In the mood for light - Sunflower mikro-greens (napraforgó-fű)

Spring salad with sunflower micro-greens, photo: Szilágyi-Nagy Ildikó

I always wanted to know to where sunflowers look at night. Last summer I made a trip at night to the closest sunflower field. There was a huge number of mosquitoes waiting for torturing me, but I persistently marched towards the sunflowers. Even an enormous number of mosquitoes attacked. The flowers themselves looked to the East. They seemed to turn back quite quickly after sunset! They must have waited for the new day eagerly.

Sunflower micro-green, photo: Szilágyi-Nagy Ildikó

 

Sunflower micro-green, photo: Szilágyi-Nagy Ildikó

     I was really keen on sprouting a year ago, and began to study various methods. They are all based on sprouting trays, of course, and on a lot of numbers. How long you have to do and what. As I have dyscalculia disorder, and I dislike producing too fussy things in my kitchen, I understood I would probably never sprout myself.

At the end of the winter I changed my mind. When the sprouts went into little plants, they made me realize I am fond of mikro-greens. Sunflower is grown in tons in Hungary for it's oil. Most of Hungarian people use sunflower oil for cooking.

Sunflower micro-green, photo: Szilágyi-Nagy Ildikó

 

The seeds make a traditional snack, szotyola or szotyi. My grandmother likes buying sunflower seeds in their hulls, because she likes peeling them. I bet we peeled millions of sunflower seeds when I was a young girl!

Sunflower micro-greens, photo: Szilágyi-Nagy Ildikó

 

Now I am used to planting sunflowers as mikro-greens. They are delicious and they grow quickly in the windowsill.

Meanwhile I prepared my fourth tray of sunflower mikro-greens, other young plants began to grow in the greenhouse. We didn't plant them all into the garden, so we obtained several kind of young salads, which, together with the sunflower mikro-greens, made our first fresh greeny salad of the spring.

Spring salad with sunflower micro-greens, photo: Szilágyi-Nagy Ildikó

 

Bryndza snack (juhtúrós pogácsa)





Bryndza snack, photo: Ildikó Szilágyi-Nagy

When I bake a dessert or a snack, I usually intend to create not only a delicious food, but also a food with a healthy nutrition profile. I prefer cakes with less sugar and more protein. That is one reason why I am so fond of Bryndza snack. Above all, I like the taste of Bryndza.

The name of this Eastern-European soft cheese originates from some Slovak regions, from the 1470's. Originally it was made of sheep milk, today Slovak Bryndza must contain 50% of sheep's cheese (what remains is from cow's milk). Bryndza is easily available all over in Hungarian shops.



Bryndza snack, photo: Ildikó Szilágyi-Nagy



Last month I have prepared this salty snack every week. Anyway, a lot of the people who live in our village have a Slovak origin.



Ingredients

20 dkg whole-wheat flour

15 dkg Bryndza

10 dkg butter

2-3 tablespoons sour cream

0,5 package of backing powder

0,25 teaspoon salt (taste first how salty your Bryndza is)



Bryndza snack, photo: Ildikó Szilágyi-Nagy



I mixed Bryndza, butter, sour cream into an almost smooth mixture. I added the dry ingredients, and kneaded it. I rolled out the pastry and then folded it several times, and repeated this operation three more times. Finally, I rolled out the pastry to be 1,5 cm thick, and I plunged a really tiny cutter. I kneaded the rest and rolled, folded and cut it again. I baked the pastry at 180 Celsius, for 13 minutes.

My first tea in the garden with Hungarian cottage cheese pie (túrós pite)



cottage cheese pie, photo: Szilágyi-Nagy Ildikó

With the first snowdrops opening their flowers I was out on the terrace to drink my first tea in the garden this spring. As I developed great enthusiasm towards cottage cheese this winter, I took some Hungarian cottage cheese pie with me.



My first tea in the garden, photo: Szilágyi-Nagy Ildikó





We live outside, in the garden and on the terrace, from spring until fall. I wear coat and use blankets if it is too cold, but I use every minutes to enjoy open air. Drinking my tea with a snack sitting outside, looking at the plants of the garden is one of my daily joys.





