When my children were young, I spent days with them decorating our home for Easter. Rabbits and eggs were everywhere. Rabbits could come only in the form drawings and puppets because we lived in an apartment but the eggs had to be real. I spent years trying out different natural dying substances for the eggs,…
Paprika is in the air is the title of a collection of essays, short stories and articles written by Zsigmond Móricz, early-20th century writer and columnist. In September 1936 he goes deep into Paprika Town and marvels at the sight of red people in red clothes, with red hair, red hands and faces. Like red…
Paprika growers know it well that it is high time to buy and sow the paprika seeds now. The grower needs to decide on which variety to use and whether to buy certified or patented seeds. Farmers can select their own seeds: leave the pods become fully ripe, maybe throughout the winter, cut up the…
„The water came in on us on St Gregory’s day… oh, what an ugly devil that was…. And the strong winds that drove the water all the way…. I had an old boat and we used that for fleeing. When the water was coming, it was rolling like rocks, high up! It was roaring loud……
25th of February in Hungary is Remembrance Day of the victims of the communist regime that lasted roughly between 1948 and 1989. The part of the regime that I knew as a child was the 70s and 80s, which is often referred to retrospectively as goulash communism, meaning a lighter form of dictatorship, a relative…
It’s still February, still carnival season and my indulgence goes beyond borders! I recently met at our Paprika Museum Tünde Dimén-Varga, the writer of the gastro blog the Hesitating Gourmet. Tünde is a psychologist working with school kids in my favourite Transylvanian town in Romania called Székelyudvarhely or Odorheiu Secuiesc. Her cooking is flavourful yet…
The carnival season has been traditionally linked to indulgence and eating as explained in my previous post. Now I’d like to share two typical Hungarian recipes that you can make at this time. The carnival ham croissant has a wonderfully rich dough and ham filling. For the dough mix 300g cottage cheese, 300g flour, some…
Carnival season has been traditionally a long period of laughter and dances at the end of winter. It lasts from the Christian feast day of Epiphany on 6 January to Ash Wednesday, which ushered in the 40-day period of fasting before Easter. The timing for carnivals was right as in January and February the agricultural…
The very first museum piece in PaprikaMolnár’s Paprika Museum was the Szánthó family’s entire business and family documents, as can be read in an earlier article. The Szánthós ran a wheat and paprika-mill for two generations in Szeged-Szentmihály. The documents from a hundred years ago offer interesting insight into local and paprika history. Mihály Szánthó…
Paprika is in the air is the title of a collection of essays, short stories and articles written by Zsigmond Móricz, early-20th century writer and columnist. Móricz was non-native to Szeged and the stories reflect his visions and experiences of Szeged the city and its people between the 1910s and 1930s. In August 1936 he…
Advent is celebrated in many ways. A hundred years ago it was natural to devote this time to waiting and preparing for Christmas. It was a time to prepare the soul for celebration and through fasting to prepare the stomach for the feast. By today, the festive season has lost much of its religious content.…
The history of Szeged and paprika have been forever linked together thanks to the local Franciscans and Nobel Prize winner Albert Szent-Györgyi. Another emblematic figure, though much less known, is chemist and paprika researcher Ernő Obermayer who was born 130 years ago, on 13 December 1888. Obermayer, a chemistry graduate from Budapest, was the first…