Around The World in Fried Dough

 

(This article first appeared online on 21st June 2023 and in print on 22nd June in Mint Lounge, India https://lifestyle.livemint.com/food/discover/best-fried-breads-around-the-world-111687313794053.html)

Central Europe via North Mumbai

With a menu full of interesting Hungarian street food, this tiny Juhu eatery takes you on a vicarious culinary holiday straight to the food markets of Central Europe.

By Raul Dias

One of the last places we flew to just before the pandemic clipped out travel-happy wings was to the Hungarian capital of Budapest. And while this beautiful Central European city may be better known for its grand architecture and for the serpentine Danube that bisects it into the Buda and Pest sides, there is something to be said about the city’s food as well. 

Redolent with copious amounts of the de facto national spice of smoky paprika, the goulashes that we indulged in were just as memorable as the spit-roasted kurtoshes and deep fried langos. Perfect snacks to munch on on a chilly winter's day. So, imagine our delight when we chanced upon Kurtosshhh, a tiny (and dare-we-say numerologically-savvy!) eatery in Juhu that claims to serve Hungarian street food. Albeit with a twist.

With barely enough room for a couple of people to sit at its wooden tables and chairs, with a cosy mezzanine level housing a single table, we realised that dining in at Kurtosshhh in these days may not be such a great idea. And so, we picked up a couple of dishes that came packed in regular aluminium foil containers and paper boxes.

The eponymous kurtosh that is the eatery’s flag bearing dish is a conical spit cake that’s also known multifariously as a chimney cake, a baumstriezl in Germany and a trdelnik in the Czech Republic. Generally served in its sweet avatar, all dusted with sugar and cinnamon, at Kurtosshhh you can also try a number of savoury iterations; ranging from grilled vegetables to cottage cheese filled ones. Out eight-inch tall chipotle chicken kurtosh (Rs.189) was composed of a buttery, blistered dough that we were told was made with a mixture of 18 secret flours. It held forth creamy, well-seasoned succulent bits of chicken with diced onions and peppers.

Served in individual rings and piping hot, the sweet cinnamon trdelnik (Rs.189) was decadently more-ish, all doused in chocolate and caramel sauce. We also tried the open-faced grilled cottage cheese kartoos kurtosh (Rs.229) that was quite different in taste and texture from its conical cousin. And while it may seem similar to a flatbread, the deep fried langos topped with molten cheese and olives, all dusted with smoky paprika (Rs.199) took us straight back to Budapest’s Central Food Market Hall where we had tried langos for the first time. 

We decided to wash all this down with the thick and creamy safrany kulfi shake (Rs.169), served in the now-ubiquitous mini milk bottle. As a parting shot, we decided to succumb to a cliché and called for the chicken goulash rice bowl (Rs.249) which, though quite tasty and satisfying, fell a tad short in the authenticity department, missing that all-important paprika hit.

Well, I guess we'll just have to go back for a more genuine one—both to Kurtosshhh and yes, Hungary too!           

AT: Kurtosshhh, Shop 12, Juhu Ruturaj CHS, Juhu Tara Road, Santacruz West.

DELIVERY: Swiggy and Zomato

TIME: 11 am to 11 pm

CALL: 9321055321

(An edited version of this review appeared in the 13th January 2021 issue of the Mid-Day newspaper, India on page 16 https://www.mid-day.com/mumbai-guide/mumbai-food/article/hungary-tide-23155492)

Budapest’s ‘dawn’ at dusk!

A magnificent city that is brimming with everything from some jaw-dropping architectural gems to its spa culture and chic ruin bars, Budapest is best enjoyed at night. Raul Dias shows you the top ways to spend your evenings in the twinkling Hungarian capital. 

