Töltött Paprika

Another descendant of Ottoman dolma cooking, brought into Hungarian kitchens during and after the 1541-1699 Turkish occupation and rebuilt around the local sweet pepper (paprika in pod form) once the plant was naturalized in 18th-century Hungary. The tomato base only entered after tomatoes spread through Hungary in the 19th century. Now a high-summer dish — peak pepper season, August.

Ottoman dolma rebuilt around the Hungarian sweet pepper after the plant was naturalized in the 18th century. Tomato base only entered in the 1800s — peak August dish.

Whole pale Hungarian wax peppers, hollowed and stuffed with a pork-and-rice-and-onion mixture (sometimes with beef), simmered upright in a pan of paprika-tomato sauce until the pepper walls go limp and translucent and the rice has swelled inside the meat. Eaten with mashed potato to catch the sauce, or boiled potato. The sauce is liquid, not gravy — somewhere between thin tomato soup and the thick paprika sauce of paprikás.

Stuff the peppers loose, not packed: the rice doubles in volume as it cooks and tightly packed filling will burst the pepper from the inside. Peppers go in upright in a deep pan, sauce reaching halfway up the side — submerging them turns the wall to mush. The sauce is finished by stirring a flour-roux (rántás) in at the end to bring it from broth to a coating sauce.