Kitchen Efficiency Part Two, We Cooked with Chef Richárd Farkas

Wild garlic soup with pine-smoked quail egg - wild duck breast with ham, pumpkin seeds and flowering herb

Ingredients:

• 1.5l vegetable stock
• 100g wild garlic
• 3-4 yellow potatoes
• 2 red onions
• salt, pepper
• 1 wild duck breast
• 8 quail eggs
• 100g pumpkin seeds
• a few flowering herb blossoms

Instructions:

1. First, we prepare the vegetable stock. We place the vegetables in cold water and simmer for 30 minutes from boiling. We do not season with salt or spices! Let it cool and then strain it.
2. For the wild garlic soup, sauté the halved red onions and diced potatoes in oil.
3. Cover with stock. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Blanche the wild garlic, meaning boil it in rapidly boiling water for 1 minute, then transfer to ice-cold water. This gives us a beautiful vibrant green color and a less peppery garlic flavor.
5. When the potatoes in the stock are tender, add the wild garlic and blend. Taste and season the soup if necessary.
6. Clean the wild duck breast, season with salt and pepper, and sear thoroughly in a hot pan.
7. Boil the quail eggs in hot water for 2 minutes, then peel.
8. Smoke the duck breast and eggs.
9. For the soup garnish, roast the pumpkin seeds and blend half of them with a teaspoon of pumpkin seed oil to create a cream.
10. Serve with freshly picked flowers.

Kitchen Tips to Waste Nothing

Stock You Can Make from "Almost Anything" and Use Anytime:

This is a real Kitchen Efficiency tip: you can make stock from almost any leftover, trimmed, or less attractive vegetable scraps, such as: bell pepper cores, tomato stems, celery ends, carrot ends, leek stems, onion skins, outer cabbage leaves, parsley stems. Just make sure everything that goes into it is thoroughly washed. Do not season with salt or spices! (this is important because this way you can use it for anything later. If you season it now, your options become limited) Let it cool and strain it. Stored in containers or bags, it keeps well in the freezer and you can "enrich" any further cooking with it, whether it's soup, stew, ragù, or sauce.

The Art of Preservation:

Vacuum sealing food: Vacuum sealing is today's most modern and rapidly spreading freshness preservation method, popular with both households and professional chefs. Vacuum bags completely seal food from oxygen, so the spoilage process starts later. Fats don't become rancid, fruits don't brown, frozen foods don't develop "freezer taste," and meats don't discolor. In short, it allows you to have any food available at any time in the best possible quality.

Storing mushrooms and vegetables in salt brine, vinegar, or oil: Storing in brine or vinegar is one of the easiest preservation methods that turns your kitchen into an efficient one. If you want to keep vegetables in vinegar brine, first mix one part wine vinegar with two parts water, then add some salt and sugar while bringing it to a boil – if you like, you can also add mustard seeds and pepper. Meanwhile, cut up the vegetables (those that can't be eaten raw, like eggplant, should be cooked before preservation). Then place the cut vegetables in a sterilized jar and pour the boiled liquid over them. Let the sealed jars cool, then store them in a cool place. With this method, vegetables keep for up to a year. For more pickling liquid preservation tips, check out this page.

The Gem of Őrség: Pajta

Őrség is the westernmost region of Hungary – full of beautiful historical, geographical, and gastronomic attractions. We dove into the latter when we visited the Pajta bistro in Őriszentpéter. The bistro's chef is Richárd Farkas, who earned the Miele Young Chef of the Year award in 2019 and who cares deeply about both sustainability and local producers. After working with Gábor Krausz and in Barcelona, he joined the Pajta team as head chef in 2017. Three years later, Pajta received the Sustainable Restaurant of the Year award. No wonder, since the restaurant uses almost exclusively local ingredients. "Sometimes the meat comes straight from the neighbor," says Ricsi. Pajta has its own greenhouse and vegetable garden, and the wild garlic for this soup was picked from the nearby garden. "For the first time in years, I feel like I'm in the right place," says one of the chefs in Ricsi's kitchen while preparing lasagna for lunch.

"One of the basic requirements of a restaurant kitchen is fresh and high-quality ingredients! Evidently, these come from the region, from local producers, to the pantry, and then to the plate. Personal connection and working together are important to me. I know which ingredients come from whom and how they were produced. They say you are what you eat... Let's eat quality food made from good ingredients, thus supporting the work of local small producers," says Ricsi in a previous interview.

But Ricsi doesn't just care about local producers and sustainable hospitality. "For the first time in years, I feel like I'm in the right place," says one of the chefs in Ricsi's kitchen while preparing lasagna for lunch. Although the guys are constantly working and there's never a moment when someone has nothing to do, the kitchen is filled with good mood, teamwork, and dedication to gastronomy.

Believe me, it's worth traveling for hours to Őrség and Pajta, because once you go, you'll definitely come back.

We hope you enjoyed the article and part two of Kitchen Efficiency. If you'd like to read more from the Munch blog, choose from the articles below. And if you have a topic suggestion, write it in the comments.