By Raul Dias

Never mind the stunning visuals put out there of Budapest by night that you may encounter when planning your trip to the Hungarian capital (whose name is a portmanteau of the city’s two neighbourhoods of the hilly Buda to the west and flatter Pest on the east). Or even in a travel article such as this, for that matter. Trust me. They do absolutely no justice to the nocturnal charms of the city, however well-composed they may be. You simply have got to see it with your own eyes, as I recently did on a trip to Central Europe.
Very little actually prepares you for that exact shade of cobalt blue of the night sky that you’ll see reflected onto the mighty Danube as the crimson sun melts into the river’s waters. No amount of reference is enough to catch a real-time glimpse of the Gothic Parliament Building all lit up, sitting mightily perched on the river’s banks. And you need to actually cross the river forded by the iconic Széchenyi Chain Bridge to realise how imposing it really is—with its twin arches illuminated by thousands of flickering lightbulbs.
Perhaps, no other city—save for Paris, France—has ever had such an impact on my senses as Budapest did, all under the cover of dusk. Here’s my list of the best take-aways from Budapest at night:

Enjoy sunset at Buda Castle
Overseeing the city that lies beneath it, the imposing Buda Castle sits atop a hill on the Buda side of the Danube. You can head here in the early morning hours, or better still at sunset for breathtaking photo ops, or come during open hours for a guided historical tour that’s free. Part of the palace complex of the Hungarian kings in Budapest, the massive Baroque castle was built between 1749 and 1769 and sits on the south tip of Castle Hill, bounded on the north by what is known as the Castle District of Várnegyed. The castle now houses the Hungarian National Gallery and The Budapest History Museum along with other 19th-century houses, churches and public buildings.

Join the Heroes!
A famous landmark in Budapest, the Hősök Tere Heroes Square with its colonnade remains a local and tourist favourite at night when it’s all lit up. If you love history, monuments and statues this is a great area to explore and take some pictures, specially of the iconic statue complex featuring the Seven chieftains of the Magyars and other important Hungarian national leaders. The Memorial Stone of Heroes often (wrongly!) referred to as the tomb of the unknown soldier can also be found here, as well as one of Hungary’s biggest museums for art and culture lovers—the Museum of Fine Arts!

An evening dip, perhaps?
Legendary for its many therapeutic thermal baths that can be found across the city, Budapest is a spa-junkie’s dream come true. And one of the best places for a post-sundown soak or splash about is the Szechenyi Spa Bath in the Pest side of the city. Here is where you can take part in the traditional Hungarian past time of going to a spa bath. Think huge tubs to choose from, lots of people resting and relaxing in the thermal pools, and snack bars to hang out at, all while making some new Hungarian friends! Interestingly, this spa offers occasional (and very popular) pool parties here as well, if you are willing to pay the hefty (almost Rs 4,000) price ticket, that is.

Cruising along
What better way to get to know Budapest by night than to see all of it while sailing the Danube on a leisurely dinner cruise? Sail past the superbly lit up Parliament Building, the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, the Liberty Bridge and Matthias Church. All this, as you sip Hungarian wine and tuck into traditional Hungarian dishes like the paprika-rich goulash stew and the exotic horsemeat sausage called lo-keilbasa.

Get ‘ruined’!
As the birthplace of the ruin bar, Budapest has a very impressive cache of them indeed—places that are perfect to wind up your evening about town at. It all goes back to the early 2000’s when people who were looking for cheap places to drink started frequenting these lively and stylish bars that were often housed in derelict buildings and unused outdoor spaces in the Jewish Quarter of the city’s Bohemian 7th District. Here, check out places like Szimpla Kert that was the city’s first ruin bar and one that remains iconic or perhaps Anker’t that is one of the most popular party venues in Budapest, with its large courtyard that’s surrounded by bars and dance rooms.

