paprika hendl

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this is one excellent and easy dish. the literary tie-in to bram stoker's dracula was an added bonus, and i will quote it again here:

 "We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (mem. get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called "paprika hendl" and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. I found my smattering of German very useful here; indeed, I don't know how I should be able to get on without it." 

now, i am no trained linguist or etymologist, but i do have some interest in the intersection of languages, words, history and geography. it seemed amazing to me that stoker would write of the german language being so prevalent in a region of what is now romania that seemed to me to be nowhere even close to germany. beyond that, the dish had definite hungarian influences as well, which stand out like a sore thumb (sour cream/flour sauce, beginning the dish with sauteed onions, heavy usage of paprika etc.). my suspicion was that he may have "fudged" facts a little and that he gave us a hungarian dish with a german name (since i knew that hungary has a large german minority and romania has a large hungarian minority), and simply glossed it over. i couldn't have been more wrong, however, and after quick consultation with wiki i realized the error of my ways:

 There are many different groups of Germans in Romania, the largest of whom have historically been known as the Transylvania Saxons. Germans once constituted a much larger portion of the Romanian population than they do today, though they are still the fourth largest ethno-linguistic group.

this makes perfect sense and of course stoker would have known this, since any well-educated person who even traveled out of his hometown back in those days would have been familiar with the breakdown of the various ethnic groups within the austro-hungarian empire. serbians, moldavians, slovaks and other groups that seem obscure-yet-recognizable to us today would have been as familiar to him as the bohemians and moravians (czechs), polish and lithuanians - none were major groups with their own sovereign boundaries (at the time), but they all were significant minorities within a larger empire, along with wallachians, transylvanians and many more that i can't even think of at the moment.

this explained the vestigal usage of the german language as evidenced by the german hendl as well as the name for the village, klausenburgh. now, all that was left was to tie in to the hungarian cooking influences. a little more digging confirmed this, as i learned that there was a significant intersection of the hungarian populations with the german populations in - you guessed it - transylvania.

on the map below, note the location of transylvania (home of the "transylvanian saxons") and the location of the western portion of the carpathian mountains (separate from the eastern chain that runs south and curves to the west):

also, note that the modern, romanian name for klausenburgh is cluj-napoca (right above the second A in transylvania), and it is in fact the capital of the province of transylvania in romania. much information on the hungarian connection to klausenburgh/cluj-napoca from wiki can be found by clicking the embedded link in the modern name

on the map below, the same location is in very close proximity to the small pokets of hungarian minority populations (in green). in fact, the location of cluj-napoca is, as far as i can tell, right smack in one of the green pockets.

it was beginning to gel for me, and consultation of the linguistic demographics of romania made it clear: 

 Hungarian is the largest minority language in Romania....This minority largely lives in Transylvania, which was part of the Kingdom of Hungary until 1918 (Northern Transylvania was part of Hungary again between 1940 and 1947) though there are Hungarian speaking minorities in other parts of the country as well.

it was here that the lightbulb came on and i realized what i should have known all along: that transylvania in stoker's time was associated with hungary and not with romania, which didn't incorporate transylvania until after world war one.

it all fit beautifully - at least, it fit close enough so that i was convinced of its plausibility. stoker knew his stuff and i happily acknowledged that i had been schooled. this is a true balkan dish, with hungarian origins, and the german name of the dish is a result of the fact that it was prepared by descendents of transylvanian saxons; said dish was eaten by traveling guests who were looking out the window of a hotel (located in a town with german and hungarian origins) at the carpathian mountains in what is now the romanian province of transylvania. 

i should have thought of this, since the town where my wife's family emigrated from (zakarovce) was also part of the hungarian empire and was thought of as hungarian, even though it is now in slovakia. 

so, set straight and inspired, i decided to give this a go, using john's recipe to the letter:

1 chicken cut up or equivalent (i used eight thighs plus six legs) 
2 large onions, diced 
About 9 cloves of garlic, peeled 
2 Quarts tomato juice or V8 
24 Oz container of sour cream 
2 TBSP flour 
2 TSP salt 
1 TSP pepper 
7 or 8 heaping tablespoons Hungarian Sweet Paprika. 
4 or 5 TBSP chicken fat, butter or olive oil
if you choose to skin the chicken, browning is not necessary or desireable; simply render the fat from the skin or heat some butter or olive oil, and proceed to browning the onions. if you leave the skin on, brown chicken in butter or olive oil in a large cast iron skillet or dutch oven; set aside in a covered dish and remove all but a few tablespoons of fat.
add diced onions to skillet/dutch oven; and carmelize the onions over medium heat; then stir in half the paprika and mix well. add V-8 juice and place chicken it the pot, pouring the released juices all over. cover and simmer about an hour, or until chicken is done but not falling off the bone. remove chicken from pot and keep covered so it stays warm.

beat flour and remaining paprika into sour cream and gently fold this into the sauce. return chicken to the pot, cover and simmer another 5 to 10 minutes to heat throughout. taste and adjust for salt and pepper. serve with dumplings, noodles or potatoes.

