Savory Hungarian Stuffed Pancakes: Hortobágyi Palacsinta

Slight update to "Word History" 8-14-22

This crepe-like stuffed pancake dish is called "Hortobágyi Palacsinta," in Hungarian. It is often made with veal, but other meat is not uncommonly used, especially ground pork, which is what I often use. Chicken is also commonly used, but it is not always ground chicken, but rather pieces of chicken are cooked as part of the stew, then the meat is taken off of the bones and chopped to the desired size. Of course, you can make the pancakes using a smaller skillet (like 6 inch) up to a large skillet (like 12 inch skillet), or something in between, which is what I do, as I generally use a 9 inch skillet. 

Ingredients:

Stew:

1 pound ground pork (or ground veal)
1 medium onion, chopped (smaller type pieces)
1/2 cup crushed tomatoes, with some of the juice
1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds
2/3 to 1 teaspoon salt
2/3 teaspoon pepper
2 1/2 tablespoons sweet paprika (preferably Hungarian, but use what you have)
1/2 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons olive oil

sauce:

1 cup sour cream
1 cup broth from the meat preparation
3 to 4 tablespoons flour

for the crepes:

1 cup flour
3 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
oil or butter for frying

In a skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and let cook for a couple of minutes, then add the ground meat. Keep breaking up the meat as it cooks with the onion, as you don't want large chunks of meat in the filling. When the onions are softened, add the tomatoes, the caraway, salt, pepper and paprika, and mix well. Add the broth and continue to simmer the stew for about 20 to 25 minutes. Strain the stew using a sieve.

Put the strained broth into a pan over medium low heat. Mix the flour with a little water and whisk it into the broth. Let the mixture cook for a couple of minutes, stirring constantly. Remove the thickened broth from the heat and let it sit for a few minutes, then whisk in the sour cream.

In a skillet (preferably non-stick), add a little oil or melt some butter over low heat. In a bowl, mix together the flour, eggs, milk and salt. Add enough batter to the heated skillet to form a thin crepe-like pancake. Let the crepe cook until the liquid is no longer runny on top, then turn the crepe over. Both sides of the crepe should be lightly browned.  

Put a couple of tablespoons of the meat mixture into each pancake (crepe). Tuck in the sides and roll up the palacsinta around the filling. Serve the palacsinta with the sour cream sauce over them, or put the filled pancakes into a baking dish, pour the sour cream sauce over them and bake at 350 F for about 12 to 15 minutes, then serve.

 Served with a small green salad of kale, tomato and red onion ....

WORD HISTORY:
Hinder-The ultimate origin of this verb (and sometime adjective) is uncertain, "perhaps" going back to Indo European "kom," which meant, "beside, near, together, by;" but I'm not totally convinced of this. Whatever the source, "hinder" does go back to Old Germanic "hindronan," which meant, "to put to the back, to keep back, to keep to the rear." This gave Old English the verb "hindrian," which meant, "to hold back, to obstruct, to impede or prevent advance." Later condensed to "hinder." The adjective use shows reference to "behind, in the rear, in the back." Other Germanic relatives (verb forms): German has "hindern" (prevent, hamper, impede), Low German Saxon "hinnern" (stop, hold in, hold back), Dutch "hinderen" (hamper, hold back, keep back from), Swedish "hindra" (prevent, keep back, hold in). This was all I could find, but Old Norse seems to have had "hindra" and Frisian once had "hinderia." By the way, German has the derived noun, "Hindernis," meaning, "barrier, obstacle," with the obvious tie to the verb, and English has the noun, "hindrance," originally spelled "hinderance," which dates to the mid 1400s. It is one of those mixed words, with "hinder," an English word derived from Germanic, with the "ance" suffix from French, from Latin "antia/entia." 

