Túróscsusza, chestnut puree, elderberry tea

Author: Tünde Remák – thyssenkrupp Materials Hungary

INGREDIENTS

Túróscsusza made from kneaded dough:

  • 300 g durum flour

  • 200 g fine flour

  • 5 eggs

  • salt

  • water if needed

  • 750 g lumpy cottage cheese

  • Smoked bacon

  • Sour cream

STORY

I am in the fortunate position that my family has an organic garden, where bio-gardening takes place. Not only do my parents grow vegetables and fruits, but the residents of the poultry yard also increase this little oasis. That’s why we cook with home-grown vegetables almost all the year, and there are always fresh eggs in the fridge. If we talk about sustainability, this is the starting point for me. There is no food waste here, because we grow the vegetables with a lot of work and attention, and we recycle the green waste, either as compost or as poultry feed.

For the recipe I brought, I use home-made eggs, home-kneaded and stretched pasta, home-smoked bacon, wild chestnuts, and elderflowers collected in the fields.

A long time ago, my grandmother taught me how to roll dough, or as we say how to scurry. She even had superstitious admonitions, because according to a popular belief, a person whose dough gets punctured means that his wife cheats him. Well, I had to learn this well because I didn’t want to end up in such a situation. Then, of course, my husband cheated me, even though he didn’t even knead the dough!

There is another special ingredient in my recipe, namely the cream of tartar, which I get from a small winery in Moravia. Due to its antioxidant effect and sour taste, I use it in desserts and breakfast muesli.

DIRECTIONS

1. I mix the measured flour with the salt and pile it on a kneading board.
2. Make a hollow in the middle, and beat the eggs into it.
3. I knead the the ingredients into a good elastic dough until all the flour is collected from the board, then I let it rest for 20 minutes. 
4. After resting, I start stretching. 
5. As the pictures show, I rolled out two handfuls of dough into a circle with a diameter of 1 m, and with a thickness of approx. 1mm.
6. It made me sweat because it’s quite hard work, but it’s worth it because it’s incomparably tastier than pasta bought from the stores.
7. So I put the rolled out, well floured dough onto the rolling pin and cut along the top with a knife.
8. Then I cut the dough into small rustic parallelograms and with a loose movement I take the whole mass into my palm and spread it airily on the kneading board so that the dough does not stick together until the water boils.
9. In the meantime, I cut the homemade smoked bacon into thin strips and fry it in a pan.
10. I also prepare the cottage cheese in a larger bowl, into which I add the pasta cooked in plenty of (salted) water and mix it all together with the fried bacon and its fat.
11. When serving, I add sour cream on top.
1. I cut the top of the chestnuts in an X shape with a sharp knife and place the chestnuts cut side up on a baking paper sheet and pour water under them.In an oven preheated to 120 degrees I bake it for approx. 40-45 minutes. During this time, their tops open along the cut.While still hot, I begin the Sisyphean task: I free the chestnuts from their skins.I cook the bare chestnuts with milk, the seeds scraped out of the vanilla pod and the empty vanilla pod. I cook it until soft in about 3/4 hours.
2. I puree it in a blender or with a stick blender.I pour the creamy mass into a clean bowl, let it cool, then wrap it in foil and put it in the fridge for at least 4-5 hours.After the setting time passed, I grate the chestnut mass on a large hole grater.
3. I serve it with whipped cream, which I also sprinkled with a little tartaric acid.
4. Enjoy!
I often drink tea made from elderflowers in the winter, so I collect a lot of it when the elderflowers are in bloom and dry them so that I can enjoy them all winter long. Tea made from the flower of the black elder helps digestion and has a cough-relieving effect. It is used for colds, bronchitis, as a diaphoretic and as an immune system stimulant. Besides, it’s very tasty!

DIRECTIONS

1. I mix the measured flour with the salt and pile it on a kneading board.
2. Make a hollow in the middle, and beat the eggs into it.
3. I knead the the ingredients into a good elastic dough until all the flour is collected from the board, then I let it rest for 20 minutes. 
4. After resting, I start stretching. 
5. As the pictures show, I rolled out two handfuls of dough into a circle with a diameter of 1 m, and with a thickness of approx. 1mm.
6. It made me sweat because it’s quite hard work, but it’s worth it because it’s incomparably tastier than pasta bought from the stores.
7. So I put the rolled out, well floured dough onto the rolling pin and cut along the top with a knife.
8. Then I cut the dough into small rustic parallelograms and with a loose movement I take the whole mass into my palm and spread it airily on the kneading board so that the dough does not stick together until the water boils.
9. In the meantime, I cut the homemade smoked bacon into thin strips and fry it in a pan.
10. I also prepare the cottage cheese in a larger bowl, into which I add the pasta cooked in plenty of (salted) water and mix it all together with the fried bacon and its fat.
11. When serving, I add sour cream on top.
1. I cut the top of the chestnuts in an X shape with a sharp knife and place the chestnuts cut side up on a baking paper sheet and pour water under them.In an oven preheated to 120 degrees I bake it for approx. 40-45 minutes. During this time, their tops open along the cut.While still hot, I begin the Sisyphean task: I free the chestnuts from their skins.I cook the bare chestnuts with milk, the seeds scraped out of the vanilla pod and the empty vanilla pod. I cook it until soft in about 3/4 hours.
2. I puree it in a blender or with a stick blender.I pour the creamy mass into a clean bowl, let it cool, then wrap it in foil and put it in the fridge for at least 4-5 hours.After the setting time passed, I grate the chestnut mass on a large hole grater.
3. I serve it with whipped cream, which I also sprinkled with a little tartaric acid.
4. Enjoy!
I often drink tea made from elderflowers in the winter, so I collect a lot of it when the elderflowers are in bloom and dry them so that I can enjoy them all winter long. Tea made from the flower of the black elder helps digestion and has a cough-relieving effect. It is used for colds, bronchitis, as a diaphoretic and as an immune system stimulant. Besides, it’s very tasty!