What the Sonkás Kocka?

What the heck is Sonkás Kocka, anyway? Start your own Dinner Club, like we did, and maybe you’ll find out! I’m kidding. Of course I’m going to share with you! 

Sonkás Kocka happens to be the dish I’m preparing for our next Dinner Club (see our full menu posted below). We’re also dining on Stefánia Szelet – wait for it – and cold sour cherry soup. Sounds like a whole lot of weird to you? Well, it may be weird, but we’ve found over the years that weird sure can be delicious! 

We’ll be enjoying Hungarian food for our Dinner Club gathering this month! A couple in our group was inspired to host this ethnic exploration while on a trip overseas with family. They visited Budapest while on their trip and truly enjoyed the food they experienced there. They wanted to share a small sampling with those of us who haven’t been to Hungary (namely, everyone else in our group!).

My dish, Sonkás Kocka, is a side dish that is basically a baked pasta dish with smoked ham. It is held together with a rich combination of egg yolk and sour cream and includes the beaten egg whites that are folded in just before baking to make it lighter and airier. 

My portion of the meal accompanies our entrée, the Stefánia Szelet, which sounds strange and mysterious until you discover that it is Hungarian meatloaf. Not so weird after all, huh? Meatloaf, pasta, ham, sour cream…. Certainly not “out there” ingredients, yet new to our taste buds when paired together. 

Here’s a little tidbit of the information quoted directly from www.wikipedia.org  on Hungarian cooking preferences: 

“Hungarians are especially passionate about their soups, desserts and pastries and stuffed pancakes (palacsinta), with fierce rivalries between regional variations of the same dish, (like the Hungarian hot fish soup called Fisherman's Soup or halászlé, cooked differently on the banks of Hungary's two main rivers: the Danube and the Tisza). 

Other famous Hungarian dishes would be Paprikás (paprika stew, meat simmered in thick creamy paprika gravy) served with nokedli (small dumplings), gulyás (goulash), palacsinta (pancakes served flambéed in dark chocolate sauce filled with ground walnuts) and Dobos Cake (layered sponge cake, with chocolate buttercream filling and topped with a thin caramel slice).

Two remarkable elements of Hungarian cuisine that are hardly noticed by locals, but usually conjure up much enthusiasm amongst foreigners, are different forms of vegetable stews called főzelék[1] as well as cold fruit soups, like cold sour cherry soup (Hungarian: hideg meggyleves). 

Meat stews, casseroles, steaks, roasted pork, beef, poultry, lamb or game and the Hungarian sausages (kolbász[1]) and winter salami are a major part of Hungarian cuisine. Various kinds of noodles and dumplings, potatoes and rice are commonly served as a side dish. 

Hungarian food is often spicy, due to the common use of hot paprika. Sweet (mild) paprika is also common. Additionally, the combination of paprika, lard and yellow onions is typical of Hungarian cuisine,[3] and the use of the thick sour cream called tejföl.” 

Possibly the most unusual dish in our menu is the cold sour cherry soup, but according to my research on the internet, including the passage quoted above, this is, in fact, a very traditional dish in Hungary. I am perfectly fine with cold soups. Last year we had a cold champagne strawberry soup for one of our Dinner Clubs that was divine, and even those who typically don’t prefer cold soup (my husband, for example) enjoyed it very much. We’ll see this time. I can’t wait to give it a try! New taste combinations and new ways of pairing foods are part of the Dinner Club experience! 

Again, our full menu is below. You’ll find we’ve tried to be quite true to the traditional dishes and flavor combinations that we discovered in our research and what I quoted above. Many of the aforementioned food preferences are represented. It’s sure to whisk us away to a new (and weird?) land!