Brazilian Salted Tapioca with Ham & Cheese Filling (Tapioca Salgada)

First, "tapioca" is a starch made from cassava root. Cassava is a plant commonly grown in tropical and subtropical parts of South America, especially Brazil, parts of Africa and also southern Asia. Americans and Canadians, also likely the people of Britain, would almost surely think of pudding upon hearing the word "tapioca." The pudding is sweet and usually made with vanilla and pearl tapioca, a form which looks like fish eggs, and the pudding is even commercially produced for sale in supermarkets, typically sold in little tub-like containers. In some parts of the world, however, tapioca is an important starch, often used as flour in cooking. Unlike wheat flour, tapioca is gluten free, an important dietary consideration for people with digestive reactions to gluten, which is a protein in wheat and many other grain products. Tapioca flour, also known as tapioca starch, can be found in Latino markets, or in many supermarkets, often in the Latino/Hispanic section, although I found it in the "gluten free" section of one supermarket.

This recipe is from Brazil, where Portuguese is the language. This is unlike the other countries of South America, and Central America, for that matter, where Spanish is the common language.* The second word of the name of the dish comes from the meaning "salted," from the ham, which like true "country ham," tends to be dry cured by salting, and not necessarily by smoking of the ham. In fact, the Portuguese word for ham, "presunto," is from the same Latin source as "prosciutto," the Italian word for "ham." These are not difficult to make at all, as making the crepe is the only real work to it, and it's not much.

Ingredients (4 servings):

9 to 10 tablespoons of tapioca flour (depending upon your skillet size)
a pinch or 2 of salt
3 to 4 tablespoons of water
8 thin slices of ham (I used the very thin deli sliced ham, and it was smoked, but finding dry cured ham, like prosciutto, is not always easy, and it can be expensive, but if you have it, use it)
4 slices of mozzarella cheese or you can use it shredded
4 teaspoons of ricotta cheese, thinned very slightly with some milk (Brazilians have "requeijão," a type of  creamy cheese
slices of tomato
1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves

Put the tapioca flour/starch into a bowl and mix in a pinch or two of salt. Add 1 tablespoon water at a time and mix lightly, until a sort of crumb or streusel mixture forms. Not all of the starch has to be in one of the clumps, which can vary in size. No rocket science here. It should not be wet or runny AT ALL. Heat a small skillet over medium heat, do not add any oil! Brazilians do the next step right into the skillet, but I used a separate large plate. Use a sieve with relatively small openings and rub the starch clumps through the sieve to reduce the clumps to about the size of fine cornmeal or grits. Add about two + tablespoons or so of the starch mixture to the skillet, making sure to even it out in a round thin layer. Within about 30 seconds, the mixture should begin to meld together into a crepe or thin pancake. Layer on 2 thin slices of the ham, then a slice of mozzarella, then some tomato slices, then drizzle on a teaspoon of the thinned ricotta, and sprinkle on a little oregano. The mozzarella should be melting slightly by then. Fold the crepe over in the skillet. Ready to go. Repeat the process for the others. Serve warm.

* Portuguese and Spanish are both Latin-based languages from the Iberian peninsula in southwestern Europe. They are similar in many ways, and mutually intelligible to "some" degree, more so in writing, and I'm sure speakers of each find it pretty easy to learn the other language. Actually, Portuguese is much closer to Galician, a language of northwestern Spain, although it is perhaps thought by some to be a Spanish dialect.

The top picture shows more of the filling, and the bottom picture a bit more of the tapioca wrap.

WORD HISTORY:
Crepe/Crêpe/Crisp-These closely related words go back to the Indo European root "sker/skre," which had the notion of "bend, turn, twist." This gave Latin "crispus," which meant "curly, wavy," and this was "seemingly" borrowed into Old English directly from Latin, as "crisp," and with the meaning "curly, wavy." Later the meaning began to change to the modern sense of "crackly, brittle," "perhaps" from the idea of some foods being grilled or fried to the point where they, or the skin of meat, "curled, became wavy," which often then resulted in them being "crackly." In England later, the noun form, "crisp/crisps," was used for what Americans call "potato chip(s)." In the meantime, going way back again, Latin "crispus" was inherited by Latin-based Old French as "crespe," with the "curly" meaning. The French later used the term for a thin pancake which "curled" when fried. English borrowed the word as "crepe," still the preferred spelling in American English, but it later also borrowed the modified French form "crêpe," with the "^" mark, called a "circumflex," which is a modern way of showing that there is a missing letter from the original spelling of a word, often an "s."