The Good Life in Aggtelek National Park Part XXXIX: Fruit Trees, Holiday Langos and Parasol Mushrooms

This weekend we received 5 fruit trees from Aggtelek National Park's tree nursery, - 2 varieties of plum trees, a summer apple, a winter apple and a greengage. We planted the plums and greengage in the front garden by the wall, the winter apple by the other winter apple that got hit by a truck earlier this year, and the summer apple between the failing summer apple and wild pear trees around the side. We also expanded the bed we used for corn this year and planted raspberries, and dug a new raised bed in the front garden for the strawberries. The strawberries seem like such fragile things, just like the lettuce - but for some reason they are the hardiest and are planted in late autumn. Kata planted the new irises, also from Marika-néni, in a new bed also in the front garden.

The next morning I went on my first solo mushroom hunt. I revisited the places I went with Sanyi last weekend, but with less success. I did not find any wood blewits in the fields, but I took the wooded route on the way back and found 8 nice specimens along with my first true wood blewit (the whole mushroom is purple rather than just the stem), and two huge parasol mushrooms each about a foot across. I thought I had also found my second honey fungus, but after having it checked it turned out to be something inedible. It was not a big haul, but I was still quite pleased with myself. One of my favourite childhood sf authors, Robert A. Heinlein is credited with coining the phrase "There ain't no free lunch," or TANFL, in his book The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966). For 99% of the time this probably holds true, except when you consider mushrooming!

I fried up the wood blewits with garlic and butter for use later in the week, not sure what yet, and also used up the last of our zucchini in a big pot of soup. Krisztian from Bódvaszilas, host of the annual Cabbage Festival, kindly sent us the recipe for their holiday langos, or leavened sweet langos made with the entirety of our small cabbage crop. See recipe below - but you might want to cut it in half. We did not have enough cabbage, so we supplemented the filling with grated apples. While the holiday langos was baking in the oven, Kata broke each of the parasols into 8 sections and breaded them in a kind of spicy pancake batter and fried them up. Dinner was accompanied by a nice Nero D'avola Rosé.

Holiday/Leavened Sweet Langos

Ingredients
(for the dough)

1 kg flour
3 dl milk
4 dkg sugar
5 dkg yeast
1 dl cooking oil OR 10 dkg butter
2 eggs

(for the filling)
3 kg cabbage
1 Tb lard or cooking oil
15 dkg sugar
3 coffee spoons ground cinnamon
1 coffee spoon salt

In a large warm bowl, mix the sugar, milk and yeast and let sit until bubbles form. Add an egg, the cooled melted butter or oil, and slowly mix in the flour. Let sit in a warm place to rise for about 45 minutes. Meanwhile, grate the cabbage and fry in some oil until it begins to brown. When it has cooled, add the sugar and cinnamon.

Flour a large board, divide the dough into 4-6 parts and roll out into pieces about 25cm in diameter. Place the filling in the middle and then fold in the dough from four sides. Place the "packets" on a baking sheet and let rise for another 15 minutes before basting with beaten egg and placing in a preheated 180 C oven for about 20 minutes or until brown. Sift powdered sugar over the top, if desired.

The Bódvaszilas Friendship Circle produced this beautiful cookbook with the above Gömör-Torna traditional recipe and many more.