funkyfrank wrote:Binko - Chicago never had a large Hungarian population compared to other cities. South Bend where I grew up had 3 Hungarian Catholic Churches, a Hungarian Reformed Church, and a Hungarian Methodist Church. Buffalo, Cleveland, and Montreal had much larger Hungarian populations. CARDINAL Mindszenty visited south Bend in 1947 abd 1974. I was one of many altar boys at one of the 1974 masses.

I understand that. Cleveland and Toronto are kind of the big Hungarian strongholds in North America. My question is why haven't more restaurants, not necessarily exclusively Hungarian, adopted some of these Hungarian standards in their menus? I mean you will find some Polish restaurants doing a type of Hungarian goulash thing, but that's about it. I'm just surprised it hasn't had more widespread popularity.

I find southern German/Austrian and some Czech rstaurants approaching my standards for Hungarian food, No one locally has approached the baking standards I became accustomed to during my youth. You uaws to have mutiple kifli every day. I learned to do the savory, but I never learned the sweet, This is the time of year when my friends and I were knead dough and do the heavy lifting for our Nagymamas.8-10 would get together in the chruch basements or a Varhavoy club and bake and bake and bake for weeks and weeks.

funkyfrank wrote:I find southern German/Austrian and some Czech rstaurants approaching my standards for Hungarian food, No one locally has approached the baking standards I became accustomed to during my youth. You uaws to have mutiple kifli every day. I learned to do the savory, but I never learned the sweet, This is the time of year when my friends and I were knead dough and do the heavy lifting for our Nagymamas.8-10 would get together in the chruch basements or a Varhavoy club and bake and bake and bake for weeks and weeks.

Oh, yeah, I'm not even talking about baking standards here. If I could anything resembling Hungarian breads or pastries here, I'd be ecstatic.

I get decent homemade kifli at the south bend farmers market. Sometimes great, other times a little stale, but always a thin dough exterior. Send me an offline email and I'll let you know next time I go to SB. Anne's Bakery - 2158 W Chicago Ave
(between Hoyne Ave & Leavitt St) - had a light sour dough rye which reminds me of one of the old time bakeries in SB. Not to surprising - my nagymama was from Kis Geres - now Slovakia but less than 5 miles from Hungary and the Ukraine. The bulk of the Hungarians in SB came from the vicinity of Sopron and Budapest.

I have turned numerous relative on to the Gulasch Kreme I get from Bende. It has become a favorite shortcut in preparing paprika centric dishes.

I'll be honest--I never really got into the goulash cream stuff. I've tried it, but I don't really get it.

But I could use a good kifli or just a simple zsemle. My standard lunch for the longest time was a couple of zsemle, some paprikas kolbasz, and an M.E. (magyar erõs paprika, basically, something like an Anaheim pepper). Oh man do I miss a good zsemle.

I just wanted to update this page with a different presentation of chicken paprikash that I've been making lately. It's not quite the traditional method outlined above, but it creates a similar tasting product and has the advantage of a more elegant presentation with a crispy skin, which the usual method does not produce.

It's pretty much just a standard braise. First, preheat an oven to 400. Instead of stewing everything together, start by frying some chicken thighs in fat (I prefer lard or chicken fat) for about 3 minutes a side over medium-high to high heat. You want to get the skin golden, but not really browned, as they'll finish browning in the oven. Place the chicken thighs (or whatever chicken parts you're using) and put them aside somewhere.

In the fat that's leftover, sweat your chopped onions. I like to stray a bit from tradition here and get them browned and caramelized, about 10-15 minutes over high heat. When they're like I want them, I remove from heat and add the paprika, stir around for a minute to distribute and slightly cook. At this point, I add about 1-2 cups of chicken broth, preferably homemade. (I like to boil up chicken thighs for the dog, so I often have a light, unflavored chicken broth lying around that is perfect for this application.) Mix together. Place your reserved chicken thighs in the pan, making sure the skin is above the liquid level. Place in oven, cook for 45 minutes at 400.

When you're done, you should have nicely cooked chicken thighs with a crispy skin. Remove these and continue the recipe adding in the sour cream (or mix of sour cream and cream) and flour to thicken the sauce. Serve.

Just throwing other ideas out there. I've grown quite fond of this method, although it strays from tradition a little bit. With the chicken fat I use and the homemade broth, it still retains the basic flavor profile, but has the advantage of getting that nice crispy chicken skin.

I know it's not rocket science, but it never occurred to me until recently to apply this braising method to paprikash. I encourage lovers of this dish to try it and see what they think.

My friend's mom was visiting from Hungary recently and she made a very off-the wall version while she was here. Ended up looking like chicken breasts in vodka sauce (her mom's very into healthy eating). She used skinless/boneless breast meat and the sauce was thickened with yogurt. Somewhere my mom was spinning in her grave but it was pretty darn good - if unconventional.