this one was a pleasure to make, and was enjoyed by all. it definitely will be made again and i encourage any interested person to try it, for you will not be disappointed! here's how it went down:

due to circumstances, i didn't get a shot of the goods, or of the rendering of the chicken fat (after removing the skins from the 8 thighs and 6 legs that we used for this meal), which is what i chose to use rather than butter or olive oil for carmelizing the onions etc. when i make this again, i will be sure to get shots of those steps.

basically, i removed the skins from the chicken pieces; then, i began heating the chicken skins in the dutch oven over medium heat, until they gave up all of the rich, flavorful fat that they had to offer and became dark (not burned) and crispy. this takes a little time, and you want to make sure that the fat does not begin to burn. after removing these "cracklings," i spooned out all but about 4 or 5 tablespoons of fat (this turned out to be too much left in the dutch oven -  i should have removed all but 2 or 3) and began heating the onions in the rendered fat. 

alternately, i could have kept the skins on and rendered the fat from the chicken pieces as they browned, but i wanted to leave the skins out of the final dish, hence the removal and rendering of the skins. this step, whether with pork, poultry or any other rendered animal fat, is a hallmark of hungarian cooking. you can skip this step if you like and use butter, olive oil or even canola oil, if you want, but you will miss out on some of the subtle joys of this dish, and also a nice, deep layer of goodness. this was the first time i had ever rendered fat from chicken for cooking; it was quite easy and while i am sure it is not nearly as healthy as canola oil, the depth of flavour was amazing.

here we are with the onions sweating out in the hot dutch oven:

i read somewhere that in hungarian cooking, the onions are slowly sautéed just to the point where they are on the verge of turning brown, which was just about here:a couple-three minutes later, i removed the dutch oven from the heat (this is important, so as not to scorch the garlic and paprika) and added the garlic cloves (which i had forgotten to leave whole and ended up chopping) as well as the salt and pepper:

it was here that i decided that i probably retained a little too much fat in the dutch oven after rendering, and made a note to use less next time. 

i then added half the paprika, stirring to mix well, then added the v8 juice:

you might be thinking, where did one find v8 juice in 19th-century klausenburgh? i wondered that myself, until i realized that v8 is simply tomatoes, which would have been available at any market or garden, and vegetable stock, which would have been the base of many, many dishes (including this one, presumably), especially once combined with the juices of the chicken to make what is essentially a tomato-infused chicken stock - quite plausible.

using the v8 juice as a de-glazing liquid, i returned the dutch oven to the heat and scraped the brown bits of chicken (left over from the rendering) off the bottom. when everything was stirred well, i added the chicken thighs and legs, and then reduced the heat to the lowest setting for simmering. 

here's how everything looked just as i was putting the heavy lid of the dutch oven down:

and after an hour of simmering to cook the chicken pieces, here's the first thing we saw when we lifted the lid:

after carefully removing all of the chicken thighs and legs:

we took a look at the wonderful, rich sauce that was forming.:

it was a true treasure, but this is hungarian cooking, so there was another step that would ensure a creamy richness to this dish.

after stirring the flour into the sour cream (this is a really bad picture, but it was the best i had):

we folded the sour cream and flour into the sauce. i immediately realized that i should have mixed the flour in more thoroughly, perhaps with a wire whisk:

but before long the sour cream melted into creamy richness and the flour incorporated itself into the sauce just fine.

i then added the remaining paprika (which could just as easily have been added and incorporated to the sour cream/flour mixture):

and returned the chicken pieces to the dutch oven:

the picture does not quite do justice to the wonderful, old-world goodness that was bubbling in that pot. the flash brightens the sauce far too much, and the chicken was sinking to the bottom, making it hard to look as good as it really was - but no matter, because the smells were making up for it.

after 5 or 10 minutes of simmering, we prepared the plates and served the meal with mashed potatoes. this is my favourite of the plated pictures, because it shows just how dark, warm and savory the sauce was:

as i said before, too many times the flash would wash this deep richness out:

 but no worries, this one was a definite keeper!

i served this to the beautiful mrs. tas, who actually enjoyed it, to my pleasure and surprise, and also to our four children, who all were pretty enthusiastic about it and had no complaints. also, two friends of the boys were over and they also enjoyed this meal. it seems that whenever i am cooking, they show up for supper, which is alright.

the two big mistakes i encountered while making this were that i did not remove more chicken fat after rendering, and that i did not mix the sour cream/flour mixture better before adding to the pot. neither of these errors hurt the dish; however, correcting them will certainly result in a better experience next time.

in all, this was definitely a do-again meal and a complete success, reaching back a hundred-and-fifty years or so into the dark hollows of the carpathians and the fascinating heritage that is a mixture of german, transylvanian and hungarian traditions. i would encourage anyone who wants to appreciate true old-world dining to give this simple meal a try.

Edited by TasunkaWitko