From Bubbe’s Kitchen: Chicken Paprikash
Image by Liza Schoenfein
By Liza Schoenfein January 17, 2018
I had a beautiful Hungarian grandmother, born Erzsébet Weisz and redubbed Elizabeth Weiss when she and her parents and brother and sister moved to New York from Miskolcz in the 1920s. I called her Nana and she called me darling. (It sounded like dahhrrlink, as if spoken by a brainiac Zsa Zsa Gabor.) Nana said her Ws like Vs and her Vs like Ws, so as she told it, proudly, I vent to Wassar. She had gone to another of the seven sisters, Barnard, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1926, a brand new immigrant who had enrolled only two years earlier, no less. She went on to get a Master’s at Columbia; then taught at Hunter College and later — after being denied tenure for marrying my grandfather — at Horace Mann. She spoke five languages, had perfect skin, and made splendid baby lamb chops and a mean chicken-in-the-pot.
Related
One day, when I was in my early 20s, she taught me how to make palacsinten, the Hungarian version of crêpes, which she filled with either apricot jam or a cottage cheese and raisin mixture, both delicious.
I don’t remember her making paprikash, though I do recall eating it one night at a family dinner — maybe it was her birthday — at a Hungarian restaurant, Mocca, which used to be on the Upper East Side.
When I came across the recipe for roasted chicken paprikash in JCC Manhattan’s “The Community Table: Recipes & Stories From the Jewish Community Center & Beyond,” I was compelled to try it. It tapped a deep well of nostalgia, obviously, but at the same time the dish seemed modern and fresh. I liked that the chicken was roasted, and that I had all the ingredients on hand — the whole thing is really very straightforward. (I happened to have leeks in the fridge, but if I hadn’t I would have substituted onions or shallots rather than running out for them.)
The dish turned out to be more than just a blast from the past — it was deeply flavorful, smoky, earthy and satisfying. The paprika flavor is very strong, but both my kids devoured everything on their plates.
What I like so much about “The Community Table” is that it manages — like Leah Koenig’s “Modern Jewish Cooking” — to maintain clear ties to the classics while feeling firmly placed here in the present. Hungarian though I may (at least partially) be, I didn’t have a go-to paprikash recipe before. I’m pleased to say that I have one now.
Related Recipe:
Liza Schoenfein is food editor of the Forward. Contact her at schoenfein@forward.com. Her personal blog is Life, Death & Dinner
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
