Grandma can dish it out
Hungarian Paprika Chicken
From an appealing new collection of recipes titled Grandma’s German Cookbook comes this lively treatment of cut-up chicken. Bell peppers, chili pepper, paprika and cayenne are combined with garlic, tomatoes and sour cream to make the sauce. Authors are two Hamburg women, Linn Schmidt and Birgit Hamm, who collected favourite recipes from six grandmothers or their descendants. This dish is from Hamm’s Hungarian grandmother. The book is published by DK/Tourmaline and costs $24.
Serves 4
3 tablespoons vegetable oil 1 broiler-fryer chicken, cut in 8 pieces, or 4 chicken legs, halved, and 2 half chicken breasts, bone in, about 3 pounds 1 red bell pepper, cut in chunks 1 green bell pepper, cut in chunks 1 large onion, chopped 2 cloves garlic, chopped Salt and freshly ground pepper 1 dried chili pepper (optional) 3 tablespoons sweet Hungarian paprika 1 tablespoon cayenne pepper 1 can (28 ounces) whole tomatoes, with juice 3/4 cup sour cream 1 teaspoon cornstarch Hot cooked egg noodles
Heat oil in a large, heavy frying pan over mediumhigh heat and brown chicken on all sides. Add peppers, onion, garlic, salt and pepper, stirring to combine ingredients. Crumble chili pepper and stir into pan along with paprika and cayenne pepper. Cut up the tomatoes and stir them into chicken mixture along with their juice. Lower heat, cover, and cook gently for about 40 minutes or until chicken is tender to the fork. Mix together the sour cream and cornstarch and stir into sauce. Raise heat and stir until mixture comes to a boil and sauce has thickened. Serve with noodles.