Guest Post: Tales From Hungary

My best friend of many years has been living it up in Budapest for the past several months, working as a Bulgarian head-hunter (yeah, I know -- what??). I asked him if he'd be interested in doing a guest post, thinking maybe he'd whip up some authentic Hungarian goulash or other local dish. He obliged, but the meal? Italian pasta. Hey, I'm not here to judge! I'm here to eat. John's story is as follows, yoinked from his LiveJournal:

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So when you find something like "homemade Italian pasta" fresh from Italy... you know you have to buy it. You might not know what the hell you're going to do with it, but you have to get it anyway. You'll figure the rest out later. If someone offered you a 30 carat diamond for $5 bucks, would you know what to do with it? Would you know where to sell it? Probably not. In a food related vein, I bought the pasta.

I may not have done it justice, but it was delicious. So... while it may not be exactly a recipe to repeat easily, I think you should be prepared to try, should you come across it. That... and it was so ridiculously delicious that I wanted to brag about it. Deal.

So first... I went to see if I had onions... and MAN I had onions. But... they weren't the most useful ones:

So I got new onions... Then the pasta made an appearance:


Sadly this was just for me. I have more left over so... there will be more made hopefully including others along with the pasta.

Next... I cut up an onion (one that wasn't practically flowering)


Then... then came the garlic.


I thought it would be better with a red pepper... but I didn't have one. I did however have a green one. It was still pretty awesome:


Then I put the onions, garlic, and peppers in a pan with some olive oil:


I only have a gas stove. If you use one, beware, they heat up waaaaay quicker than electric ones. I have some experiences with omelets that went seriously awry:


mmmmmMMMMMMMmmmm grill that stuff gooooooood:


I wanted to put on some parmesan cheese, but I was foiled. I couldn't find any. So... I got some random ass cheese (it was in Hungarian... who knows what it is?) but... let me stress this... it was AWESOME.


While all of this was going on, I boiled that pasta.


and a side of bread and butter needed to happen too


Finished product?


and with it all mixed in:


It was awesome. One of the best dinners I've had since coming to Europe. I done made it myself. One recommendation: make sure if you use this method that you use a lot of oil or butter because the cheese melted and turned the supposed pasta into more of a casserole consistency. Now, I don't care too much, because it was delicious, but people with better taste in food might.

Thanks to Teirk for the posting... Also thanks to her for teaching me how to cook. So... y'know... I can feed myself out here.