What is lecsó? One of the easiest and most popular Hungarian dishes. But why is it Communist? Anikó Mészáros has come back from her winter holiday and overwhelmed her friends with her memories.
Every time I come back from Hungary, I’m just too Hungarian.
This means that…
I’m speaking about my country, culture and memories endlessly.
I get used to complaining again – which is a national sport of ours. It took me three months to start complaining about Sweden, but only three weeks to restart it about Hungary again.
I’ve brought a lot of sausage and alcohol with me. Alcohol is very welcome in this house, especially because we are in Sweden. About the sausage, however, there is a constant debate: which one is better, the Italian or the Hungarian?
With all these preconditions, last weekend we had a „welcome back everybody” dinner with an Italian, a German and a Greek around the table. This time I was the chef. We ate lecsó, drank Unicum shots… and – I still don’t understand how – ended up having a philosophical debate about communism.
Lecsó is a cool thing. It’s really easy to prepare and everybody likes it. The trick is that it’s very flexible regarding the ingredients so you can easily fit it to your own taste.
The basis is onion, tomato and paprika (relation 1:2:4) in a pan on oil, and the spices: salt, black pepper and of course Hungarian red pepper which we call paprika as well. I usually add scrumbled eggs and some kind of meat that I find at home: bacon, ham or sausage. It goes with bread.
How it became communist, I actually don’t remember. With the first shot we started talking about Greece: we realized that it’s very useful to have a Greek friend, so that you can go visit him or her in summer. Then – with the second shot – we talked about facebook and how it became a crucial part of our life. For some, the date you started using facebook is as important as your first cigarette. Then we had the third shot of Unicum – and from a silent diplomat I turned into a loud anti-communist, complaining endlessly and just speaking about the memories of my parents and myself, while the other political science students became pro-communist – in theory at least, as they said.
The mathematician wasn’t interested in this debate. After finishing his lecsó, he moved from the table to the couch and signed in to facebook.
