cia – Page 92 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Hungary: Beef with Vadas Sauce and Dumplings

I can’t believe 2007 passed without me cooking anything for my Global Gastronomy project. Bad, Cia! I have at least four pending recipes from acquaintances and friends, but c’est la vie, the year went by just like that. Over the weekend, it was colder in New York City than it was in Budapest, Hungary, and their city experiences what they call a Russian front. Canadian front? Meh! It gets cold over there.

I work with a few talented boys based in Budapest. We talk every morning over IM. If work doesn’t get in the way, I get a spatter of Hungarian words in exchange for some quirky American slang. They know about this blog and we are each other’s contact on Flickr, so when I asked one of them, Keki, to send me a family recipe, there were no questions asked. He said he had to use the dictionary a lot to translate his mother-in-law’s handwritten recipe, so I was very grateful when I received two: a vadas sauce to go with beef and the dumplings to complete the meal. Vadas comes from vad, which means “game”, and Hungarians make the base of the sauce using all kinds of gamey meat. I used beef to make it less difficult.

My arms got tired when I tried this at home and I understood why Hungarians don’t make it often. You need at least a day to marinate the beef and a couple of hours to get the sauce and the dumplings done. Keki said that his mother-in-law makes a wicked version, and because they’re not readily available in restaurants, he looks forward to eating it. Even the kids love it, especially before they find out that the sauce has carrots in it.

When I let Keki preview the photos I took, he gave me the biggest compliment: he said he “felt the smell of vadas” even though mine looked more orange because of the extra carrots I put and seemed a little thicker than what he was used to. I could have used a full cup of sour cream to make it less orange–apparently, a lot of sour cream is very Hungarian. I thought I did better with the dumplings because I’ve had the Czech version, knedlicky, when I visited Prague. If your vadas sauce is creamier, you can sop the dumplings while you eat the beef.

When I finally sat down to eat, a wish to visit Budapest sooner than later floated in my head. Thanks, Keki.

Ingredients:
2 pounds beef tenderloin
4 slices of bacon, chopped
3 carrots, peeled, chopped
2 onions, chopped
1 parsnip, peeled, chopped
3 bay leaves
2 tbsps of flour
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp sour cream
1 tbsp mustard
lemon juice
salt, pepper, oil

For the dumplings:
1 baguette, torn in smaller pieces, toasted
whole milk
2 eggs
2 tbsps flour
a knob of butter, melted
salt

1. In a nonreactive pot, render some bacon fat. Add the beef and brown on all sides. Move the beef to the side while you sautÃ© the onions. Add the carrots and the parsnip and cook for about 5 minutes. Don’t forget to turn the beef to avoid burning. Add enough water to cover and toss in the bay leaves and some pepper. Cook in low fire for about 3 hours, covered. After 3 hours, let it cool and store in the fridge for up to 24 hours, turning the beef occasionally.
2. When ready to cook, remove the meat from the water and set aside. Save some of the water. Using a slotted spoon, remove the vegetables and transfer to a large bowl. Mash.
3. Make the dumplings. In a large mixing bowl, soak the toasted baguette in milk. Set aside.
4. Make the roux, or the sauce thickener. In a large skillet, heat vegetable oil in medium heat until somewhat smoking. Pour flour and mix with a whisk. Keep mixing for about 15 minutes or until flour is red-orange. If black spots start to appear in the flour, it means you’ve burnt it. You have to start over. Remove from heat and keep mixing with the whisk to help cool down the roux. When cool, add to the mashed vegetables.
5. Make caramelized sugar. Heat another skillet and cook the sugar with a whisk until it caramelizes. Remove from heat and set aside.
6. Now you have a a large bowl of mashed vegetables with roux. This is your vadas base. Use the leftover water to keep a sauce consistency. Add the sour cream and mix. Add the caramelized sugar. Season with the lemon juice and the mustard until you get a somewhat sweet and sour taste. Set aside.
7. Don’t forget the dumplings. By this time, the baguette has absorbed all the milk. Add in the eggs, flour, butter and salt. Mix until you get a soft and sticky batter.
8. Boil some water in a large pot. When boiling, spoon some batter and make a few balls. Drop them in the boiling water and cook for about 5 minutes, or until they come up to the surface. Avoid overcrowding. Using a slotted spoon, remove them to a chopping board. Slice in thick rounds when cool enough to handle.
9. To serve, slice the beef in thick slices. Arrange the beef on a plate with some dumplings. Pour in some sauce on the side.

Kona Kampachi With Coconut Cream Sauce

Out of all the recipes I tried to make use of the kampachi batch that Kona Blue Water Farms generously sent me, this was the simplest, but also the most complicated in taste. The coconut cream was wee thick, but the kaffir leaves and the lime juice squirted in the end made the fish lighter. I remembered a cauliflower pilaf to serve with this and a 10-minute prep made an impressionable dish.

