Hungarian gulyas revealed
...and talk of Magyar horsemen and the delights of Swabian wine-cellars
Among dishes that define regional culinary habit, while ingredients vary, it’s often the cooking-vessel that gives its name to the national dish. In Hungary, the distinguishing factor (apart from the many varieties of paprika, dried and powdered capsicum, a New World johnnie-cum-lately) is the bogracs, a swing-handled cauldron set over the embers of a campfire. So says New York restaurateur George Lang in The Cuisine of Hungary, a comprehensive record of the recipes and culinary history of his native land, first published in 1971 - a time when the USSR had attempted to destroy all evidence of nationhood in its client republics.
Hungary has never been an easy conquest. Malarial marshland flooded by the Danube, combined with raids by fierce Mayar horsemen from the steppes, defeated the Romans - leaving the Magyars to settle down with their herds and flocks on a bend in the river in the tenth millenium, comparatively late in Europe’s history. In due course, the river brought new settlers to share the territory - Ottoman, French, Austrian, German - which goes some way to explain an unusually high level of diversity in the preparation of gulyas, Hungary’s national dish.
In its original incarnation, explains maestro Lang, the traditional gulyas is a simple meat-and-onion one-pot meal cooked in the bogracs - hence bogracsgulyas - set over a campfire on the pushta, preferably by Magyar horsemen. The cooking-fat is lard and the flavouring caraway, a plant native to the steppes. A seasoning of fiery paprika - dried, milled capsicums that have anti-malarial properties - is an optional New World addition to the Old World’s spice-chest.
As for the cooking-implement - a swing-handled bogracs - this is as essential to the dish’s identity as is the paellera - a shallow-sided, wide-based, double-handled pan that takes the heat of a campfire - is to Spain’s treasured paella. The smilarity doesn’t end there: paella as well as gulyas belongs to the campfire men-only tradition, a situation that continues to this day in Budapest and other towns and cities with an ad-hoc arrangement in whatever outdoor space is available, in much the same spirit as America's backyard barbecue.
If sufficient water is added to the bogracs-gulyas to provide a broth, the combination of meat and onion becomes a soup, gulyasleves, that can serve as a cooking-liquor for pinch-finger dumplings - tiny scraps of flour-and-water dough that cook in a minute or two, like soup-noodles in China. If, however, the same ingredients - meat, onion etc - are cooked in their own juices without additional liquid in a lidded pot in a domestic oven, the result is a porkolt. But if a porkolt is prepared with veal or chicken and served, as they like it in Austria, with soured cream, it's a paprikas.
But if the correct ingredients are cooked by Hungarians in Romania, it’s likely to be spiced with peppercorns imported by Turkish traders, and the flavouring is not caraway but marjoram, a herb favoured by Romania’s Saxon villagers, it's a tokany. If, on the other hand, the recipe is prepared in a bogracs on a campfire by Magyar fishermen on the marshy banks of the Danube, the main ingredient is, naturally enough, river-fish, while the spicing is fiery paprika, a natural defense against malaria identified by Hungarian workers on the Panama Canal.
But if the dish is prepared by German-speaking Swabians, wine-makers invited to establish vineyards on the banks of the Danube in the 1750's by the Roman Catholic bishop of Kalocsa (these days, a famous paprika-producing region), the recipe includes a generous libation of red wine, something no Magyar would consider in a million years. For the bishop, the advantage was not only a cellarful of reliable German red wine, but a congregation of solid God-fearing Germans to keep his flighty Magyar flock in order.
In return, the bishop’s German-speaking villagers were encouraged to remain as Swabian as they pleased - a decision that held under Communism, possibly for similar reasons. As a result, the traditional Swabian gulyas - of which I had happy experience in the early 1990's - adopted the nomadic tradition by establishing men-only drinking-cellars in their vineyards, beyond the reach of disapproving wives and impressionable daughters, while welcoming ladies of a more tolerant disposition willing to fraternise. 'Nuff said. What happens in a Swabian vineyard, stays in a Swabian vineyard.
p.s. My beloved paid-subscribers (you know who you are!) will shortly be provided with a recipe for Swabian bogracsgulyas with pinch-finger dumplings.
p.p.s. You'll find the Swabians in full voice in the Hungarian episode of 'The Rich Tradition of European Peasant Cookery', downloadable free at www.talkingoffood.com.