Gala dinner for EU and US Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs

The gala dinner for EU ministers and US department secretaries of Justice and Home Affairs, was hosted at the National Museum on 14 April 2011. The building had been erected in Classicist style between 1837 and 1847. It was designed by acclaimed architect Mihály Pollack and founded by Count Ferenc Széchenyi, who petitioned Emperor Francis I in 1802, to grant permission to present the Hungarian nation with the Hungarian section of his family collection held at Nagycenk. That date is now recognised as the date of foundation of the museum.

The dinner party of around eighty invitees convened in the banquet hall of the National Museum, the former venue for the House of Lords of the 1848 Parliamentary Assembly, which continued to work in this building, before the Parliament building was completed. The banquet hall is a richly decorated, imposing room lined with paintings. Sparkling wine, orange juice, mineral water, finger food and scones were served, to receive the European and American guests upon arrival at the building, which was decorated with murals by Károly Lotz, Mór Than and other high-ranking 19th century painters.

Selected members of the Danube Symphonic Orchestra, a 1961 formation, provided colourful and highly successful entertainment for the dinner party, in the Cupola Room of the Museum. The repertoire of the ensemble spans the periods and styles of European music from Baroque to contemporary compositions.

After the concert, the guests were ushered into the adjoining banquet hall, where tables had been laid. Piroska Bakos, spokesperson for the Hungarian Presidency, greeted the invitees and gave the floor to Tibor Navracsics, Minister of Public Administration and Justice, and Sándor Pintér, Minister of the Interior, to toast the guests.

The wines of the dinner were selected from the Pannon Wine Region, particularly from the Villány and Pécs wine districts. The Pannon wine region produces both whites and reds. Typical international varieties include cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc with chardonnay and rhine reisling, dominating the white varieties, along with traditional Hungarian white grapes, such as olaszrizling or hárslevelű. The wine sub-regions include Villány, Szekszárd Tolna and Pécs. Their overall territory is approximately 29 thousand hectares, of which 9 thousand hectares are currently in production.

Wines and Dishes of the Gala Dinner

The wine: Noblesse Serena 2009 (Csaba Malatinszky, Villány)

This new white was fermented with reductive technology in steel tanks at controlled temperature from grapes selected from a slope of partly organic cultivation. It is a blend of popular international varieties, including chardonnay (55%), rhine reisling (40%) and muscat ottonel (5%). On the nose, it is dominated by flowers with a hint of citrus and traces of green herbs. Vibrant fresh acids, fine mineral character and a lingering finish. Noblesse Serena 2009 is a well-balanced wine with a definite structure, noticeably carrying the kind features of sauvignon blanc.

The entrée: Matured fillet of catfish with kohlrabi salad

European catfish (Silurus glanis), is becoming more and more popular in Hungarian gastronomy, which is also justified by the gala dinners hosted by the Hungarian Presidency of the EU. The fish was flavoured with salt and lemon, prepared under vacuum, then cut into cubes. Fresh kohlrabi was scalded briefly and tossed in a dressing made of onions, vinegar and lemon juice, to get the kohlrabi salad, which was ladled onto the cubes of fish. The salad was also topped with fruit mousse. Olive tapanede, made of olives and a morsel of smoked stream trout was also set next to the cube. Below the fish, a line was drawn across the plate in fluffy sea salt coloured with beetroot.

The soup: Clarified Palóc Soup with dill

The very first Palóc Soup was prepared in honour of Kálmán Mikszáth next to the Academy at Archduke Stephen Hotel in 1892. The chef was János Gundel. The soup has since faded almost into oblivion, only to get revived by the chef’s son, Károly Gundel in 1934, in a manner described by Elek Magyar. In the spring of that year, the contest for festive pig slaughtering dinners of restaurant operators, had hardly ended when Károly Gundel summoned an adjudication board to join him for a meal. The revived soup that his father had dreamt up was well received and praised yet again.

The soup is best if made out of the leg and shoulder of wither or mutton. The original recipe instructs that you start to make goulash with onions, lard and red paprika; and at the same time parboil potatoes and green beans in water, or better still in vegetable or meat stock. Add the vegetables and sufficient stock to the meat and bountiful drops of excellent sour cream, to get a hearty Palóc soup. That is how Károly Gundel prepared his variety of this soup.

Clarified Palóc soup is a version of what is described above, minus the sour cream, as indicated by the epithet, in its name: clarified. To clarify soup, you need egg whites: this being the traditional method since the 17th century. The soup for the gala dinner was made of young lamb and it also preserved some of the colours of the paprika. The main course, paprika chicken, was one of the reasons why the clarified version of the soup had been chosen.

