Well, plenty of you guessed right about the onion and its importance to Hungarian cuisine, you guys are really good. Onions provide the background notes so essential to the range of gulyas and porkolt dishes that are famous not only in Hungary but worldwide. The best onions come from Mako, where they have been grown for more than two hundred years. It was here that a special method for growing onions was discovered, whereby young bulbs grown from seed are lifted from the soil and dried in a warm place over winter. The next spring the bulbs are replanted and the onions are unable to shoot thus producing huge, top quality bulbs.

It is said in a Hungarian folksong that so long as you have an onion you won't go hungry, indeed a common farmer's breakfast was bread, bacon and onion and if he was too poor to buy bacon it was just bread and onion, of course if he was really poor.... In fact Hungarians enjoy eating raw onions.

There are no really traditional Hungarian dishes that feature onion, but there is one restaurant dish called stuffed onions a la Mako that is quite popular. But really, without onions Hungarian cuisine would be but a pale shadow of itself and it was no accident that I chose onions, peppers and tomatoes as the guesses for these are the base ingredients of Lecso (pronounced lech-o) a traditional Hungarian paprika stew which is popular in surrounding countries as well.

When Hungarians say paprika they could mean two things, either the fresh pods of the pepper plant or the spice obtained from drying and grinding the pods. Outside of Mexico from where peppers, or as they are better known chillies, first originated, it is hard to think of a country that values both the heat and flavour of peppers as much as Hungarians do, most cultures that use chillies extensively do so for the heat.

In an aside it was peppers that were responsible for Hungarian scientist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi winning the 1937 Noble prize, described by the press as the 'paprika' prize. It was in 1932 that Albert was sitting down to dinner which had a fresh bell pepper. In his own words he said, "I didn't really want it, and as I looked at it, I realized I had never experimented on a pepper." Albert took the offending pepper to work for testing and after the initial results, within three weeks over three pounds (1.5 kg) of pure vitamin C had been obtained, a veritable mountain compared to the measly few grams that had been previously isolated.

This new vitamin was sent to WHO to be used treating scurvy and it was this success of Albert that was responsible for the dawning of the mass production of vitamins. It was not his only success either, he isolated flavonoids and later on invented paprika paste which he sold commercially under the names Vitaprik and Pritamin, brands which are still known in Hungary to this day.

To say that Hungarians love their peppers would be a huge understatement. They have developed specific varieties for paprika powder production and have several different types for eating and cooking with, including tolteni valo paprika, bogyiszloi, almapaprika, kosszarvu, cseresznyepaprika, hegyes eros and paradicsompaprika. The last named pepper gets its name from the Hungarian word for tomatoes, paradicsom. Tomatoes were originally known as love apples in England, possibly based on a mistranslation of the Italian name pomo d'oro (golden apple) as pomo d'amore. It looks like the Hungarians must have mistranslated too for their original name for tomatoes was paradise apples, but later on the apple part was dropped. Its fascinating that two totally different cultures had similar names for the humble tomato, perhaps our forebears knew something rather special about them!

How Lecso turns out depends on which peppers are used; some like theirs searing hot while others prefer a much milder version. The great thing is Lecso is adaptable to whatever pepper you have on hand, hot or mild. Personally I favour a mixture of coloured mild capsicums or bell peppers with just a hint of fire through the use of a pinch of cayenne pepper. The version I'm giving is meatless thus suitable for vegetarians, but meat can easily be added, especially smoked pork belly and/or smoked sausages.

LECSO

1 kg (2.2 lb) capsicum or bell pepper, green, red, yellow and orange
500 g (1 lb) tomatoes, skinned and cut into chunks
1 onion, peeled and sliced
2 tablespoons oil
1 heaped tablespoon paprika
pinch cayenne pepper
salt

If you don't mind the skin, remove the stalks and seeds from the capsicum amd slice into strips. We like to bake the capsicums in the oven before peeling their skins off and removing the stalk and seeds, then cutting into strips. Fry the onion in the hot oil until soft and translucent add the paprika and cayenne pepper and cook a moment more. Add the capsicum and if not pre cooked, simmer for ten minutes before adding the tomatoes and salt. Cook until soft about ten or fifteen minutes. Serve with rice.

This is my entry to Weekend Herb Blogging this week hosted by Ed from Tomato. But you have to pick which vegetable I'm talking about because clearly I have no idea! I'm also deeply sorry about not being able to put accents and dot thingy's on the Hungarian words. Whenever I manage it, something in blogger changes everything to weird symbols.