cook.
Szegedi Halászlé
Carp in a deep red broth that is passed through a sieve, never thickened and never stirred...
Ingredients
800 g fish heads, bones and small fish
500 g onions, sliced
3 tbsp sweet paprika
2.5 l water
salt, to taste
1200 g carp, in thick slices on the bone
150 g carp roe and milt
1 hot cherry pepper, whole
Method
Salt the carp slices an hour ahead and leave them in the fridge. Salted flesh firms up, and firm slices survive the twelve minutes in the soup without falling apart.
Put the heads, bones and small fish in the pot with the onions and the cold water, and bring it slowly up to a bare simmer.
Cook the stock for an hour, never at a rolling boil, until the flesh comes away from the bones by itself. A hard boil makes the broth cloudy and grey instead of clear red.
Take the pot off the heat before the paprika goes in, stir it through, and put it back on a low flame. Paprika is mostly sugar and it turns bitter in seconds on a boiling surface - that bitterness stays in the soup for good.
Push everything through a sieve with a ladle, working the soft flesh and onion through and leaving only bones and skin behind. This is the step that makes halászlé what it is: the body of the soup is pressed fish, not flour.
Return the passed liquid to the clean pot, bring it back to a gentle simmer and taste it for salt now - once the fish is in you cannot stir seasoning through it.
Lay the salted carp slices into the simmering broth in one layer, and settle the roe and milt on top.
Never put a spoon in from this point. If it needs moving, take the pot by the handles and swirl it. One stir shreds the fish.
Simmer uncovered for 12 to 15 minutes, at a lazy bubble, until the flesh comes away from the bone at a fork's touch.
Drop the whole hot pepper in for the last 5 minutes, and take it out when the heat is where you want it.
Rest it off the heat for 5 minutes, then serve with white bread and more hot peppers on the table.
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