This weekend I tried my hand at a recipe from World Vegetarian Food by Cecilia Brooks-Brown. It’s called Houby Paprikas, or Mushroom Paprika, and is originally from Hungary.

The recipe caught my eye because it uses dill, which I have a major food crush on. I can’t get enough of its fresh, almost aniseed, fragrance or its delicate, beautiful fern-like leaves.

Unfortunately, I don’t have much of a dill repertoire. I either use it in potato salads or it wilts on my kitchen window sill. I’ve always known that such a beautiful herb could really make a dish, but its distinctive flavour and fiddly texture makes me chicken out of adding it to dishes on a whim.

Ingredients

1 brown onion, diced
margarine
450g mixed mushrooms, chopped in large chunks
1 tbsp of fresh, Hungarian paprika
Pinch of cayenne pepper
1 cup of sour cream or creme fraiche
3 tbsp of fresh dill leaves, finly chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Method

Melt the margarine in a large saucepan over a low heat. Add the onion and cook until its translucent.

Add the mushrooms, season with salt and pepper to taste, then increase the heat and stir. The mushrooms will hiss and pop and lose their moisture. Let this moisture evaporate to concentrate the flavour. The speed at which this happens will depend on the mushrooms.

Add the paprika and cayenne and fry briefly until the paprika change colour. Add the sour cream and dill, cook for about five minutes, then serve.

Notes on the recipe

• First, the good news. This dish tasted good! The combination of dill, sour cream and paprika worked well.
• Now the confession: what I made looked nothing like the photo in the cook book. It’s meant to end up looking like sauteed mushrooms with a dusting of paprika. Mine came out more like a stroganoff. I think its because I used less mushrooms that the original recipe but forgot to adjust the sour cream. I apologise to Hungarians for committing a sacrilege with your national dish.
• Apparently chanterelles are traditionally used in this recipe, but Celia suggests a mix of wild and cultivated mushrooms. I used standard white mushrooms as I already had them lying around in the fridge.
• The mushrooms are meant to be served over rice, pasta or noodles. I coudn’t help myself and served them over mashed potatoes instead.

Dill

• The origins of dill are unclear, but it’s thought to come from the Mediterranean or west Asia.
• Dill is used in both its fresh and dried form. Dill seeds and dill oil are also used in food preparation as well.
• Dill is normally paired with potatoes or cucumber.
• In medieval times it was used to ward off witchcraft. It’s also thought to ward off flatulence. How convenient.

Read more here, here and here.
OK, so I’m officially hooked on Weekend Herb Blogging, kindly hosted this week by Glenda of a Fridge Full of Food.

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