THE HUNT: FIERY DUST
One man’s experiment proves that homemade paprika is tasty but not economically viable. The real payoff, however, is the reminder that the zippy spice should not be shoved to the back of the spice cupboard.
One man’s experiment proves that homemade paprika is tasty but not economically viable. The real payoff, however, is the reminder that the zippy spice should not be shoved to the back of the spice cupboard.
w hen it’s prime time at the farmers’ markets, as it is now, I like to think I know what’s what. But this season I was reminded that there is an entire realm with which I have practically no experience: the huge variety of peppers derived from European strains.
Maybe I’m a snob, in that I favour Mexican and Asian pepper styles, which tend to be considerably more fiery than Euro cultivars. So-called hot banana peppers, for example, have always struck me as feeble. But perhaps I just ate the wrong ones. Experts contend that of the thousands of known chili varieties, the ones often called Hungarian wax display the broadest range of heat signature.
Hungarians, of course, gave us both the word and the product known as paprika. It’s an oddly generic term, however, in that it makes no claim about which pepper it contains. Indeed, there’s not much that’s memorable about the standard little canister of powder found in most Canadian kitchens, whose use seems restricted to sprinkling gingerly over devilled eggs.
But paprika, and its derivative gravy, paprikash, didn’t become essential to central European classics like goulash because it lacks flavour. In Hungary they’ve had nearly three centuries to refine their offerings, and now produce eight recognized grades of paprika. I recently popped into the Hungarian Delicatessen (4008 26th St. S.E.), where I noted that they sell three or four at most. But for $6.95 I bought a house-packaged bag with 200 grams of sweet paprika, and another 100-gram commercial packet said to be hot ($4).
Then I headed to the Crossroads Market and my go-to pepper kiosk, HillTop Farm. The Punjabi growers from Oliver, B.C. sell about 20 varieties, which, on that day, were all priced at $2.49 a pound. That made it easy to buy a mixed bag with a few of each purely for sampling purposes. (The verdict: still “meh.”) But my real mission was to get a larger quantity of two key varieties to dry and pulverize: long, red, sweet peppers that resemble the ones strung everywhere in Hungary at this time of year, and the cherry-tomato variety reputed to be hot. Lacking a dedicated dehydrator, and having been rained out from my earlier plans to build a low-tech solar version, I resorted to using my steel-box smoker with the element plugged in but no wood chips. It took a couple of days under a full sun, but they eventually did get past the leathery stage and into a grindable state.
The bad news is that this exercise proved to be less than financially rewarding. The dried material was one-tenth the weight of the original peppers, meaning producing my own paprika would only be economical if I paid less than $1.50 a pound. And even with my sharpest end-of-day case-lot negotiation, I don’t think I can get there.
Nevertheless, once it emerged from my spice grinder, I had two entirely awesome species of paprika. Compared to the imported Hungarian varieties and a sweet Spanish variety from the cupboard, they have every bit as much flavour, though perhaps an even more floral, fruity nose. I didn’t do side-byside cooking tests, but I’m persuaded that Okanagan paprika could probably fool a European diner.
One positive outcome is that I now have loads of paprika in the house, including a smoked batch that hasn’t quite dried out yet. Which means that we get to eat even more of the dish that ranks as the most perfect autumn comfort food ever conceived: chicken paprikash. A ridiculously simple braise, the classic recipe involves browned, skin-on, chicken quarters, with some tomatoes, lots of yellow onions and, curiously, no garlic. The two keys are a heavy hand with the paprika at the onion-cooking stage, and finishing the stew with sour cream towards the end, remembering to temper the cream first with hot liquid so as to avoid curdling. Serve with nokledi, the Hungarian version of spaetzle.