Kaspressknödel

From: Austria

Ingredients:

  • 250g / 8.8 oz Breadcrumbs

  • 200g / 7.1 oz cheese strong, granular cheese (ideally a mixture of tyrolean grey cheese and Bergkäse)

  • 60g / 2.1 oz butter

  • 60g / 2.1 oz onion

  • 200 ml / 6.8 fl. oz milk

  • 40g / 1.4 oz flour

  • 3 eggs

  • Salt

  • Parsley

Yields:

Serves 4 Knödel

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 180 C/ 350 F
Finely cut the onions and lightly fry them in the butter
Mix eggs, milk and salt and pour over the bread crumbs
Cut the cheese in small cubes
Add parsley, cheese, onion and the melted butter to the dough
Let the whole thing rest for a couple of minutes until the bread cubes are really soft
Form round balls and press them down until they roughly look like burger patties
Bake them for roughly 15 minutes until they are nice and brown

Notes:

You can enjoy Kaspressknödel in different ways:

  • add them to a soup

  • eat them with Sauerkraut as a main dish

  • enjoy them with a green salad

I just recently started to do Kaspressknödel by myself. Main trigger was a hike with my daughter where we ate the most delicious Kaspressknödelsuppe and Klara felt in love with the dish.

I hope you enjoy it too!!

The vegetarian, low-calorie Hungarian soup most Hungarians never heard of

From: Hungary

Ingredients:

  • Sunflower oil

  • 2 spoons whole wheat (or white) flour

  • 0,5 kg sauerkraut (if you can't buy sauerkraut where you live, you can make your own, it's really easy)

  • 2 liter water

  • 6 bay leaves

  • 2 garlic cloves

  • Small head of red onion

  • 1 handful pearl barley

  • 10-12 small potatoes

Yields:

Serves 6-8 people

Directions:

Squeeze the juice from the sauerkraut by hand and cut the very long strands into smaller bits with scissors. Put the sauerkraut into a big soup pan and add 2 liters of water.
Add the bay leaves and the crushed garlic cloves.
Add a small onion cut into small pieces and the barley. Do NOT add salt at this point!
Cook covered, over low heat for 50-60 minutes. Meanwhile bake the potatoes in the oven with their skin on.
Prepare the roux: heat a few tablespoons of sunflower oil in a pan.
Add two large tablespoons of flour to the oil when it's hot and keep stirring until it gets a tiny bit of light brown color.
Add pepper and sweet red paprika, stir well and remove from the heat.
Take a bit of hot soup and stir into the roux until completely blended.
When the sauerkraut is ready, stir in the roux. Add salt if needed.
Peel and break the potatoes into pieces and add to the soup when served.

Notes:

It is probably the ugliest soup you have ever seen, be warned.

The Hungarian butterhead lettuce soup I couldn't live without

From: Hungary

Ingredients:

  • 2 heads of butterhead lettuce (iceberg lettuce won't work unfortunately)

  • 1 large onion cut to small pieces

  • sunflower oil

  • salt, pepper, sweet red paprika powder

  • 1 clove garlic

  • 450 g creme fraiche

  • 1 dl milk

  • 1 spoonful of wholemeal white flour (or white flour)

  • ungodly amounts of fresh dill (2 bouquets at least, but depending on the size, make it 3 or even 4 if you have to) cut to smaller pieces, removing the hard stems

Yields:

Serves 6-8 people

Directions:

Wash and cut the salad leaves to strips.
Cook the onion in a few spoons of sunflower oil.
When the onions are ready (glassy texture), add the ground pepper, the cloves crushed, the paprika and some salt.
Add the saladstrips continuously and let them wilt completely. If they don't produce enough water, add enough to make it 2 liters.
Add the dill too.
Cook for 45 minutes on low heat, covered.
Prepare the creme fraiche: add 1 dl milk, mix well, then add 1 spoon of flour and stir until smooth, then add a splash of vinegar and stir well again.
Add the creme fraiche mix to the soup when ready.
Add 2-4-6 spoons of white vinegar, depending on your taste.
Serve hot or cold with fresh bread on the side.

Notes:

Now we are well into the weird and wonderful world of strange, ugly looking and not very well advertised soups from the Hungarian countryside. Both the lettuce soup and my sauerkraut soup recipes are hidden treasures, that many people overlook in favor of fancy meat dishes. However, if you want to make authentic tirpák (an ethnic group from the Eastern parts of Hungary) food a part of your everyday diet, these two are fantastic choices. The lettuce soup exists in numerous other versions where the recipe is more or less the same, except you can replace the lettuce with potatoes, green beans, white beans or shredded white pumpkins. In the summer, you can eat this soup cold, it's lovely and refreshing.

Cold sour cherry soup

From: Hungary

Ingredients:

  • 1 kg sour cherries, fresh or frozen

  • 2 - 4 cinnamon sticks

  • 1 spoon cloves

  • 2 liter water

  • 100 g sugar (yeah, I know, but trust me on this)

  • juice from ½ lemon

  • 200 ml creme fraiche

  • 200 ml cooking cream

Yields:

Serves 6-8 people

Directions:

Put the cherries in the water and start cooking on low heat together with the cinnamon sticks and the cloves. Put the cloves in a tea egg to make it easier to remove from the soup once ready. Cook for 20 minutes. Add the sugar and the lemon towards the end. Take off from the heat and add the creme fraiche and cream, stir well and bring to boil. When ready, remove the tea egg with the cloves, chill and serve cold.

Notes:

This is the best thing in the summer! If you can't get hold of creme fraiche, you can just use cooking cream instead.