Cooking with my Hungarian Grandmother

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Limited edition of 100, certificate of authenticity supplied.

My grandmother was Hungarian, so we called her Nagymama. We didn’t learn to speak Hungarian, but we did grow up eating a lot of food heavy with paprika. It’s laughable to me when recipes tell you to add 1 teaspoon or less of paprika. What’s the point of that? 1 tablespoon or more is the correct metric.

Those little spice jars you get from Colesworth? Ridiculous. Using it by the teaspoon so that it gets old and stale and caked at the bottom? Appalling. Go get a big bag from an Indian grocer.

Hungarians know flavour. When we were in Hungary, my sister and I went to a restaurant and ordered a vegetarian soup. This was the middle of winter so there was snow outside. A warm hearty soup is just the thing you need.

Did we suspect that the vegetarian soup was most likely made with beef broth because it was so rich and hearty? Yes. Regrets? No.