Duck Tales: The Horror...The Tasty Horror!

I entertained both Briggi and Franny in Szeged last weekend. We cooked and ate wonderful dinners, had lots of farmer's market and flower shopping time, explored the city, and took a trip to the Pick Szeged Factory museum.

Friday night we had Japanese curry with roasted eggplant, rice, and pickles. Saturday afternoon after a long stroll in the market I decided to share my duck confit with Briggi so I dug it out of the fat and roasted it in the oven.

I served it on top of spinach salads simply dressed with lemon juice, a little salt, red onions, and some of the Mangalica fat that cooked off of the duck. The smell, texture, and flavor of the duck was amazing! It was so fragrant, tender, succulent, and earthy. The skin alone was some transcendent form of bacon. The Mangalica lard was a perfect choice for cooking the duck in. We paired the lunch with a fantastic Egri Cuvée (a gift from Briggi) that was dry and fruity. It complimented the duck and salads perfectly.

We all had salads of spinach, freshly pickled radishes, beets and red onions. It was a celebration of spring! A funny sidenote about the red onion: I wanted two medium onions and the guy at the stall gave them to me for free! I left 50 HUF behind anyway.

That night we had a ratatouille of radish greens, tomatoes, zucchini, and mushrooms. That was served along side a fresh orchiette pasta with butter sauce and basil. We all enjoyed making the orchiette by hand. It was a perfect dinner after walking all around Szeged that whole day. Briggi, thank you again for visiting I hope you had a great time!

Comfort Food: Confit de Canard part deux

We'll be right back but first, a word from our sponsor:

So the Pick brand Mangalica lard that sells for 998 HUF/Kg at Spar, but I bought it from the market stall in Mars tér from the Pick Szeged stand and got it at 780 HUF/Kg. Not only is it cheap but couldn't be whiter or firmer. What a deal! Now back to your regularly scheduled program...

This is the duck after cooking in a 75°C oven for ~4 hours.

I've made the pork confit recipe from Charcuterie and that was excellent, so I'm hoping that this is just as good if not better. I'm also getting ahead of myself, but I've already begun thinking about Mangalica pork belly confit with a paprika cure!

The duck in hibernation.

The duck was covered, but a little too thinly on top due to an uneven surface in the refrigerator, so I had to redistribute a little bit of fat, but otherwise this worked out great. I'm hoping that I can hold out from eating it for at least a week while it ripens...we'll see. More to come!

Comfort Food: Confit de Canard part 1

Every so often I'm reminded of the irony of moving to Hungary after having just bought my copy of Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn's Charcuterie and having to leave it behind because of the weight restrictions on baggage. Secretly I was hoping that spending hours scanning the pages with my eyes would have actually scanned them into my brain, but the files are corrupted and I only remember garbled bits and pieces. But I'm not going to allow that to slow down my research in charcuterie, at least not too much.

Thanks to some recent posts by Michael, and his updated recipe which I'm tweaking a bit, I have finally bought a duck leg, kacsa comb (kocha-stomb), and intend to make duck confit. So here's what the procedure is going to look like: I'm going to cover it in a cure of salt and spices such as cloves, garlic, bay leaf, and pepper and put it in the refrigerator for a day or two. After that time I will rinse it off, dry it, and submerge it entirely in fat and cook it for several hours afterwards allowing it to cool off before putting it in the fridge to cure. It's really simple, really.

I think the chosen fat will be Mangalica lard for two simple reasons 1) I want to experiment with it, and 2) I don't have the money for duck fat. As odd as it sounds the extremely luxurious Mangalica lard only costs me a couple of bucks which makes it more affordable than even olive oil, that's just good for me, and the duck. From what I've heard about Mangalica lard is that if it comes from the highest quality pig it will be neutral enough to cook the duck in. I'll find out in a couple of days. Until then I leave you with this picture of the the curing duck's leg. Don't worry though, I'll move it to the refrigerator.

Hús: 101

I began writing this as a post on duck confit, but looking back at the title now that I've written most of the following post I realized that I had to finish this post first. I'll retitle it of course.

I finally ventured to expand my Hungarian vocabulary by learning butchery terms. I thought I had adequate knowledge before arriving in Hungary to be able to point at a piece of meat and guess what kind of cut it is and what part of the animal it is from. The only problem is, and I knew this coming here, that although some cuts may be cross-cultural, many are not; so the cut may look familiar, but don't really know what it is. Even if it is labeled, though most of what I've seen is very poorly labeled, some words are easily translatable because it refers to a body part like leg, thigh, neck, or liver. The real problem begins when knew terms are used that either refer to a style, city, or simply is a word I haven't learned yet.

Below are some terms I've been working on. Thanks to www.chew.hu I've been able to easily look up terms, but the organization is lackluster and doesn't aid direct referece for a specifc animal. I must stress that this is all a work in progress and most likely has many errors and misunderstandings on my part. With that in mind, and taking this all with a grain of salt (I couldn't resist), I give you hús (meat)!

First the easy stuff: marha means beef, sertés means pork, baromfi means poultry which can refer to many different birds but the most common are- kacsa which means duck, csirke which means chicken, and pulyka which means turkey. Bárány refers to lamb, while juh refers to mutton.

OK, now that we know some animals the cuts are the next stop on the express train of Hungarian culinary knowledge: the Paprika Express. Some cuts refer to the same part of many different animals, one such example is mel which means breast. Still others only refer to only one animal. For example csülök refers to the leg cut of pig and translates to knuckle, whereas lábszár means the same thing but refers to beef.

Speaking of the cow: Beef

• Bélszín-tenderloin
• Szűzérmek-tenderloin medallions
  
• Lapocka-blade or shoulder, good for gulyás
  
• Fehérpecsenye-eye of round
• Hátszín-round or rump
• Nyak-neck
  
• Rostélyos/magas hátszín-ribeye
• Belsőségek/zúza-offal/innards/variety meats
  
• Fartő-rump
• Borda-ribs
• Csontvelő-bone marrow, called velős csont if it's still in the bone
  
• Felsál-tip/rump
  
• Lapos hátszín-short loin or strip loin
• Szegy-brisket/breast

The All-Holy Pig:

• Csülök-knuckle
• Lapocka-blade or shoulder, good for gulyás
• Sonka-ham
  
• Tarja-neck
• Belsőségek/zúza-offal/innards/variety meats
• Fartő-rump
• Borda-ribs
• Comb-leg
• Frikandó-leg round
• Oldalas-rack of ribs
  
• Pecsenye-schnitzel, generically any thin slice of meat for breading and frying
• Szűzérmek-tenderloin medallions

Poultry:

• Fartő-rump
• Mel-breast
• Comb-leg/thigh
• Bontott csirke-gutted chicken for roasting
• Belsőségek/zúza-offal/innards/variety meats

Lamb

• Gerinc-literally spine this connotes the tender cuts of lamb
  
• Szegy-brisket/breast
• Belsőségek/zúza-offal/innards/variety meats

Who Knows?

• Gyíkhús-lizard meat: this is unidentifiable and low grade meat, yum!
• Belsőségek/zúza-offal/innards/variety meats
• Máj-liver
  
• Velőrózsa/velő-brains