Today I'd like to present a dish that I've always enjoyed greatly, whether cooked by my mom, or in a restaurant. It is named after the Transylvanian city of Brassó in Hungarian, Brașov in Romanian, or Kronstadt in German. It's a fairly simple recipe, but oh so tasty, based on pork, potatoes, with lots of garlic, onions, and of course paprika. In fact, it's so easy to make, I'm surprised that I don't cook this more often! The original name Brassío aprópecsenye can be translated into something like tiny roast, probably for the small sized meat and potatoes.
What You Will Need:
- meat and potatoes mainly, at a 1:2 ratio (500 g meat to a kilo of potatoes). Normally pork shoulder is what's typically called for, but today I'm making it with beef, as that's what I could find at the store.
- bacon Not all recipes mention this tasty seasoning, but I thought I should include some, especially since I already skipped the pig in the first step. A 100 g of smoked bacon should do it.
- garlic and onion Being a Hungarian dish, you can really go to town on this. I took a large specimen of each.
- salt, pepper, and paprika for seasoning. I use mild, smoked paprika, which means I can use it quite liberally.
- oil or butter for frying. Ideally you could also use pork lard... but today I'll just go with the oil and the butter.
How to Proceed:
I wanted to bring the unpleasant part behind me, so I chopped the onion and garlic first. My trick to avoid tears is not putting a piece of onion behind my ear, or lighting candles, but simply using a very sharp knife. That way I don't squeeze the juice out unnecessarily. As for the garlic, I could squeeze it trough a garlic press, but I was not in a hurry, so I used the same sharp blade to chop it up in really fine little bits.
Then I continued with the potatoes. I cut them into cubes of about the same size as the meat (somewhere between 1-2 cm-ish). I still had some oil left over in a jar where sun-dried tomatoes used to be, so I used that to add some extra flavor to the potatoes. Also, the blue pot I first used would have turned out way cramped, so I opted for the wok to fry the potatoes. I left them in there until they were golden crispy.
Then I set them aside, and continued with the bacon, starting them off with a chunk of butter, then fried them slowly until they were soft and glassy. Then I added the chopped onions, and eventually the garlic, salt, pepper, and plenty of paprika. A quick stir was enough, and the pot was ready for the beef.
Once everything was stirred together well, I added a little bit of boiling water, to tie everything together, then turned the stove to simmer, and sat down to write this post. Occasionally I got up, gave the whole thing a stir, and let it keep simmering. This is actually not that different from the technique of making goulash.
Eventually, once the meat has gotten soft enough, and most of the water has evaporated, it was time to mix it all together with the potatoes that have been waiting patiently. At this point you may want to fry it all together for a few minutes. Just long enough to cover the potato chunks with the flavor of the meat, but don't let it all grow into a homogeneous mush.
Here are Some Previous Posts in The Infrequent Hungarian Cooking Series:
Goulash – The Most Famous Hungarian Dish (that doesn't actually exist!)
Lecsó – A Lovely Summer Dish from Hungary
Plum Dumplings – A Hungarian Dish Without Any Paprika
Stacked Potatoes a.k.a. Rakott Krumpli