Mass hunger was banished from Hungary only in the middle of the last century. Until then, a bad harvest could kill hundreds and thousands in the less developed parts of the country – southeast, in the Alföld and northeast in tiny mountain villages. In fact, abolishing mass hunger was one of the true achievements of communism – per capita GDP rose in the burst of quick growth spurred by rebirth of international trade behind the Iron Curtain and this gain was, to a never before seen extent, truly redistributed in the end of the 50s, beginning of the 60s.
And amid all this shiny new hope and uncharacteristic optimism, Hungarian comfort food was born. It wasn’t fancy stuff. It was, after all, adapted to life in a partly industrialized agrarian society. And physical work requires a vast amount of calories that are the easiest to deliver with a plateload of potatoes with a huge dollop of fat, preferably lard and/or sour cream. It also followed the logic of human biology – with carbs to make you happy and some fat to make it taste good.
Simple, hearty fare was also an ideological issue – anything out of line with traditional farmers’ fare was considered bourgeois affectation. (This of course, did not extend party leaders here and abroad, which is easy to discern in view of the fact that whole generations of cows were born, chopped up and sold without any filet mignon reaching the markets.)
In the industrialized cuisine of socialist era, niche vegetables previously widespread in gardens such as artichokes, rhubarb and chard disappeared altogether. Vegetable farming was limited to these: potatoes, tomatoes, paprika, cauliflower, kohlrabi (German turnip or karalábé), carrots and parsley root, tree types of cabbage (red, Savoy and Bulgarian), onions and garlic.
So I always wonder that so many dishes were compiled of so few ingredients. Paprikás krumpli, which was originally shepherds’ food and cooked in a cauldron, starts out with a chunk of diced bacon, some sautéed onions, some kolbász, preferably of the lángolt type to give it some protein, a spoonful of the omnipresent paprika, some water, and potatoes to give it bulk.
Krumplis tészta, the perfect meal for lonely people without much patience for cooking (shepherds, again), is pasta squares with paprika, cooked potatoes, pepper, and bacon.
Túrós csusza is even easier: just cook the pasta squares, and sprinkle cottage cheese, sour cream and fried bacon bits on top. (There are ways to make this more complicated, and taste even better, though. E.g. coating the pasta with the fat from the bacon and sticking it all in the oven to make it crackle a bit.) This however, is special in the sense that this is the only Hungarian home-cooked comfort food that makes it onto restaurant menus, so it is the simplest to try.
Tojásos galuska, where home-made pasta with an overdose of eggs is cooked, drained, then mixed in with some yes, you guessed it, dices of fried bacon and eggs. This dish is always accompanied by some salad lettuce sunk in vinegary-sugary water.
My personal favorite is a slightly more complicated dish called rakott krumpli, which is in fact a bucolically bastardized version of a gratin dauphinoise.
The latter is an elegantly minimalist concoction of paper-thin potatoes, rich cream and garlic. However, the inventors of rakott krumpli obviously felt it that it was lacking in some respects. First of all, who wants to bother with grating potatoes, lets just cook them in their skins, making it easy to peel them when they cool a bit. And no potato slices should be less than half a centimeter thick, it wouldn’t fill you up if it was. You definitely need some protein, maybe preserved meat and eggs in it, and a touch of paprika, hm, let’s slice in some kolbász as well. And let’s use some 20-30% fat sour cream instead of crème fraîche, it’s cheaper and easier to keep. Maybe some bacon? Slice it all up and shove it in an oven, bake it at high heat and voila, now that is what a potato dish should be like! None of your dainty airs now!
And truly, made well, the potatoes become creamy from all the fat, the kolbász adds a complicated but familiar “Hungarian” taste and the eggs soak it all up and add a variation of texture without making it all heavy. So if you are ever invited to dinner by a Hungarian family, beg them to eat the fois gras without you and just make you some authentic rakott krumpli with pickles cucumbers (csemegeuborka).
