This article is taken from the July 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

Vainglory, not gluttony, took me to Budapest. The government esteems the Magyar Külügyi Intézet, the Institute of International Affairs. So the invitation to give lectures and seminars made me hope I might do some good. The Institute was full of learning and vibrancy. To go to the opera was like being locked in a jewel casket: plush and intimate, yet grand and glorious (though an over-zealous director managed to make Boris Godunov irrational but unexotic). 

Other highlights of the trip were slabs of goose liver piled on the cakes of fried dough that Hungarians favour, heaps of peppery tripe with marrow fat, soup stiff with roe and lumps of carp, schnitzels cut from a Mangalica pig (a half-wild beast peculiar to Hungary), abundant boar and venison, the soft round egg noodles they call galuska, with sour cream and curds or onions and crispy bacon, and the ubiquitous paprika that brightens sauces everywhere except in Visegrád, where an ultra-purist restaurateur bans it as an intrusive innovation, which arrived in Hungary only in the sixteenth century.

Hungarian food, in short, is honest-to-goodness, undesecrated by fashion or fusion, unmodified by pretension and indifferent to the finicky aesthetics of celebrity cuisine. It embodies the values of unerring tradition, national pride and cosily united families that Viktor Orbán has turned into a successful political formula. 

In consequence, it has lost the prestige that once made Csárda and The Gay Hussar haunts of Soho cognoscenti, boho aristocracy and bien-pensants. I decided to try to imitate it or at least appropriate its principles for a dish of my own.

In some ways the ideal food to adapt is paprika chicken or chicken paprika: Hungarians, generally typified by neighbourly solidarity (perhaps because they are surrounded by more numerous Slavs and Germans and distinguished by a language no one else understands), bicker fiercely over it. 

Does it matter whether you mention paprika first or second? Should flakes of chicken strew the noodles, which are so small and soft they require constant stirring to deter coagulation, or should a whole grilled breast top them? Should scorching pepperiness predominate, or sour cream mollify the sauce?

To preserve my neutrality, I decide to focus on venison. Peppery garnishes suit most game and I have a notion that goulash would be enhanced by substituting the conventional beef. 

In its homeland, gulyás is a hearty, highly savoury broth, but I see it as the inspiration for a potentially thick, rich gravy, enlivened with slugs of Bull’s Blood — the wine that is said to have fortified Magyars to save Christendom by fighting off Turks — and with crême fraiche paying tribute to Hungarian sour cream (which may be too acidic and runny for the effect I have in mind). 

I anticipate, too, opportunities to adapt another Hungarian oddity: slambuc, a mess of noodles and potatoes, which, according to tradition, the cook must stir 32 times for the perfect consistency — once for each playing-card in piquet. The urge to find roles for popular garnishes — pickled hot green peppers, crispy little lardons and beetroot or red cabbage — is irresistible. 

And though in Hungary poppy seeds are always postponed to the pudding course, when they spill out of pastries like shot from a locker, I want them among my ingredients.

I forego my principle (exclusive dedication to olive oil) and use lard, à l´hongroise, to sear strips of flour-drenched venison and make a slow, thick soffrito of finely chopped onions, tomatoes, garlic and unrestrainedly abundant sweet paprika, with a pinch each of cinnamon, muscovado sugar and peppercorns, before stirring in wine and rich stock, in which the venison simmers till tender, topped up as necessary. 

The blending of the crême fraiche and adjusting of the seasoning are best left until just before serving. 

Slambuc demands the Hungarian lebbencs noodle if available, but any thin, flat, eggy pasta will do. Hungarians shove lebbencs in the oven, but a swirl in hot bacon fat, with more paprika, suffices, before a brisk boil-up with potatoes already half-way to collapse. Sprinkled with poppy seeds and crisp lardons and accompanied by the pickles and red cabbage or beetroot, the slambuc complements the venison. 

As Magyar food, the dish of my devising combines gravity with tradition, but is cheekily unorthodox. So are the playful extemporisations of Hungarian gypsy violinists and the innovative politics of Mr Orbán. I am thinking of calling it Venison Fidesz.