Hungarian Cabbage Soup

Rainy days make me crave soup. Go figure. I have a picturesque love of food. Always have, always will.

The two main reasons for my love of the culinary arts are:

a.) I can travel without ever leaving my kitchen, and good lord do I love to travel…

AND

b.) Scents and flavours allow us to create, relive and enhance memories in a way that nothing else on Earth can.


So, with this rain came a sense of nostalgia and a distinct need to recreate some of the Hungarian flavour that I grew up with as a kid. The fact that I found out, years later, that I am not actually Hungarian doesn’t lessen my love of Hungarian food. It’s still home for me, that and a good bout of haggis now and then, but that’s another story.

So staring into the abyss of my refrigerator I find a bag of coleslaw cabbage, two frozen bratwurst and some chopped up red bell pepper, and so the story goes. I flavoured this kind of like a traditional goulash. The smoked paprika is entirely optional, as is the porcini mushroom powder. Mushroom powder is fairly common in eastern European cooking, and adds a lovely earthy flavour to things. It’s also amazing to add to gravies and burgers. I make my own. It’s pretty easy. You just take a package of dried porcini mushrooms and grind it up in the blender or if you are a nutter like me, a coffee grinder reserved entirely for grinding spices. Just let the dust settle after grinding for a while before you take the lid off or you will be sneezing mushroom dust for a week.

If you wanted to make a vegetarian version of this, I would definitely add the mushroom powder, and probably even double it, then skip the sausage and top with garlic sautéed mushrooms, the wilder the better. Use a commercial veggie stock or hot water flavoured with enough dark miso to taste “soupish”. Plain water won’t cut it for this one...

Hungarian Cabbage Soup
2 Tbs canola oil, or if you’re feeling daringly authentic, lard
1 medium onion, diced
1 bag pre-shredded coleslaw cabbage or half a green cabbage, thinly sliced
4 lrg cloves garlic, minced
2 red bell peppers, seeded and diced (Hungarian peppers would be even better. I’ve seen them starting to pop up in the last couple of weeks. They are a waxy yellow and have a teeny bit of heat.)
1 hot pepper, minced (I used a Serrano and didn’t seed it. Skip the hot pepper if you want, but even with it, I don’t consider this a particularly spicy soup.)
1 14oz can diced tomatoes
6 cups well-flavoured beef stock
1 tsp caraway seed
2 – 3 Tbs sweet paprika
1 Tbs smoked paprika (optional)
1 tsp porcini mushroom powder (very optional)
1 medium potato, diced fairly small (about 1")
a small amount of some sort of smoked sausage (I used to bratwurst, sliced about ¼ inch thick. Kielbasa would be great, even European wieners work well.)
sour cream and dill, to garnish

Heat oil in a large pot, then add onion and sauté until golden brown. Add cabbage, peppers and garlic and sauté until soft and gooey. Add all other ingredients, except potato, sausage and sour cream. Let simmer about an hour or until flavours have blended. In the last 15 to 20 minutes of simmering add potato. Season with salt and pepper to taste. If soup seems a bit flat add about a teaspoon of lemon juice. Add sausage and simmer until heated through, about 5 minutes. Serve and garnish each bowl with a little bit of sour cream and a pinch of dill.