At New Year’s Eve I think if I could have a wish, I would ask for as many joyful moments in 2017 as many I could be grateful for in 2016. I think about the moments when I cooked and baked, photographed and tasted. The time spent in the garden that taught me something new every month and I know that this is only the beginning. The community we are living in which is an unlimited source of stories about the village, life and people. I am grateful to be able to get a brand new year, like a blank page which is waiting for to be filled with plans, things to do and dreams to fulfil. Time is the greatest present we can get especially if we don’t forget that moments are possibilities for us to make them unrepeatable. A day before New Year’s Eve we spend the afternoon by loading our firewood shed with three cubic meter wood. Symbolically it is like storing warmth for the coming year. This warmth can manifest in many ways not only in form of the fire in the tile stove.
For example in the enthusiasm my niece helps us to load wood . Her face gets red because of the cold but her eyes are shining while she explains that she really feels like a village girl by now.
There are so much warmth in the feedbacks regarding my recipes I get from all over the world. Dana bakes cresent cookies filled with poppy-seed cream, Bea’s sister tries the cocoa rolls. Edina and Erzsébet tell me how vanilla crescents turned out, Niki writes me about bejgli, Kati bakes and takes pictures of the Christmas linzer. Mariann bakes bejgli in Lyon, France as a present for a French chef.
Warmth come also in a bowl of steaming lentil stew which I am preparing right now. It is a New Year tradition in Hungary to cook lentils, but for me it is also the perfect dish for any winter days. It definitely needs some slices of fresh bread, roasted bacon while I need a warm knitted sweater that I can wrap myself in. But this story as all of them is completed by You, everyone: my family who is sitting around the table in this little house, and you living all around the world who is cooking and tasting with me. Tastes become memories and memories will produce more tastes. I really cannot wish any more.
Lentil stew
Ingredients:
500 g lentils
1 pepper
1 tomato
1 red onion
2 bay leaves
4 cm piece of sausage (Hungarian one, or similar like chorizo)
4 slices of bacon (optional)
1 lemon
1 bunch of parsley
4 tbsp oil
6 tsp flour
2 tsp paprika
sour cream for serving
Put the lentils into a bowl, cover it with water and let it soak overnight or at least for 30 minutes. Rinse lentils under running water, transfer them to a pot and add as much water that it is 2 cm over the level of lentils. Peel onion and cut it into quarter, cut tomato the same way. Add bay leaves, tomato, onion, 2 slices of peppers and sausage (cut into slices or in whole) to lentils, season it with salt according to your taste. Cover it and bring it to boil, than reduce heat and let it simmer until lentils are tender (approximately 30 minutes) If water evaporated completely add some more water. Heat the oil in a pan, add flour and stir it continuously for 1-2 minutes. Remove from heat, add paprika. This mixture called “rántás” will help to thicken our stew. Stirring continuously add it to the lentils and bring it to boil again. After it thickened, remove from heat, add a few drops of lemon juice and parsley. (Before serving remove tomatoes, peppers, onion, parsley and bay leaves if you want) Roast both sides of bacon in a pan. Serve lentil stew with fresh bread, sour cream and roasted bacon.
sabrina
I adore lentil, are healty and you can eat instead of meat. Great recipe…. ;O)
Judit Neubauer
Thank you for your comment Sabrina! I love lentils too, it belongs so naturally to winter for me! Do you have the tradition to have lentils at New Year’s Even in Italy, as we do have in Hungary? Nice greetings from Hungary to you! 🙂
esin
We don’t have a tradition on lentils 😉 but we eat them a LOT.Lentil soup and lentil
stew are two most popular dishes in Turkiye.
What I found very interesting is your flour and butter mixture which we call „meyane” or sometimes „terbiye” is only used in soups but almost never in stews but also we would start with a base of onions „killed” in oil and tomato/pepper paste , garlic added and cook it a little till all give their taste and then add boiled or water-rested lentils , put the lid on for a little for everything to mix well and then we would add hot stock or water or (not too much) and let it simmer. We wouldn’t add any cream or bay leaves traditionally but definetly add cumin and black pepper…Similarities and little different approaches to cooking same ingredients… Photos are beautiful… By the way I tried the tejfol some months ago, raw and fresh milk got a bitter taste, I had to throw it away,. Perhaps it wasn’t fresh enough.Thank you for a beautiful blog.
Judit Neubauer
Dear Esin, it is sooooo interesting that you were writing! I will definitely try cooking lentils in the Turkish way as well! It is amazing, that there are these similarities, maybe because of historical background… I love this! I am sorry that tejföl didn’t turn out to be good, I will ask my neighbour who sells me the raw milk, she an expert on this, maybe she know what the reason was. I will let you know! Thank you for reading, your comment and for sharing me your recipe!