For years, my time in the kitchen was about creating big pots of food that I could feed a hungry family. Casseroles with a cheese lid were what the kids wanted when they got home from soccer practice, so I dished up what they loved, and we never argued about cleaning your plate at our house!
During those years, Italian seasoning and garlic powder in my spice cupboard got a workout, while caraway seeds and paprika got stale. Spices were much too gourmet for our children’s palates, so I ignored almost everything except cinnamon, which they put on toast with sugar…I’m just saying.
Then the kids grew up and started eating somewhere else, and my husband and I took a trip to Budapest. It was during the 2007 financial crisis in Hungary, so we did our best to stimulate the economy by eating in the best restaurants, and I weep to remember those dining experiences.
My favorite cozy upstairs dining room was hung with tapestries and filled with carved brown 19th century furniture. It smelled of fruity red wine and many slow-cooked dishes I couldn’t wait to sample. It was warm up there, as if the heat from the kitchen rose with the aromas just to remove the damp cold of an Eastern European October.
We were seated in a private alcove at a table with a starched white linen tablecloth and napkins, and I trembled with a thrill as a violinist appeared at the top of the stairs. He started to move among the tables playing romantic gypsy folk tunes, and I succumbed to the allure of quintessential Hungary. Our first course arrived, and while eating goulash soup, the room melted, and I merged with the warmth, the music, the wine and the blue pools of my husband’s eyes. There wasn’t a cheese lid or a kid in sight, and I wanted to swoon and sway to the music.
What is this soup? My tastebuds were singing arias! It was rich and beefy with aromatic overtones of the divine. I didn’t know then the flavor I loved was created by the Hungarian-style sweet paprika which I only used to decorate deviled eggs. It was pungent, savory paprika made from red pepper fruits first imported to the Old World from the New World in the 16th century through Spain. And even though it didn’t make its way to Hungary until the late 19th century, when it arrived the Hungarians took possession with a flourish and put their culinary signature on the way they grew and produced it.
After dinner, in the restaurant gift shop downstairs, I bought a large souvenir tin of Hungarian paprika displayed prominently and stacked in tall red pyramids. The display was beautiful and promised the contents were important and valuable, but I had no idea what I was buying.
At home that winter I made my first pot of goulash soup using the paprika from my souvenir tin and a Hungarian cookbook. The moment I tasted Hungarian style “beef stew” I knew why goulash gave me paroxysms of gustatory pleasure. Scooping a spoonful out of the pot before dinner my husband asked, “Why does this stew taste so amazing?” and I answered, “It’s the paprika, darling.” We both heard violin music as he took me in his arms… and we danced.
