Lecsó

A late-summer farmhouse dish from rural Hungary, made possible once tomatoes and peppers reached the region via the Ottoman Turks; it spread in the 19th century as Bulgarian and Serbian market-gardeners began cultivating these crops locally, and early-20th-century periodicals still listed it as "rácz omácska" (Rascian sauce). The name is native Hungarian — from the obsolete lecs ("overcooked vegetables") or a dialectal word for liquid flowing/babbling — and has nothing to do with lentils; the Slavic forms (Czech/Slovak lečo, Polish leczo, Russian лечо) are in fact borrowings from Hungarian. A pepper-tomato pickup that gathered the late-summer harvest into one pan, and a standard preserve-and-freeze for winter pantries.

Late-summer farmhouse pickup from the Great Plain. Cooked in lard, not oil — paprika carotenoids are fat-soluble, and pork fat carries them where vegetable oil can't.

A loose stew of yellow Hungarian wax peppers and ripe tomatoes cooked down in lard with onion and sweet paprika until the peppers have collapsed and the tomatoes have broken into a pulp. Often eaten with a sliced smoked sausage stirred in late, or as a base to crack eggs into. Bowl food with bread to mop. Pepper skins should be tender enough to spread on the bread without pulling.

Lard, not vegetable oil — pepper carotenoids and capsaicin are fat-soluble, and pork fat carries them better than neutral oil and adds a savory back-note. Onions go in first and cook to soft and gold; only then the paprika powder, off-heat for ten seconds; then peppers (the long-cook contributor); tomato last because acid stalls onion softening. Sausage at the end so the meat doesn't toughen and the smoke flavor stays present.