The Food of Budapest, Hungary

On May 22, 2019 By Isobar ExpeditionsIn Hungary, Recipes17 Comments

It certainly shouldn’t be surprising that you can find just about any type of cuisine that you would like in a city the size of Budapest. Especially in the tourist areas, you can find restaurants featuring traditional Hungarian dishes, but you are just as likely to find Italian, Asian, Mediterranean, and even Mexican restaurants. It is also not surprising that you can find plenty of American fast food restaurants throughout the city. When it comes to Hungarian food, it is definitely meat and starch (potato/rice) forward and vegetables are almost an afterthought. One of the things that did surprise us were the number of restaurants specializing in burgers that we found everywhere. Not fast food restaurants, but just restaurants that offered many varieties of burgers on their menus.

Beef Tenderloin with Letcho and Fried Potatoes

Goulash soup was probably the most common item that could be found on almost any Hungarian menu, but it is truly a soup and not what most of us think of when we hear the word goulash. You will also find meat stews listed and sometimes it will even be listed as goulash stew. Another common menu item is Chicken Paprikash, which is chicken and cottage cheese noodles covered in a paprika sour cream sauce. Cottage cheese noodles are pretty similar to spätzle. You will find many menu items that feature “letcho”, which is a pepper and tomato stew that can be combined with different proteins or eaten on its own. Another common item that you find as an appetizer is duck liver pate with the local flatbread, very similar to naan.

Needless to say, there are plenty of other choices for Hungarian dishes including boar cheeks with dumplings and lamb soup with duck liver dumplings. There are also Hungarian deserts such as an almond cake, but one of the most famous is probably the chimney cake. We got our chimney cake from a food truck where it was cooked over burning embers. It is then coated with your choice of flavors and we decided on a simple cinnamon sugar. Since burgers were so prevalent, we did decide to get a burger one day and since we like spicy food, we ordered a spicy burger. It turned out to be so spicy that we were barely able to eat it.

With six days in Budapest, we didn’t limit ourselves to just Hungarian food, but also ate some seafood and Italian food as well. In the main tourist areas, you will sometimes find that the restaurants offer a “tourist menu”, which is usually a three course meal focusing on Hungarian dishes. It is probably focused on those tourists that come from the cruise ships that stop in Budapest where the people only have a single day in the city. We found some of the best restaurants tended to be in the Jewish Quarter and we even ate an excellent meal at an Israeli fusion restaurant called Mazel Tov that was recommended to us by several people.

When visiting Budapest, you will certainly have plenty of options of restaurants to choose from. We definitely enjoyed the different meals that we ate and it would be difficult to choose a favorite, but you should certainly try some of the paprika based dishes. All of the restaurants usually had English as well as Hungarian descriptions as well as German sometimes. Many of the tourist restaurants also include picture menus, but we didn’t find those to be necessary. Fortunately we did a lot of walking during our time in Budapest, otherwise all of the heavy meals might have taken their toll on our wastes.

Pastrami Sandwich at the Israeli Fusion Restaurant

Hearty Stew

On September 19, 2018 By Isobar ExpeditionsIn RecipesLeave a comment

No matter where you travel, you will likely find a local variation on a hearty stew with a mix of meat and vegetables. Stews are basically the same as soups where the solid ingredients outweigh the broth. One of the nice things about stews is that they are very economical as stewing meats are inexpensive and the meat and vegetables can be substituted for whatever is in season at the time. This meal uses ground beef as its base, but it would be equally delicious with beef, pork, or lamb chunks or you can leave out the meat completely to make it vegetarian. This particular stew is meant to be a little bit lighter, but if you wanted to make it even heartier, you could use beef stock and a thickener to create an almost gravy-like consistency. It is one of our Autumn, “go-to”, meals and we always enjoy it.

INGREDIENTS

1 lb Lean Ground Beef (or any other stew meat)
1 tbsp Vegetable Oil
2 cups of Baby Carrots – quartered
3 Medium Potatoes – cubed
2 cups Green Beans – cut into 1 inch pieces
1 cup Frozen Corn Kernels
1/2 Small Onion – diced
1 Stalk Celery – diced
3 Small Bay Leaves
1 tsp Garlic Powder
1/2 tsp Dried Rosemary
1/2 tsp Dried Thyme
1 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
5 cups Water (may need to be adjusted)
Salt and Pepper to taste

INSTRUCTIONS

Heat a large pot over medium-high heat with vegetable oil. Add the ground beef and start to brown. Add the celery and onion when the beef is halfway browned. Add water and bring to a simmer. Add remaining vegetables and seasonings, simmer until the vegetables are fork tender (approximately 45 minutes). Serve with your favorite fresh bread and butter.

Semi-Deconstructed Turkey Pot Pie

On January 17, 2018 By Isobar ExpeditionsIn France, Recipes2 Comments

One of the meals that we had when we visited Strasbourg was a very rustic chicken pot pie. Because of the fact that we wanted to share it, they basically prepared it deconstructed for us, which we actually enjoyed. We decided to make our own version of this hearty meal and it turned out quite delicious. Needless to say, it certainly wasn’t as elegant as the meal we had in France, but since it was just a weeknight meal for the two of us, that was perfectly fine. We happened to have left over turkey, so that is what we chose to use, but you could easily do something similar with beef, chicken, or even lamb. You could also use a puff-pastry instead of biscuits, but we liked the biscuits as it made a cross between a pot pie and dumplings. Obviously this recipe is very versatile, so you could add in different vegetables to create your own spin on the meal. It is really about what leftovers you may have on hand and what flavors you prefer.

INGREDIENTS

3 cups Turkey Stock (we used homemade stock, but you can use store bought chicken stock)
1/2 cup All-Purpose Flour
1 cup Red Onion – chopped
1 cup Celery – sliced thin
1 cup Potatoes – peeled and diced
1 cup Carrots – peeled and sliced
1 1/2 cup Cooked Turkey – diced
Biscuits – store bought or homemade
1 tsp Fresh Thyme
Salt and Pepper to taste

INSTRUCTIONS

Sauté the onion and celery in a skillet over medium-high heat until they are soft and translucent. In a medium sauce pan, melt butter and stir in the flour to create a rue and add the stock and continue heating on medium-high heat until it simmers (alternately, you can heat the stock in the pot and mix the flour and some cold water in a bowl to create a slurry and then add that to the simmering stock). Add the carrots, potatoes, and cooked onion and celery to the broth. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for about 2 hours, stirring continuously. Once the potatoes and carrots are tender, the stew is done. Pre-heat an oven to the temperature in the biscuit directions (350 degrees in our case). Pour servings of the stew into oven-safe bowls and put the uncooked biscuits on top of the stew trying to cover it is fully as possible. Place the bowls in the oven for the time in the biscuit directions (16 minutes in our case). Remove and serve.