Old Country Summertime Cooking - Part 2!
The summer dish that's both comforting and refreshing-hideg meggyleves (cold cherry soup)
As I noted in my earlier blog post on Old Country Summertime Cooking, my grandmother taught me to make many wonderful dishes, but they were all in the Fall-Spring seasons. She was just too darn busy working in the summer.
But during my Hungarian Citizenship journey, I found a summer dish that feels so quintesentially Old Country, you feel like a character in a Sándor Márai novel, sitting on some Eastern European estate on a hot summer day. Eating this dish feels strangely familiar and exotic at the same time.
I had my first taste of hideg meggyleves (cold cherry soup) at a restaurant in Budapest in 2021, and in that moment had no doubt, I was Old Country through and through.
This summer, I saw a punnet of sour cherries for sale at an Amish farm stand in upstate New York. It's rare to find fresh sour cherries, so I thought I'd take advantage of this good luck and make some cold cherry soup for myself.
I'm usually comfortable cooking from instinct, but this is one dish I didn't feel I could guestimate.
Searching online, I found many great recipes for meggyleves. And since we studied cooking and recipes in my B1 language classes, I felt comfortable following these recipes in Hungarian. Unfortunately, like with many recipes written in Europe and the UK, measurements are in weight, and I don't have a kitchen scale.
So I searched some more in English and found this excellent recipe.
But then I ran into my first problem...how to pit the bowl of sour cherries I had?
Again, a google search led me to this simple technique of using a straw to push the pit out quickly, easily and with little mess or waste.
Then as I prepared everything, I realized I didn't have heavy cream on hand. But being a good Hunky, I had plenty of sour cream. So I substituted.
Then I got overly confident and started fiddling around some more with the measurements in this recipe.
I can say my first attempt at meggyleves was ... ok.
It was tasty, but not the ecstatic experience I had when easting it in Budapest.
So I tried again, a few days later. I bought some heavy cream and followed the recipe exactly.
And the result: excellent! Note to self: sometimes it's a good to swallow some your pride and follow the recipe!
So in these last few weeks of summer left in the Northern Hemisphere, I encourage you to find some sour cherries (canned are perfectly fine,) and give meggyleves a try. You may find yourself transported to a table at the Old Country, where your ancestors will be sipping this classic dish with you!
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