I am Hungarian on my mothers side. My mother, uncle and grandparents fled Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Both my mothers parents were Phd organic chemists. You may thing this may give me a head start or intuitive understanding of the subject. Not so much...I am just not that lucky.

They did, however, leave me with the tradition of Hungarian cuisine.

I never had the opportunity to meet my grandfather, although I heard stories of what a wonderful cook, as well as chemist, he was. I was fortunate enough to live and become very close with my grandmother until I was the age of 16, when she passed away. My grandmother, who we called Anyu, which means "mom" in Hungarian (we followed what my mom called her when we were very young), was a great number things, but not very interested in cooking... The only thing I remember her cooking when my parents would go out was scrambled eggs for dinner (which we, of course, loved). My mom, on the other hand, was passed on the cooking genes. Every night, no earlier than 8pm, we would hear "Vacsora!" ("Dinner!"). My sister and I would run the dinner table to a bowl of soup. Always soup to start. Starting with soup is very traditional in Hungary. We would then have some sort of meat and potato dish, along with a green or cucumber salad.

In honor of my (organic chemist!) grandparents, I am going to cook a very traditional Hungarian meal this evening and something I grew up eating at least once a week.


Becsiszelet (Hungarian Wiener Schnitzel or Veal Cutlets)















































Note: If you are opposed to eating veal you can substitute it with pork chops pounded down to about 1/4 of an inch.

Ingredients:

-Pounded veal cutlets (you can find them already pounded at your local meat market or specialty food stores)
-Flour
-2 eggs
-Bread crumbs (store bought)
-Salt and Pepper
-Lemon for garnish
-Canola or Vegetable oil

Preparation:

Pour about 1 inch of canola or vegetable oil into your frying pan.
Heat oil on medium high until you can smell the heated oil and you hear it crackling. Turn down to medium or medium low depending on how hot

Creating the assembly line
-Pour about 1 cup of flour into one plate, 2 beaten eggs into another plate and 1-1 1/2 cups of
bread crumbs into another plate.
-I like to season the eggs with a bit of salt and pepper to give the veal added taste. You can
even add a pinch of paprika if you would like.

Preparing Veal
-Place one veal cutlet in the flour and cover whole cutlet with the flour.
-Transfer the cutlet to the egg and flip over until the cutlet is covered in egg.
-Transfer flour and egg covered cutlet into the bread crumbs and cover and pat bread crumbs
onto the veal, making sure the whole cutlet is covered in bread crumbs and the bread crumbs
stick.
-Repeat for all the veal cutlets you have
-Place the veal cutlets into the frying oil (now on medium). The cutlets should sizzle and
begin to brown very quickly.
-After about 2 minutes on one side flip and fry the other side for another 2 minutes until
golden brown

Garnish:
-Serve veal with a quarter of lemon
-Some of my family members also eat it with caper, dijon mustard or ketchup.