Cheese & Football Feast day 9: Hungary

Day 9 of the Euro2016 football tournament and the early evening game was Iceland vs Hungary.

The cheese feast recipe I chose was Lipto Cheese Spread which is quite similar to the Austrian Liptauer cheese spread. Lipto is the name of the Hungarian sheep's milk cheese it should be made with which is apparently similar to Romanian Brindza but I could find neither so I had to settle for using a Greek soft sheep's milk cheese instead.

I have a couple of books on Hungarian cuisine but this one by the late George Lang is the most comprehensive and well written.

It's 'old school', 400 pages of close text, no recipe pictures, but some line illustrations and a detailed English, and Hungarian language index plus a detailed bibliography. It was first published in 1971, and my paperback version appeared in 1985. As it was written long before word processors were common it must have taken a monument of paper drafts to complete. The recipe for caraway soup is a reminder of just how little there sometimes was to make meals from as it is composed of no more than lard or butter, water, bread, garlic and caraway seeds, with an egg if one was available. This reminded me of the Spanish garlic and bread soup Sopa de Ajo.

The recipe below is taken the book but apparently only the cheese, paprika, onions and caraway are essential so I skipped the anchovy. Other versions can include capers and gherkins.

200g Lipto cheese
100g softened butter
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp prepared mustard
1/2 tsp pounded caraway seeds
1 small onion grated
1/2 tsp anchovy essence

Sieve the cheese and mix with the softened butter
Add all of the other ingredients and mix well.
Serve with wedges of good crusty bread, toast, young radishes, scallions, peppers.

This, rather off dry, Hungarian white wine went very well with the dip and has encouraged me to look closer at Hungarian wine. The supermarket blurb read ' It's a fruity blend of Chenin Blanc, Pinot Grigio and local grape varetity Kiralyeanyka that represents excellent value for money' and as it was under £5 I would have to agree.

For day 10 I am making the timeless classic Croque Monsieur.

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I am voting to stay in the European Union. I strongly believe that Britain is stronger and safer in, than out. One of the reasons I want us to stay in is the European Union has set far higher levels of protection and financial support for conserving the environment than I believe any UK government would do if it was 'free' to do what it wants. Alone, we cannot control our environment.