I baked this cottage cheese pie remembering well one of my grandmothers, who often prepared a similar pastry, túrós lepény. She used pig lard to bake a pie (pite or lepény), and she would be astonished to see I waste butter for baking a dessert. There are both yeast and baking powder in this kind of pie.



cottage cheese pie, photo: Szilágyi-Nagy Ildikó



Pastry:

25 dkg whole-wheat flour

10 dkg sugar (hopefully any kind of whole cane sugar)

10 dkg butter

1,5 dl milk

1 dkg yeast

0,5 package of baking powder

1 egg

1 egg yolk

pinch of salt

Filling:

0,5 kg cottage cheese

1 egg

2 egg white

1 tbls flour

1 sour cream (2 dl)

3 tbls sugar

raisins

cottage cheese pie, photo: Szilágyi-Nagy Ildikó

After I mixed lukewarm milk with yeast, I kneaded all the ingredients into a flexible pastry, which I divided into two, and I let them rest for some minutes in the fridge. (The pastry doesn't need to come up!) After I prepared the filling, I rolled out the two pastry balls into 1 cm thin sheets, or even thinner. One of the pastry sheets went to the oven, with it's edges hanging over the oven, then creating a wall to prevent the filling from pouring. I put the filling and covered it with the other pastry sheet. I closed the ends of the pie and pierced the top of it with a folk. I baked at low heat (160 Celsius) until light brown.

Millet cake with poppy filling (mákos kölestorta)

Millet cake with poppy seeds, photo: Szilágyi-Nagy Ildikó

Using huge amount of poppy seeds is typical in Hungarian cuisine. Those, who are not familiar with Hungarian sweets, are often surprised to see such thick, black fillings, and what is more, whole cakes made of poppy seeds. I use several kilos of poppy seeds per year in the kitchen, and the other day I realized that I had only 10 dkg left.

But I had millet at home, which is said to be the oldest cereal that was used by Hungarians, or by the ancestors of Hungarians wandering at the steppe. Millet is gluten-free, takes care of your stomach and metabolism, protects your heart, repairs the body-tissues, lowers the risk of diabetes-II., helps prevent gallstones, and contains several valuable nutrients like manganese, tryptophan, magnesium, phosphorus. Wow, I decided to eat even more millet!

This cake tastes supernatural and clear. Next time I will use twice more poppy filling.

Millet cake with poppy seeds, photo: Szilágyi-Nagy Ildikó

Ingredients

millet mash:

1 cup millet

2,5 cup milk

2 tablespoons honey

2,5 dkg butter

1 egg

1 tablespoon flour if needed

poppy filling

10 dkg minced poppy seeds

5 dkg sugar

1 egg

1 dl cream (30% fat)

1 tablespoon flour (use any kind of gluten-free flour if you want to go gluten-free)

I prepared the mash earlier. I just usually boil the milk and the millet for some minutes, then I add the honey, take it from the oven, cover the pot with 3 kitchen towels, and I return to see it is ready in 1 hour. I mix the mash with the butter, egg and a tablespoon of flour and poured 2/3 part of it into an oven. I mixed all ingredients of the poppy filling, then I dosed it to the top of the millet mash with a tablespoon. I mixed the poppy heaps slightly into the mash in order to get a nice outfit of the cake. I covered with the remaining of the millet. I baked the cake in about 40 min, at 180 C.

A Few Words About Onions (and Hungarian Cabbage Soup)

I have been preparing myself to write a topic about onions for a long. Perhaps this seems a weird obsession. Well, it is not weird at all. (What does „weird” mean, anyway?) The simple fact is that most Hungarian food recipes begin like this: fry some chopped onion in a pan or a saucer. So for me, and many other Hungarians, „onion” is an equivalent of cooking.

There is no Hungarian household without onions. They are in the pantry during the winter, waiting for their celebrated moment, when they can act their prime role in the process of cooking. They are with us. They also accompanied our Hun ancestors along the Asian steppe – nomads did not only eat meat... Wikipedia also opens a Historic perspective: .„Allium cepa is known only in cultivation, but related wild species occur in Central Asia”.