely feels like we are at the height of Spring.
At the bus station, a man handed out balloons to anyone that would take them - and we watched in dismay as one, then another, then another were carelessly let go into the air. Some kid's weak grasp or teenager's boredom with holding onto the thing just choked a whale in an ocean somewhere. Such a shame. This woman waited for the next red cable car to arrive.

Sammarinese Mercatale

Borgo Maggiore is one of the nine castelli in San Marino and also happens to be the name of that castello's largest town. Early in its history, around the late 1200s, it was called "Mercatale" (marketplace). The most important market in the country still takes place here every Thursday. Parking was tight and people trudged up and down the hills with their plastic bags filled with rainbow polyester. Instead of in a market square, the vendors spilled through all the narrow streets of the pretty town.
We went with a shopping bag and a hope to find dinner. Passing by the few fruit and vegetable stands we saw at the very beginning of the sprawl, we hoped to find a larger collection of food sellers. Instead, we found the Borgo Maggiore market to be exactly like most European markets we've visited: filled with more fabric than food. Curtains, blankets, blouses, silk flowers that the mosquitos still swarmed around and poked at. I understood their disappointment.
We found cacti and t-shirts with Christina Aguilera's face on it, but no cheese or wine or meat or fish... Then, we spotted a little boy digging down into a greasy paper cone and walked in the direction from which he'd come. We smelled fry wafting in the air and finally stumbled upon a stand which churned out helping after helping of freshly fried seafood to very eager customers. Just a few feet away stood two identical porchetta stands, with competing pork and tins of crackling. While both things were enticing, we were after something a little more - raw.
The goods seem so random and mass produced, yet these markets are always bustling. I honestly wonder how many of the customers are resellers. In San Marino, it seemed like a lot of people just stopped by to chat with their friends. You definitely overheard more gossiping than haggling. It also seemed to give people an excuse to have a pre-10am glass of wine - sort of like brunch or Wimbledon.
I may or may not have purchased my very first cheap, European market undergarment- but that's neither here nor there. We struck out on dinner ingredients, but managed to procure a little food for the walk back down.
This table appeared to be run by the food collective of San Marino and the youngish unsmiling man was very keen on explaining which grains were used to make the small variety of bread he had for sale. There were pale, round loaves that looked exactly like enormous sugar cookies (complete with liberal sugar dusting). We opted, instead for this sheet-bread thing. It was very oily and sort of bland but pleasantly dry somehow. We think he said it hadn't been baked at all. The huge crystals of salt on top really helped it make the jump from 'interesting' to enjoyable.
The most impressive part of this generally unimpressive market was the fact that under the eaves, in the narrow passageway which wound around a strip of stores, they had actually found some level ground. As we pulled a little basket on wheels around the produce section of a supermarket later that day, I felt awful that I hadn't purchased more from the market. Merlin made me feel better immediately, though. "All the market stuff was imported from Italy, too." Sammarinese produce basically consists of olive oil, wine and cheese. We, dutifully, had a large helping of all three with our dinner.

Thread Bare to Thread Full

Right near our guesthouse in Kolomyia was this market skeleton. We walked through it on a ramble. These outdoor shopping structures just never cease to draw us in, empty or full. The idea that markets still work this way, all over Europe - these supercentres that never get packed up on their days off. Real estate where vendors all pay their dues for a stall, drive or drag their goods in and stand out in any weather to sell is just so interesting. It's always such a vibrant scene when full and then such a tattered and desolate one when empty.
The big market happens here every Saturday, but we happened to be there right in time for the hush-hush use of the space. Every Thursday morning, starting at 3am, there is an embroidery market. Souvenir shops come to get their hutsul shirts, skirts, tablecloths. Residents come to find an embroiderer and a pattern they like so that they can put in an order for a specially made piece or two. It's the biggest market of its kind in Ukraine and customers come from all over. Naturally, we made it our mission to head over there as early as we could manage to sneak a peek and maybe snap some pics.
We weren't going to fool ourselves into thinking that we'd make it there when it opened at 3am, but thought that moseying on over at 7ish would be just fine. Well, as you can see, that was like showing up to the midnight showing of Twilight at 11:45pm or waltzing into the Mac store midday on the Ipad's release.
Four hours into their market day, it was sort of a mad house. From a block away we could see cars parked haphazardly. Vans were parked with men asleep in the driver's seat. A police officer weaved in and out of the cluster of women at the gate. We weren't sure if the group outside were selling or buying or if they were in line to enter and thought it best not to barrel our way inside. Though we never made it in, it was still amazing to see the market space go from this...
...to this in less than 24 hours.
Through the gates we saw barrels of threads, piles of linen, a sea of heads. It was quite the scene.

P.S. We learned about the embroidery market from Vitaliy, our host at On the Corner guesthouse. Apparently, their home has also welcomed Julie Powell a.k.a. Julie of Julie & Julia (the author, not the actress Amy Adams a.k.a. Purse Girl from The Office). She's pretty much blogger royalty, though Vitaliy and his family are "real people" royalty themselves. They've been featured in at least two Discovery Channel specials on Ukraine and Ukrainian families. Mama Pavliuk made a mean mushroom soup.

Udelnaya Fair

Udelnaya fair isn't about rides or the midway - it's about "antiques." It's the largest flea-market type place that I've ever been to, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. We took a long subway ride out there, not knowing exactly what to expect.

There were countless rows of stalls which gave way to snowy, tree-dotted expanses, which led to more stalls and more merchants. Some goods were displayed carefully in little, open shops. Others were strewn about on snow tables or hung up on tree branches.
Calling it an antique market is a little misleading - one could find anything from vases and painting to rolls of stripped electrical wiring and used faucet gaskets. There were people selling food, like the man above, and people selling soviet era rifles (complete with ammunition). Stacks of pornography sat next to leather bound books and box upon box upon box of bootleg DVDs surrounded the odd iconographic image.

There were clothes, too. In fact, cloth made up the better part of the market. Wedding dresses, kids snowsuits, racks of fur...

We were told many times not to take photographs - some people said it respectfully, some yelled at us and shouted to other people around them, pointing at us. A few people covered up their wares with blankets or pulled down the gates in front of their shops. This place has a reputation for selling stolen, illegal and counterfeit goods, so I can understand their concern. It was big enough, though, that we were able to get a lot of pictures just by continuing to move.

On the other side of the room - hockey skates, of course.

I tried to get a better picture of the wedding dresses hanging on the side of this shed, but one woman was quite adamant that I move along, away from her space. The dresses were incredible. A few looked ancient, with many layers of yellowing lace.
Some people didn't mind us taking their picture. This man actually smiled and waved. I saw a lot of people carrying nordic skis around, so he may have been making a lot of sales today.
I'm not exactly sure why people would come here to buy food, but it seemed as though crackers and biscuits were the most popular items on the edible goods tables.
We didn't see anyone else who looked like a tourist - it's pretty far away from the center of the city, and the cold might be a deterrent for some. It was fascinating, though, and I really recommend taking the trip. It's open on the weekends from ten 'til five, but I'm not sure about the week days. To get there, take the blue subway line to the "Udel'naya" stop, leave the station and turn right. Cross the train tracks and head for the group of modern kiosks, which mark the entrance to the market. Keep walking through the kiosks, and then just walk and walk and walk.