Cooking Attempt 2: Lecso

Lecso (Hungarian dish #2) is essentially a stir fry. Since BreAnna and I have decided to attempt Hungarian dishes, we’ve found ourselves with a Sunday night tradition. One main dish a week seems to be appropriate for us, particularly since most recipes are meant for 4+ people (Leftovers!). I found this recipe at food.com, but since I failed to save the link, I only found variations of the following ingredients:

• 1 green pepper, cut into strips

• 1 red pepper, cut into strips

• 1 orange bell pepper, cut into strips

• 1 yellow pepper, cut into strips

• 1 large onion, cut into strips

• 2 tablespoons canola oil

• 2 tablespoons Hungarian paprika

• 3 tomatoes, skinned, & chunked

• 2 eggs, well beaten

We created our own variation, which involved one green pepper and one red pepper (instead of a total of 4), and we used 5 tomatoes because we could only find small vine tomatoes. While chopping the peppers, we decided that the strips should be around ½ the height of the full pepper. Here are some photos of the process:

 As we were chopping, we sort of guessed at sizes, and we had words with our onion because it caused us to lose a few tears. We then squished into the issue of skinning our tomatoes. My personal attempts involved removing more of the tomato than I should have, and resulted in a very lopsided, shaved mess.

BreAnna, however, had a more successful attempt, and by tomato #3 had tomato skinning perfected. I merrily skipped around, applauding her success, and enthusiastically captured photos of the master at her craft:

Jubilant cheers were raised as our massacre of vegetables came to a close.  Now it was time to sacrifice the vegetable limbs to the fire.

1. The onion is the first sacrifice.  You must fry the white limbs in oil until their white transforms to clear.

2. Mix in the red dust of paprika to cure clogged noses.

3. Then drop in your peppers & fry the juicy limbs for 2-3 minutes.

4. Your massacred tomatoes slop in next, and these should be cooked for one minute.

5. The final step, lower the heat, stir in the eggs of hen until just cooked.

6. Now that your witches’ stir fry is complete, add your choice of cat’s whisker, snake’s tongue or your own witchy tooth.

(The above instructions may have been altered from their original text)

Our final meal included a bottle of Chardonnay, which confirmed my former assessments that I don’t like alcoholic drinks.

Sizzling Peppers in a Pan

Results: Fiery dragon breath burns snot from nostrils.

My assessment: Could have used some mushrooms.

BreAnna’s assessment: Would be great with ground beef.

Conjoined opinion: Needed more than 2 eggs. The vegetables barely fit in our frying pan, and when the egg was added, it seemed to simply soak into the mix and disappear. We couldn’t really taste the egg at all. It was still pretty good as an onion and pepper dish.  The following night, we made noodles and mixed in the Lecso, which I really enjoyed.

Feb 5, 2012

About these ads