Tarhonya is a type of
Hungarian pasta, usually glossed
remarkably unintuitively as "
egg barley nuggets". The
egg part
is understandable, as the dough does contain egg, but
barley it
ain't -- tarhonya are made from ordinary (wheat) flour, the
end result just
looks similar to
pearl barley. In these
days of
McDonalds the word "nuggets" also seems
a bit bizarre, although the handmade variety (produced by grating
the dough with a cheese grater) does resemble gold nuggets
if you drink a liter of
Unicum and squint. The mass-produced
factory stuff, on the other hand, looks like dry
spaghetti chopped
into tiny pseudocubes.
Naming aside, tarhonya are used as a substitute for rice,
potatoes or dumplings, especially as an accompaniment to
pörkölt, the beef stew known as goulash in the rest of the world.
The method of preparation differs quite a bit from normal pasta,
but the end result is (IMHO) quite excellent and far superior.
I'll assume you can get your hands on commercial dried tarhonya
-- ubiquitous and ridiculously cheap in Hungary at about
100 Ft/500g, and shouldn't be too difficult to
find in Eastern European groceries -- since
making tarhonya from scratch is (like all fresh pasta)
time-consuming and difficult.
Ingredients
Preparation
- Heat the tarhonya in a pan with oil on low heat, stirring frequently,
until golden brown. (This may take up to 20 minutes; haste makes waste!)
- Add broth and pepper. Simmer until liquid is absorbed, stirring
occasionally. Add more broth or water if necessary.
- Let stand for 10 minutes and serve immediately.
Serves 6-8. You can also spice up the tarhonya by adding some
paprika, a crushed clove of
garlic or some chopped
onions
at the end of the frying. You may also wish to reduce the amount
of oil or substitute some of the broth with water if you find the end
result too greasy/salty, but then again, people on low-fat, low-sodium
diets shouldn't be eating
Hungarian food anyway...