Ingredients:
2 fillets of kampachi
1/4 cup of coconut cream
1/4 cup dry white wine
a knob of ginger, peeled, julienned
1 shallot, thinly sliced
1 clove of garlic, minced
a handful of basil leaves, chiffonade
a handful of kaffir lime leaves, chiffonade
juice from half a lime
butter
salt, pepper, oil

1. Using a small pan, heat butter and cook shallots and garlic without browning. Add white wine and deglaze. Add the coconut cream and the rest of the ingredients and simmer for a few minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Sprinkle a little bit of salt and pepper on the fillets. In a separate skillet, heat some oil and sear fillets, about 4 minutes per side. Remove to a serving plate and top with coconut cream sauce. Squirt with some lime juice for some kick.

Kona Kampachi Paksiw, Filipino Vinegar Stew

Paksiw, or what I would translate as Filipino vinegar stew, has got to be my father’s favorite dish. Filipinos, especially those from the northern part of the country, love anything with vinegar. We can cook and stew almost anything in sour goodness and make an honest meal out of it.

My father loves fresh seafood paksiw the best because he grew up in a farm where the family didn’t own a refrigerator. He’s told me about heading into the nearest town very early in the morning to buy the morning’s catch and consuming all of them before they went bad, usually before the day ended. Meat was expensive and hard to come by.

The traditional paksiw recipe uses milkfish, or bangus, but Kona Blue Water Farms sent me a whole kampachi and I wanted to use every part of it. It would have been a waste to throw away a perfectly good head. My father happily cleaned and gutted out the fish. I used the entire head for this dish with a small steak from the body. My favorite part is crushing the pepper after the entire thing has reduced: the sourness has a touch of spiciness to it that will make the skin behind your ears crawl.

Ingredients:
kampachi head with some fillets
1/2 cup white vinegar
a small knob of ginger, peeled, crushed
1 green Serrano pepper
salt

1. In a nonreactive pot, bring all ingredients to a boil with 1/4 cup of water, uncovered.
2. When boiling, lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes, covered, turning fish head once to evenly cook. The liquid should have reduced, making the vinegar and water combination more concentrated. If you like, crush the pepper a tad to release some spice into the stew.

Kona Kampachi With Soy-Ginger Sauce

I felt bad searing the Kona Kampachi fillets from Kona Blue Water Farms. It was enough that I baked it with butter the first time. I felt blasphemous to be ruining such a good fish with heat. But when seared, Kona Kampachi turns into the Cinderella of fish: an oomph was added to what would have been a very simple flavor. It became richer and meatier, as if the oil plumped it up. The soy-ginger sauce actually took the fish a notch down. A tarty watercress and pear salad with crumbled blue cheese and a glass of dry white wine made our dinner complete. We made it way past midnight.

Ingredients:
2 fillets of kampachi
a knob of ginger, peeled, julienned
1 shallot, thinly sliced
a jigger of soy sauce
a splash of sherry
oil

1. Make the soy-ginger sauce. Combine all the ingredients, except the fish and oil, in a small bowl and let sit until ready to serve.
2. Using a skillet, heat some oil and then sear one side of the fish for about 3 minutes. Gingerly turn it using a heat-resistant spatula. Sear the other side for another 3 minutes. Transfer to serving plates and spoon soy-ginger sauce on top of the seared fillets.

Kona Kampachi With Coconut, Apples, Ginger and Basil

One of my father’s specialties during the holidays is pichi-pichi, a grated cassava dessert cooked in milk and sugar and eaten with fresh coconut. I was delighted to find leftover shredded coconut in the fridge when I was exploring different ways to cook the Kona Kampachi sent to me by Kona Blue Water Farms.

Kona Kampachi is known as Almaco Jack in the wild and Hawaiian yellowtail in most kitchens and sushi restaurants. Kona Blue nurtures its Kona Kampachi from hatch to harvest, making it a sustainably-raised fish that has no detectable levels of mercury and is completely free of internal parasites. Kona Kampachi is also good for you–it is rich with healthy Omega-3 fish oils–and the fat content makes it one of the most flavorful fish available in the market today.

One of the most interesting recipes from Jean-Georges’ cookbook, Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges, involved halibut, but I can’t imagine how it could be any better than when I used the kampachi. The fish itself is mildly sweet–you can taste its natural flavor without any of the dressings. To dress it even seemed a waste to me because it’s good on its own, sashimi-style. But Kona Blue was extremely generous and I had a lot of fish. I wanted to try different ways of cooking it.

Ingredients:
kampachi fillets
a knob of butter

For the salad topping:
1 cup shredded coconut
half an apple, thinly sliced
a small knob of ginger, peeled, julienned
1 shallot, thinly sliced
fresh basil leaves, thoroughly washed, patted dry, chiffonade
juice from 1 lemon
Thai chili, seeded, chopped
a knob of butter
salt, pepper, oil

1. Prepare the salad that will go on top of the fish while you preheat the oven 275Âº. Combine all the salad topping ingredients together in a small bowl. Drizzle with lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.
2. Butter a baking sheet. Lay fillets and bake for 15 minutes.
3. When serving, top the fish with the coconut salad. Drizzle with some leftover lemon juice.