The wine: Kopár 2007 (Attila Gere)

Kopár is the most recognised wine of the Villány wine district. The name of the wine derives from one of Villány’s premium slopes (Kopár), a site with a truly favourable micro-climate owing to its western-most location, which offers protection from northerly winds, also indicated by buds bursting open in the early spring here, than anywhere else in Villány. Kopár 2007 is similar in composition to Kopár 2006, but it has just a few dashes more of cabernet sauvignon. It is a blend of 50 percent cabernet franc, 40 percent merlot and 10 percent cabernet sauvignon. The wine has been fermented, both in wooden vessels and containers. Most of it (60 percent) was held in medium-burnt 225 litre oak, and the remainder in large storage casks to age for another 16 months. This excellent vintage has complexity, good structure, harmony, plenty of substance and good longevity. This particular wine possesses an excellent vintage year on the label.

The main course: Paprika chicken with strudel-layered curd cheese noodles

Although any meat can be used for making ‘pörkölt’ (Hungarian stew), nowadays - to make a subtle distinction - this kind of dish is only called ‘pörkölt’ if it is only made with red meat; mostly beef, mutton, pork or venison (deer, roe or wild boar). The only exception is cock-a-doodle, symbol of masculinity, which no man with a sense of gastronomy would ever chance to refer to as ‘paprikás’. This may be reminiscent of the fact that it was a man’s job to make pörkölt for fellow men, during the late 18^th century and the dish merged with sexuality at birth. Even though treated as synonyms for a long time, the terms ‘pörkölt’ and ‘paprikás’, have taken on slightly more sophisticated and distinct meanings, with the latter denoting food made of younger animals (veal, lamb), poultry (chicken, turkey) or fish (catfish, sterlet) and mellowed with sour (or sweet) cream, as it has been customary since the late 19^th century.

There is a slight masculine/feminine overtone to what sort of meat lends itself to making ‘paprikás’ as opposed to ‘pörkölt’. “Masculine” and “feminine” features are simultaneously present in the case of the rabbit, our pagan symbol of Easter, which explains why it is perfectly legitimate to use either of the two names in this context.

The “paprika chicken” of the gala dinner was made of brown fillet, served in a roll of bacon on top of paprika sauce. Curd cheese noodles make a simple dish, but simplicity is also the key to its magnificence. Called ‘csusza’ in Hungarian, the small noodles are a good match for any pasta. Although ‘csusza’ is quite similar to Italian lasagne, it is put to good use mostly (and partly to everyone’s surprise) in another way and form. Prepared for the gala dinner, this variety reminded the observer of the Italian cousin. Talking about the Italian peer, it is worth mentioning that the emergence of curd cheese and sour cream as additives to Hungarian pasta dishes in the late 18th century is indicative of the weakening influence of cheese dominated Italian cooking. Paprika chicken and strudel layered curd cheese noodles merged in a fine embrace.

The wine: Szajki Cirfandli 2007 (Hárs Cellars, Szajk)

This sub-region is located on the southern slopes of the Mecsek Hills, whose east-to-west ranges offer protection from northerly winds and on the sides of hills along the Danube. The area covers a total of 7,000 hectares but hardly 10% is currently in production. The climate is sub-Mediterranean in character. This is one of Hungary’s warmest sub-regions, with the longest growing cycle. It has medium precipitation and is rather short of water. The soil is various, typically including limestone formations on substrates of sand, degraded limestone, marl and loess. Szajki Cirfandli 2007 was made of grapes, harvested from an organically farmed vineyard on the slopes of Szajk, which is adjacent to the Villány wine district. Cirfandli is only grown in the neighbourhood of Pécs in Hungary. This wine has a pleasant golden yellow colour, and intensive scent of fruit and flowers on the nose and integrated acids and sweetness. This exciting wine shows harmony and has a long after-taste.

Chocolate cream with cardamom jelly was served for dessert. Chocolate cream (ganache) originates from around 1850, when the Swiss and the French discovered when mixing chocolate with hot cream, while keeping the ratio mostly at 2:1 or 1:1, yields a new and tasty quality to be used as icing or in truffle; or even to make mousse. This chocolate cream or ganache formed the basis of the dessert of the gala dinner, integrating a host of other flavours, including strawberries, hazelnuts and mint. Kept at room temperature this piquant dessert holds well.

Following the dessert, black currant palinka (Matheus Palinka Distillery, Ököritófülpös) was also served with the coffee. The Franciscan monks who used to inhabit the estates of the Beregszász Abbey in the 16th century, had already used the fruit harvested in the floodplains of the Tisza, Túr and Szamos rivers to brew palinka. The brew served this time, was distilled using the recipe of those Franciscan monks to turn into alcohol, the fruit grown in the black currant plantation of Bózsva, a settlement established near the Hungarian-Slovakian border during the period of the Árpád Dynasty. The drink was matured in wood. It is a highly pure, pleasantly fiery potion with the peculiar tart aroma of ripe fruit on the nose and also on the palate.

Sándor Csíki