Christmas in Hungary - Food

The traditional foods at the Christmas meal in Hungary are very different than those in the United States. That being said, my family never ate the traditional holiday meal. We ate our favorites, shrimp and rice. In Hungary, one of the traditional meals is halászlé, fish soup.

The ingredients are fish (typically carp), paprika (both the pepper and the ground spice), tomato, onion, black pepper, and salt.

Another popular food for Christmas is beigli. This is a rolled pastry that comes in a variety of flavors. The two most popular flavors are mák (poppyseed) and diós (walnut). We tried a walnut beigli for the first time this Christmas. It was delicious! In the picture below, the third flavor is chestnut.

One of the popular Hungarian desserts is mákos guba.  It is delicious. We have eaten it three times since we've been here. Our first taste of mákos guba was actually at McDonald's. I noticed that it was something that I had never seen before and I decided to try it. The picture on the menu (click here to see it) looked like a shake so I was surprised when it wasn't. The taste made up for any confusion. It was delicious. We also ate mákos guba when we were in Letkés with the Clowns on the Horizon and at the Fulbright Christmas party. Every time, it has been great. I haven't been a fan of all of the poppyseed dishes here in Hungary but mákos guba is exceptional.  For Christmas, we decided to make our own mákos guba. The recipe was fairly simple (bread, sugar, poppyseed and milk) yet I struggled with a few measurement conversions. Still, I didn't worry about accidentally adding too much sugar...that wouldn't be a bad thing! Our dessert turned out very well! Here is a photo of our creation:

If you have a chance to come to Hungary, try these dishes while you are here. Otherwise, look for the recipes online. It's easy to bring the taste of Hungary to your own home.