Chicken Paprikas, Bread Pudding and Visiting In-Laws

As preparation for the Patino Banquet, we took our children to my in-laws in Tracy (it really is Stockton, but saying Tracy makes it so much nicer) and they promised to return the infants to our house on Sunday. So my mom and I were thinking of surprising them with a very Hungarian meal. We decided, perhaps very unoriginally, to go with Chicken Paprikas and Cucumber Salad, but then I tackled the loaves of dried bread, and after grinding two baguettes into bread crumbs, I could not do more. I looked up bread pudding recipes to use up the remaining one loaf of whole wheat french bread from Safeway, and found this gem of Amish bread pudding recipe: http://www.momswhothink.com/easy-recipes/bread-pudding-recipe.html

And I followed the recipe very faithfully, but tripled the amounts, because really, who has only three cups of dried bread at home. You either have none, or you have tons of dried bread, at least in my household. When we put the bread pudding in the oven it didn't look like anything appetizing, but in puffed up into a nice, crusty on the outside, melting soft on the inside goodness, and it really wasn't that much of work. And when we were done with the Paprikas, we even made the sauce for it, which I strongly recommend, because it is a lot prettier with the sauce on the top.

The Paprikas is a Hungarian stew, that is NOT a Goulash, because a Goulash is built on caraway seeds for flavor, whereas the Paprikas is built on paprika. You start with diced onions (you may add some small red bell peppers, too) and oil, and sautee the onions until it's glassy, then you pull the pan off of the fire and add the paprika. We only use Szeged Sweet Delicacy, but it should not cause you to stop considering this flavorful dish - Safeway carries this type of paprika with admirable regularity. When the paprika released its color in the oil, you may put the pan back on the stovetop, and add your chicken, after blotting it in paper towels, so it's properly browning without releasing too much juice and drying out. It is the best to use chicken thighs with the skin and bone in, but if that's too much fat for you, just add the boneless-skinless thighs and a couple of wings with the bone and skin. The bone releases a lot of good flavor and gelling ingredients into the sauce, and cooking it with chicken breast is not going to yield the characteristic Hungarian dish. (But I cooked it with chicken breast for my then boyfriend, and supposedly, that was the meal that sealed his marriage intentions towards me, so it can be safely said that you can't screw this dish up with improper meat selection.) Once you browned the chicken on both sides lightly, you remove them to another pot, and add another dose of chicken to the same red oil; usually we make a lot of this dish, and yet, we never have enough leftovers.

When all the chicken is browned, you combine them all with the oil-onion mix, one quartered tomato, and add just enough water to cover the chicken. We usually cook this in the pressure cooker for 15-20 minutes, then turn off the heat, and wait for a bit for the cooker to cool. Time to make the cucumber salad: slice the peeled cucumbers on a mandolin, and make a dressing with aromatic herbs and garlic. Resist temptation to eat this salad before the chicken is ready. Now we are moving on to thickening the sauce for the chicken. We use sour cream, 3 Tbsp and combine it with 3 Tbsp flour, until smooth. Slowly, mix in small bits of the chicken's cooking juices, until it achieves the thickness of heavy cream, then pour over the chicken, gently stir (your chicken will fall off the bones by now) and let it boil for a minute or so. If it's not thick enough, you may add 1 Tbsp corn starch mixed with a bit of cold water, and hope that it will thicken up, or you can repeat the sour cream mixture process for a more creamy consistency. And voila, your dish is ready.

We would have served this with home-made noodles, called Galuska, but we were by now too tired... and we have heard by this time that my in-laws had dinner already at home, so they are not very hungry... and so we decided to go with elbow macaroni, a totally acceptable choice with this Chicken Paprikas. We had a splendid dinner, even the in-laws ate it, because, really, nobody can resist the smell of a Paprikas, and then we had the Bread Pudding, which came out absolutely superb, and made us all feel frugal yet able to afford luxuries.