Paprikas Krumpli

Paprikas Krumpli (Paprika Potato) is definitely my favourite Hungarian recipe. How I got the recipe is innately tied to how I got to Hungary.

Coming to Hungary was at the same time both very easy and very difficult. As anyone who's ever tried to get a legal working visa in a European Union (EU) country knows, it's ridiculously hard. For American's its usually easier to try and request citizenship if your grandparents immigrated to the US. For those of us whose ancestors came over earlier, we're kinda screwed. The difficulties comes from a pact that the EU countries follow, in order to hire someone from outside the EU, the employer must prove that no one in the EU is qualified for the job.

While I was still searching for a job I became more and more aware of programs who could place you in Europe, however they usually came with pretty steep program fees. After a month of applying I found an opportunity to come to Europe through the Central European Teaching Program (CETP). The program fee was difficult, however I knew without a doubt that I wanted to go back to Europe and Hungary seemed like a fine choice.

Part of coming through CETP meant mandatory orientation. We stayed at a wonderful hostel near the Danube in Pest.

It came with wonderful wall art.

In the kitchen of the hostel, the recipe was written on the wall near the ceiling, circling the room. (Forgive me I seemed to have forgotten to take a picture of it). The recipe seemed easy enough and I decided it would be the first Hungarian food I'd cook.

When I moved into my apartment I was without internet or cable for about 3 weeks :-(  However it did give me time to perfect my Paprikas Krumpli. Here are pictures of nearly all the steps.

First chop up some onion, the recipe didn't actually give any quantities so I just guessed. Since I really like cooked onions I chopped up three small ones.

A fellow American expat told me that when cooking in Hungary you generally use one pot/sauce pan and just add everything to it. I can live with that, less dishes. While my onions where browning I chopped up the other ingredients.

The jar at the top left of the table is some paprika that my wonderful coworker gave me cause Lidl didn't have any. Next to it is a pepper mill, two chopped up sausage links, two chopped peppers & two chopped tomatoes, three medium potatoes sliced, and my phone with the recipe open. Also pictured are my tools! The cheapest peeler ever (yay IKEA!) and my only chopping knife.

 

After the onions were cooked, but not quite browned I added the chopped sausage. The recipe said to brown the sausage for five minutes.

Pretend this is a picture where 

the tomato and pepper has

been added and the sausage

is slightly brown. Then 

pretend there is another

picture with pepper and

paprika added.

After the peppers and tomatoes are added to the mixture it needs to cook for 15 minutes. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to mix it or not but I did cause it started to stick on the bottom of the pot. I added five-ish grinds of pepper and about two tablespoons (no idea what that is in metric) of paprika. The recipe did call for salt but I don't like salt, so I didn't add any.

After fifteen minutes I added the sliced potato and covered it with water. The temperature was then turned up so that the water would boil off, both cooking the potatoes and creating a sauce. This part takes forever.

Ta-da! Paprikas Krumpli! I did it! At least I think I did it, I don't have anything to compare it to. Maybe one day I'll get really ambitious and cook it for a Hungarian friend. Until then I'm going with: I'm awesome cause I can cook Hungarian food!