There are days when everything seem to go wrong. I don’t succeed to finish and important work, I am going past the deadline and everything falls out of my hand. I even step on a slippery spot in the garden and after a short alternative ice-skating performance I end up lying on my car’s bonnet.
A recipe that I wanted to try from an old cookbook turns out to be a disaster. I get ready in a big hurry for the concert that we have been planning since months so I forget my cap and gloves at home. I am walking by Áron’s side to the concert hall shivering, while trying to act like I won’t feel cold at all. These are the moments when everything seems to be hopeless, first of all: me.
I learnt in life already that in that case there is nothing you can do. Except one thing. Baking. Something. Delicious. Several recipes pop into my mind, but when you are not in the best mood, you shouldn’t start baking a complicated recipe. The simplest things are the best things in life anyway. So it is túrós pogácsa, savoury scones with cottage cheese, with some grated cheese on top. It is my mother’s recipe, it is just impossible to mess up, it is not dry, not hard, just simply perfect. I think that maybe there are other savoury scone- fans like me but maybe among them there are some of you who don’t want to spend hours and hours to prepare my tepertős pogácsa recipe which requires a long folding and resting procedure. I address this recipe also to Nina, a very nice reader of the blog with whom I had conversations about how she could find roasted pork rind in Germany to be able to prepare those scones.
Rolling and cutting is like meditation, the scent of cheese and cottage cheese slowly fills up the air in the kitchen. It is nice and warm in the house, I make a tea and take Beeper on my knees, like a teddy bear. The still warm scones disappear from the table one after the other one and slowly everything fall to its place. I get some extra time to finish my work, haven’t caught cold after the concert, no more accident (neither indoor, nor outdoor) and the sun starts shining on top.
I get even in the mood to ice-skating. However, not in the garden.
Túrós pogácsa (Savoury scones with cottage cheese)
Ingredients:
250 g cottage cheese (The Hungarian type has little crumbles, try to look for something similar)
250 g butter or margarine
250 g flour
1 tsp salt
1 egg
approx.100 g grated cheese
Mix flour, salt and butter (I used to grate butter to mix with flour more easily) Add cottage cheese and egg yolk and knead well. Keep the egg white for brushing. Put the dough into the fridge for at least an hour then roll out to 1.5 cm and using a round cutter cut scones from it. Preheat the oven to 200 °C. Lay the scones on a baking pan lined with paper and brush the top with egg white and sprinkle with grated cheese. Bake the scones until golden brown. Serve it to tea, wine or take it with you to work as a snack.
Blue
Sigh.. I’ve known these days, like troublesome relatives that show at my door just when I want to relax. You made my face smile, laugh even. ♡ I get up and do right by myself in those times, so yes, I so understand how the time in the kitchen working in flour brings a completedness to the days pratfalls and one’s rhythm is restored. It is pie that restores my soul. I’m good inside like my fruits or nuts that grace the crusts with their gifts of sweet or sour, savory or crunch, the crust holds this conversation in trust. I sit with a cup of hot chocolate .. watch the birds on the lawn and gather up my senses again. I realize I get fracture, do this, do that, now Now.. and soon enough my focus is blurred and ice-skating on leaves or wet blades of grass is entirely possible. I catch myself. Whoaaaa.. pause is needed, pie beacons and the world is right again! Ha! Yes I see my fractures, my hapless hopeless self at times. I am human I tell my heart, be gentle on these musings. I may ever be hopeless in those moments… tho.. those moments lives pass away. And the efficient, talented, even gifted happy me is born again and again like passages of seasons, each different, each leaves its legacy, each welcome hellos and why aren’t you gone yet , reveries .
