Hungarian Pancakes With Walnut Filling

This is a Hungarian pancake, a "palacsinta," called "Gundel Palacsinta," in Hungarian, after the dessert's inventor, Károly Gundel, a Budapest restaurant owner of the early to mid 20th Century.   

Ingredients:

Pancakes:

1 1/4 cup flour
2/3 cup milk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup sparkling mineral water (or club soda)
1/4 teaspoon salt
oil/butter for frying

Filling:

1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 to 1 cup finely chopped or ground walnuts
1/4 cup chopped raisins
2 tablespoons rum
2 tablespoons grated orange peel

Chocolate Sauce:

4 ounces dark chocolate
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons sugar
2 cocoa powder
1 tablespoon rum

Put the raisins and grated orange peel into the rum in a small bowl or cup about an hour before you will use them. In a bowl, mix the flour, the eggs, the salt and the sugar. Gradually stir or whisk in the milk to form a batter. Add the sparkling water (it will foam) and stir to mix. The batter should be neither too thick (like most cake batter), nor too thin, but rather like the thickness of gravy, so you can adjust the ingredients slightly to achieve that. Let the batter sit for 30 minutes. In a sauce pan, heat the cream to just a simmer, then stir in the sugar until it is well dissolved. Add the other ingredients and mix well. Keep the heat very low, so that the mixture just barely simmers for a few minutes, stir frequently. The mix should form a paste-like consistency. In another pan, heat the cream over low heat. Add the chocolate and keep stirring until the chocolate has melted. KEEP THE HEAT LOW! Mix the egg yolks with the sugar and cocoa and then gradually whisk the mix into the chocolate, whisking constantly. Whisk in the rum. Let the chocolate sauce remain over VERY low heat, stirring or whisking occasionally, until it is nicely thickened.

Make sure to oil the pan you will use to fry the crepes (pancakes, palacsinta). I used an 8 inch nonstick fry pan with a little butter and oil mixture for each palacsinta. I used low heat, but some recipes I've seen used medium heat. Put enough batter into the pan to just coat the bottom. These should be pretty thin pancakes. Cook until lightly browned, then flip the pancake to the other side and do the same. Spread some walnut mixture (paste) onto half of each palacsinta, fold over the other half and then fold again. Drizzle some chocolate sauce over each palacsinta and serve while still warm.  


Spread some of the walnut paste onto half of each pancake ...

Fold the palacsinta and drizzle with some chocolate sauce ...

WORD HISTORY: 

Meander-This word goes back to a river in southwestern Asia Minor (now modern Turkey). The transliterated Ancient Greek name was "Maíandros," which was borrowed by Latin as "Maeander." English borrowed the word in the late 1500s as "meander," meaning "a winding path or course," seemingly initially for rivers and streams and then broadened to land courses. The verb developed about a decade later meaning, "to flow in a winding course," but it too then broadened beyond water, eventually even taking on a further meaning for humans or animals of "wandering about."