Brett and Sara Musick: Grandpa would be proud

Oh, Grandpa, you would be proud.

I got back in touch with my Hungarian roots today. The girls and I made some food for the annual Labor Day Hungarian food gathering that my Suppinger side of the family has at the lake.

I decided I wanted to make tarhonya, which is a small egg noodle, dumpling-type of pasta. If you could cross orzo with couscous, you get tarhonya. Honestly, tarhonya is better. My Grandpa Suppinger would make his homemade tarhonya and drench it in sauce from his chicken paprikas. I remember seeing trays of it drying on towels in the back room of the basement. It always seemed a little beyond my reach to make, so I decided to tackle the challenge. You look at the ingredients, and it seems brainless: egg, flour, salt. Seriously? That's it?

So the girls were really excited to tackle the tarhonya challenge with me. They dug in to the dough and mixed with fork and hands. They loved it. Nine batches later, I thought we were set. I never saw what kind of grate my Grandpa used to make his dough crumble in to little pieces, so I decided to use a good cheese grater that I had on hand. After grating two "loaves" of pasta dough, the next seven looked huge. How did my Grandpa make enough of this to feed all of us when we visited? It took forever. I finally figured out that I needed more flour in my dough to make it grate faster. Score. Still, those nine loaves of dough took me all afternoon to grate.

Mixed in between the tarhonya grating. Sophia and I made a loaf of Hungarian white bread topped with poppy seeds. Honestly, I've never made a loaf of bread by myself without killing the yeast. I either put it in water that's too hot when I make the starter, or I have yeast that has gone bad. Either way, I end up with bread that won't rise. But in THIS case, everything worked out. I think the new stove helped too. I braided and baked this loaf of bread, and it looks amazing. The thing is over two feet long. I can't wait to cut in to it!