Túrós Csusza

You can take the boy out of America, but you clearly can’t take the America out of the boy.

I was telling Rick about something, who can remember what, I talk a LOT, when the Hungarian cheese túró came up. It’s a kind of vague soft white cheese with a vague sour note. I think. I’m a little vague on all my soft white cheeses. Imagine cream cheese but not as firm, or sour cream but not as runny, or cottage cheese but not as curdy. (Really…”curdy”?)

Anyway, I told Rick that the Hungarians make a very simple dinner for children or drunks with noodles, bacon, and túró, “kind of like macaroni and cheese.”

“I LOVE macaroni and cheese,” he interrupted, like I didn’t already know that. “Make it for me,” he demanded, which I was not expecting.

In my mind—a pretty busy place on a normal day—I thought, “Pffft,* noodles, túró, sour cream, and bacon…how hard could it be?” I mean the hardest thing about it seemed to be just pronouncing it, túrós csusza.

Well, it turns out that it wasn’t just noodles, cheese, meat, and Hungarian pronunciation** that I needed to worry about. The place we were staying in had a dearth of useful pots and pans. Or really any pots and pans at all.

But I’d already bought all the ingredients and had nothing else to do with my evening. So, armed with Google Translate and a wildly misplaced sense of confidence, I rolled up my sleeves to get started.

Boiling the pasta was easy. I mean, it was the wrong pasta but it’s what they had at the store. Honestly, how important is pasta to, well, a, well, pasta dish anyway. Whatever. Shaking it off, I pressed ever onward.

Frying the bacon was actually easy. We’re American. We know from bacon. Adding the túró is when things started to get dicey. Was it supposed to be lumpy? Was it supposed to be that tart? Why was it so boring?

I just kept stirring.

And then, in a surprise move that would distress Hungarian mothers everywhere, I added some Aleppo pepper. And some mustard. It wasn’t common or even really acceptable*** but this mess needed something to liven it up.

The result was, well, an interesting mix of textures and flavors. The túró melted into creamy curds and the bacon added a delicious crunch. And the sour cream added a welcome tartness.

Rick dug right in. He even managed a second helping. I liked it, for sure, but I wish it looked better on my plate. It was more noodle pudding than the understated savory masterpiece I was aiming for.

Did it taste like authentic Hungarian túrós csusza? I'm going to say probably not. But it was a fun night in the kitchen. And isn't that what cooking is all about?

I’ve included the recipe here, just in case you find yourself in a poorly equipped Hungarian kitchen battling an overwhelming need for cheese and noodles. Remember—the journey is as important as the destination. And when all else fails, there's always bacon.

*I say “pffft” to myself in my mind more often than you might think. And “pffft” is merely an approximate spelling. Sometimes there are more Fs and other times there are more Ts.

**As I have repeatedly said to Rick—sometimes calmly and sometimes screaming as we speed past a key freeway exit—“Hungarian is completely phonetic, so if you know what a word sounds like, you can spell it.” Well, Rick can occasionally have difficulty spelling “phonetic,” and, to be fair, it’s true that Hungarian has 42 letters in their alphabet, as he has repeatedly pointed out to me—sometimes calmly and sometimes screaming as we speed past a key freeway exit. It turns out that just casually saying, “We need to turn right on Szentharomság utca and then loop around to get to Boldogasszony sugárút” does not always result in instant comprehension. Phonetics be damned.

***I know this to be true because I texted my friend Ági that I’d added mustard and Aleppo, along with a picture of my túrós csusza. She told me later that her mother looked at it and turned away abruptly, crying softly.

Túrós Csusza

 Serves: 4

14 ounces (400g) pasta, preferably fresh lasagna noodles, torn into large pieces

3/4 pound (350g) grams bacon, diced

16 ounces (450g) full fat túró cheese (or substitute cottage cheese or farmer’s cheese)

1 cup sour cream

2 Tablespoons prepared brown mustard

1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preheat broiler.

Start the bacon in a cold oven-proof skillet. Set the skillet over medium heat and add about a 1/2 cup of water. Cook until the water has completely evaporated, and the bacon has crisped and rendered its fat. Transfer the cooked bacon bits to a paper towel-lined plate to drain, and set aside, keeping the rendered fat in the skillet.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to package instructions. When the pasta is ready, drain it, reserving a cup of the hot pasta water.

Toss the cooked pasta into the skillet with the hot bacon fat over medium heat and toss to coat. Add about the túró (or other cheese), 2/3 of the sour cream, brown mustard, Aleppo pepper, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir until combined.

Place the skillet under the broiler and cook until the exposed edges of the pasta brown slightly and the túró just begins to melt.

Top with remaining sour cream and bacon bits. Serve hot with crusty bread.

Notes:

Adding water keeps the heat gentle and consistent so the bacon stays moist and tender as the fat renders. Bonus—the water method also reduces splatter on your stovetop as the bacon finishes in the pan. You can, of course, simply fry the diced bacon on its own like our grandmothers and great-grandmothers have been since time immemorial. Or at least since sliced bacon was invented.

posted June 2, 2023