Instructions
Growing up with a Hungarian father meant that my cultural connection to paprika was always going to be strong.
That rich, red powder, so spicy and aromatic, was the flavour of lunch at my grandmother’s place. Truth be told, Alice wasn’t much of a cook. She had developed a bond with a local Turkish kebab shop that flowed more strongly than her cooking oil.
But even she found a myriad of uses for paprika. Sprinkled onto meats, into sandwiches, stewed into goulash, or just stirred into Hussein’s take-away hummous. She managed to Hungarianise Turkish food. Quite a feat really.
But Alice was right to celebrate paprika. Not only is it the national flavour of Hungary, but this remarkable ingredient has transformed the food of Spain, India, the Middle east, and even modern French kitchens.
In essence, paprika is simply ground dried capsicums. But a deeper range of complexity exists just under the surface. The surface of the capsicum, that is. You see the capsicum family (Solinacae, related to eggplants and tomatoes) comes in a wide varieties of colours, flavours and intensities. It’s heat level, derived from the chemical capsaicin, also ranges from unnoticeably mild, to terrifyingly painful.
When dried, these intrinsic characteristics of the capsicums are concentrated. So light becomes sweet, rich becomes strong, and hot becomes searing. When the capsicums are dried in the traditional way (slowly in the sun) their nutritional values are all maintained, making paprika one of the world’s richest sources of vitamin C.
Hungarian paprika is famously sweet, and fire-truck red. The hotter a paprika is, the more orange its colour.
Spanish paprika is called pimenton, and it’s uniquely flavoured owing to the smoking method used to dry it. Oak or hickory shavings are placed over smouldering coals with the split capsicums on a wire griddle above. The capsicums take 4-6 hours to dry, after which they have the perfect aroma of a barbecue. It is this perfume that has come to define the flavour of Spain.
I still cook with plenty of paprika. Sometimes Spanish, sometimes Hungarian. Actually, I’m growing my own Hungarian peppers now. I picked the first crop just the other day, and dried them slowly in the sun. Now on my kitchen windowsill there’s a small jar, glowing red when the morning sun spills in. And its little label reads – Paprika for Alice. I’m sure she would have loved it.
Spanish-scented mulloway with potato tortilla and olives