Lecsó or Lecho Recipe

erikah(83)

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It's time to get back to posting more regularly, although my schedule got more crowded, instead of getting lighter. I'm not complaining because I love what I do and the new entries in my schedule are things that will benefit me greatly. I just need to have a better time management to have time for everything I want and have time to rest as well as I'm failing that miserably.

Today I brought a traditional Hungarian recipe for you, a dish that I have a love-hate relationship with.

Lecsó (English: Lecho, Hungarian: lecsó; Czech and Slovak: lečo; German: Letscho; Ukrainian: лечо; Polish: leczo; and Russian: лечо) is a Hungarian thick vegetable ragout or stew which traditionally contains yellow pointed peppers, tomato, onion, salt, and ground sweet and/or hot paprika as a base recipe. The onions and peppers are usually sauteed in lard, bacon fat, or sunflower oil. Garlic can also be a traditional ingredient. It is also considered to be traditional food in Czech, Slovak and former Yugoslavian cuisine and is also very common in Poland and Austria.

Most Hungarian recipes recommend the mildest variant of Hungarian wax pepper, which are in season August–October which is also when field tomatoes are at their best. Other recipes suggest using both bell pepper and banana pepper as alternatives. source

Most likely this dish is known for many of you and I bet it has a countless number of version throughout Europe and not only.

This dish used to be a regular at the table, but a few years something happened, after which I could not even look at it, let alone eat is. Years have passed since then and this year I thought I would give it a try and cook this vegetable stew the way my mom used to, with a bit of deviation.

The good thing about it is that the key ingredients are basic veggies you can find at any market, doesn't need a lot of work and it is ready in no time. There are endless variations out there and for ages we only had the basic one, but this time I added some sausage as well, to make it richer.

Ingredients for four servings:

1 big tomato, or two smaller one,
1 white bell pepper,
3 onions (one white, one yellow, one purple),
3 big potatoes,
300g sausage,
200g rice,
5 clove garlic,
1 tsp salt,
2 tsp red paprika powder,
1 pinch of black pepper
3 tbs olive oil.

Method:

The cooking of this dish is very simple, but first let me answer the obvious question you possibly have in your mind. I mean why I am using 3 types of onion and if it is really necessary. The answer is not necessary, but I like to do it because each type of onion has a different flavor and mixing all three gives a dish a nicer flavor.

First I sliced the pepper, the onions and the sausage. Then heated the olive oil in the pan, added the previously mentioned ingredients and sauted till the pepper seemed soft.

If you're using sausage that has more fat than mine, you can add less oil and let the sausage let out the oil.

Next I added the paprika powder, salt, pepper, potatoes and rice and water to cover. The tricky thing here is the amount of water you add as this is a stew, not soup. Usually I know how much I need to add, but this time I added a bit more, so some corrective move was needed.

But before that, I added the tomatoes. It's important to add the tomatoes last as it can make the veggies harder.

As I said earlier, somehow I added more water than necessary and as a corrective move, I added this pasta, which is for fish soup, hoping it would absorb the excess water, which it did.

And here's the result. I must admit, I was quite satisfied with the result and chances are , this will not be the only occasion this year, when I cooked lecsó.

The good thing about this recipe is that the variation of veggies you can use is endless. You can use eggplants, squash, carrots and God knows what else.

I hope you like it.

Let me know if you know this dish or if you've heard of it.