(An edited version of this column first appeard in the 13th January 2019 issue of The Free Press Journal newspaper's Weekend section on page 3 https://www.freepressjournal.in/travel/budapest-is-best-enjoyed-at-night-and-heres-how/1435487)

Notes from Hungary

By Raul Dias 

Like any seasoned traveller, I have a non-negotiable set of ‘rituals’ that I need to perform when visiting any new place. Chief among those is to visit a food market to get a pulse of the quotidian life of the local people. I love nothing better than to see bossy grannies haggle their way though a purchase of tomatoes. In European markets, I greedily look forward to the generous samples cheese-mongers and charcutiers put out for gourmands like myself.

So, on a recent trip to Hungary, the minute I was done with checking into my hotel in Budapest, I sauntered down to the city’s Great Market Hall housed at the end of the famous pedestrian shopping street Váci Utca on the Pest side of Liberty Bridge at Fővám Square. And while I did get my fill of both bargaining octogenarians and some rather strange local charcuterie — particularly the lókolbász or horse meat sausage — I encountered row upon row of stalls in the market dedicated to a single spice. Paprika.

Revelling in all its sweet-n-smoky glory, paprika is the de facto spice of Hungary, where almost the entire cuisine pivots around the axis created by the spice. And paprika-obsessed Hungarians have a certain Mr. Christopher Columbus to thank. Originating in Central Mexico, the spice that consists of dried and ground chillies made its way to the far Balkans via Spain when the Turks introduced paprika to the Balkan Peninsula in the 18th century during the Ottoman rule.

Dash of heat

Interestingly, thanks to it being packed with Vitamins A and E and capsaicin — which is said to have anti-cancer, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties — paprika was first used by Hungarians as a medicine for treating typhus. It is also capsaicin that gives chillies their heat.

In fact, up until 1920, all paprika was super-hot. It was only when a hybrid variety of the plant was created in the southern Hungarian region of Szeged that paprika got its distinct sweet and smoky flavour profile. In fact, the Szeged paprika museum is said to be a very popular tourist spot where everybody is sent off with a 10-gram sampling of paprika.

Back at Great Market Hall, I soon realised there is no one paprika that fits into all dishes. A rather patient stall owner with much better English language skills than my non-existent Hungarian gave me the paprika 101. Apparently, the two most common types of paprika are either édes (sweet) or csipős (hot). But one could also go for the különleges deep red, finely ground paprika, which is mild. Or for those with a predilection for a dash of searing heat in their food, the rózsa, a dark red, medium-coarse paprika which tends to be very hot, is your best bet.

At lunch later that day at Zeller Bistro, a Budapest icon that regularly gets its share of ‘five star’ reviews for its wide range of paprika-rich offerings, Zoltan, an old university buddy, introduced me to a plethora of Hungarian classics that hero the spice. We started off with a cliché. Better known to most as goulash, gulyásleves is by itself a very basic meat and potatoes kind of stew that gets elevated to high gastronomic heaven when a dash of paprika and cream are added to it. Similarly, halászlé, the humble fishermen’s soup — made using river fish like carp or pike fished from the Danube — takes on a spicy hue when the warmer édesnemes variety of paprika is added to it.

By then, utterly obsessed with all things paprika, I found myself at Paprika Molnar factory, in the village of Roszke 15 kilometres from Szeged city. It is here I took a guided tour and learnt how things weren’t all rosy (pun intended) for paprika very recently, almost causing a national crisis.

In 2013, production hit a rough patch when Hungarian paprika exports slumped, as buyers across the world turned to cheaper supplies mainly from China and Latin America. This was in the wake of two years of unpredictable weather Hungary faced, resulting in the poorest yield of the paprika-producing capsicum annuum chilli in 50 years. I was told there was even talk of the possibility of Hungary having to import its very own treasured spice.

But in the last five years, things have taken an upward swing with production back on track, and once again, all is well in the land that literally worships its ‘red gold’.

(This article first appeared in the 2nd December 2018 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 7 https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/travel/notes-from-hungary/article25642593.ece)

But in the last five years, things have taken an upward swing with production back on track, and once again, all is well in the land that literally worships its ‘red gold’.