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

 

3.

I was threatened with a gun twice in my life. First, when I visited my parents' house in 1998, I went for a walk with one of my friends. I had just been about to leave for Budapest, and I decided to take a walk before sitting on the bus for two hours. I just went to a near place, where there was a little pine wood. I knew that place well, as there stood the kindergarten what I attended as a child.

A soldier with a gun ran towards us, shouting we should stop. We stopped, and we were captured. He informed us that the site belonged to the Hungarian Army, and we were forbidden from the territory. Otherwise, there was not any sign or barrier which said it was a restricted area, and it was in the town, between two residential areas, from 15 minutes walk from downtown. We didn't have an identity card with us, so were unable to satisfy his require for justifying our address. But it would be in vain as my parents were those who were inhabitants of that town, and not me.

As the soldier kept threatening us with the gun, I was forced to believe that he is a real soldier. He accompanied us to a watch tower, and ordered us to knee. Meanwhile it was raining slightly, and I asked him if he could refrain from this. He told me this is the rule.

– I am a sharpshooter, you are lucky you stopped. Anyway, I was not on a holiday for ages, I think I will get some days for you. Okay, stay standing, but show a really intimidated face when the patrol arrives.

Then he marched up to the watch tower to make a phone call. In ten minutes a patrol arrived and we couldn't give them any more information about ourselves that we had already given to our soldier, that we were walking around here because here stood my former kindergarten. They knew this was true, there was a kindergarten here in the 80's. They ordered us to go forward and leave the restricted area with their accompaniment. We got the civil town in 3 minutes and they let us free. I took my bus to Budapest in time.

What was this eager presence of army in such an insignificant town for? Inhabitants guess the gold holdings of the country is kept in this town, in a natural cave inside a rock. As for me, I don't think any country can be so stupid to store it's whole golden property in a single place. And I would be surprised if my country still had any significant gold holdings remain. I guess the state owns some valuable artifacts, but, honestly, I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if they had been already sold including the Hungarian Crown, and merely a fake one would be displayed. Anyway, my country is usually careless about artifacts and artists. Gedeon Gerlóczy, who rescued the works of the painter genius, Csontváry Kosztka Tivadar, from being sold as cart covers, told that after he had lent the Hungarian state some of Csontváry's paintings for an exhibition, the pictures were never returned to him.

The presence of the Soviet Army was also strong in the town when I was a young girl. As we lived quite close to the barrack of “Russian soldiers” (as we called them), my grandmother never let me go alone anywhere, because she had a fear I would be raped. She strongly taught me to run away immediately if I saw a Russian soldier. She herself took much more risk. If some Russian soldiers approached her house, she immediately locked the garden gate, shouted them 'Go home!' in Russian. She completed this vocal action with threatening the soldiers with a hoe or rake she just had in hand, or throwing a stone towards them. Then she rushed into the house and locked the door. She was the wife of a revolutionist, and she could never forget the Soviet Army ruined the Revolution of in 1956. She was not a woman of theories. She simply was angry because she felt sorry for his husband's achievements, and hated to have been under terror and having been chased for almost all of her life.

2.

Marco N., Italian mariner inspired me to write this text.

Nothing romantic. He is the boyfriend of my most precious amiga. And don't imagine a mariner in a navy blue stripped shirt. It is not the time of romance nowadays. He is a second officer in a cruise liner.

We happened to meet in three on a summer weekday when he visited here from Italy. We spoke English in order to make him comfortable, and I realized that my English was eroded. I stayed a while in the US three years ago and I had graduated from an English faculty grammar school, but at that summer day I realized that this country kills my intelligence. It kills not only my English, but destroys my intelligence, my education and my literacy that I had to get with much effort.

This can seem to be exaggeration. But I had to realize that something happens in my home country, something that poisons the air and the mind of people living here. I feel sorry for my homeland, as I was born and lived here all my life.

I live isolated in a village near to the capital which is the only real city in this country. I have lived in the capital for 10 years, together with 2 million other people. This amount is the 5% of the whole population of the country. But then I chose isolation, what I call an inner immigration now. I live isolated from any people, I keep in touch with just some close friends. It can seem to be foolishness or eccentricity, but it is not so. I felt that I didn't want to be involved in something I don't like. And I don't like those processes which take place in today Hungary.

Even if I live isolated, I experience a lot of events. There are shocking, weird ones, but there are joyful, exciting, inspiring ones as well. Living in Hungary, and living anywhere in the Earth can be extremely exciting and joyful, if you are not starving, not ill and you are not tortured. I determined my mind to write this diary and memoir in order to open a window to our Balkan country which is part of the European Union. So all of my experiences are in the EU, and in present, 2012.

"The Balkans begin at the Rennweg," Klemens von Metternich, Austrian Chancellor said about 150 years ago. We will see.

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.