It’s so lovely you found a bond between hope and flour, between you and your inner goodness.. you are the delicate scone of hope that your grandmother made in her days of wine and roses. Hugs upon hugs. Thank you for sharing both this yummy recipe and your reassurance that all things come around, especially, pardon the pun!, the delightful cottage cheese scone☆
Judit Neubauer
Thank you so much dear Angel! I can imagine that pie gives you the same sense of relaxing and getting lost in the moment. So often times we lose focus on what matters most, and my recent days were exactly some of those days. Yesterday, after work, I just sat down in the middle of our orchard (although I have to be careful, because the ground can be still cold despite of the warm sunshines) and I was just listening, and looking at the world around me. And I was wondering, why I worry so much about things that don’t matter at all, if I look at them from this perspective. Horses were running freely at the neighbours’s yard, birds in a group were flying up and down in search of a place where there is a lot to eat. Wind brought me the scent of flowers from the plum cherry tree, which started to bloom first. What is a reason we think that our daily problems are so important and we need to take control of everything if the world seem to go around every day, without our direct help? 🙂 So, cottage cheese scones or pie definitely help or for me first of all, expressing my love through food. 🙂 Nice greetings from Hungary! ps: I hope you will try this recipe and will like it!
Blue
Thank you for your good words. Pondering your words I thought it seemed there were 2 different angles and that was why do I worry and about things that don’t matter– 2 separate roads going in different directions. When I ask myself why I worry I know that I am worrying too much and so therefore it is a sense of urgency that I regain whatever power over myself in my senses and in my world– so that I have moved past worry into action .onto the phrase: things that don’t matter : that’s definitely a judgment, value call and I have to wonder what are those things that we say don’t matter versus those things that we say do. And why have I assayed no value to that about which I worry. And when you mix those 2 roads together why worry about things that don’t matter it’s such a juxtaposition: worry over something I care about but I intellectually tell myself it has no value. Well of course it has value I’ve spent time and energy you worrying about it it is important to me and one level or another. And honestly when it comes down to it, the inner me, it has value, it in fact, matters. Then what then, action is the next step. I then must exercise my power thereby releasing my worry they taking action upon those things which do matter to me whether I make an outward evaluation of the less I am a still face the inward evaluation of more. The time sitting there in their beautiful space gave you direction and off you went. Power is one of those unique abilities to be lost and gained and sold and taken by humans because we’re so at the will of our world whether it is whether Earth or other humans and relationships so power is a big thing to us and to realize that really we exercise so very little of it because all we have is the power over ourselves to eat or not to eat to care for ourselves to love or not to love everything else be sickly is outside of our sense our circle of power so that is why humans always want to have power over everything because we come face-to-face with having none so often area and then we get in the kitchen and we exercise that little power we have and we create it is not just the art of what we create it is the actual product of that creation that creates more ~ Food has that wonderful life after life feeling. When you’re in kitchen, the center of control, you master the recipes, you bend the flavors to your will. At least to a greater degree than we sometimes can over our fears, worries and our values. It is such a grand thing to sit there in the kitchen waiting while things bubble and boil and bacon roast in the sense that wave over the air tell us that all is right with the world our world and everything that we value and therefore the worry is gone and life is good and it taste good and it feels good and we set our feet back on the path and walk along
Blue
(Ps) again, please forgive the many typos. I get do frustrated not being able to type.
Along with that thought, I am now be able to make um any recipes for a quite a while there is saying my own will be in this cast for another 3 months I cannot believe this it seems like an eternity not a good one either haha but none the less as they sit with my arm in this cast with my impatience well in hand, pardon my pun.. I do look forward to trying your recipes, it will be like waking from s deep slumber. A lovely weekend to you and yours ☆
Judit Neubauer
I feel so sorry for your arm, I completely feel and understand your impatience! Get better soon, sending you positive vibes and energy! Have a wonderful weekend! ❤️
Nikki
Nagyon finom lett, én parmezán sajtot tettem a tetejére!
Judit Neubauer
De örülök,hogy ízlett Nikki! Parmezánnal is nagyon finom lehet,ki fogom legközelebb próbálni!☺️