Saffron and Honey

Eat Chic

Lecho – Hungarian sweet peppers

I’ve been in the mood to cook but not in the mood to write recently.
Can’t really tell why, but hoping that we can now kick off mid-week. It’s a drowsy, gray day here, and I’m rejuvenating with some lightly sugared grapefruit and fresh mint tea.
What is lecho? For one, it’s one of my dad’s favorite things. And for those who are not familiar with it, it is a variation of a traditional Hungarian vegetable dish, served hot or cold, and often canned for the winter months ahead. Those cans never survived that long in our house.
You’ll need:
  • 3 large sweet peppers (red, yellow, orange – a variety of colors is great)
  • 1 red onion
  • 4 cups tomato puree (or passata works really well here)
  • 2 T vegetable oil
  • 1 T sugar
  • 1 T red wine vinegar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • 3-4 black peppercorns
  • 1 bay leaf
1. Wash, core and de-seed peppers. Cut them into long, thin (about 1/4 inch) strips. Cut onion into rings.
2. In a medium-sized saucepan, heat up passata/tomato puree with the spices, oil, vinegar, and aromatics. Add onions. Stir often and bring to a simmer. Taste for seasoning – you want a very light tart and sweet taste of a pickling liquid that is sweetened by the tomatoes.
3. Once the sauce comes to a simmer, stir in the peppers, and cook for about 7-10 minutes. You want the peppers to take on all of the flavors in the sauce but still retain some crunch.
You can can the lecho while it is hot and eat it both hot and cold. It is delicious as a side, with some rice, or on a thick slice of white bread.

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Comments

  2. Sergei says

    There are many canned brands of Lecho. I have tried most of them. For some reason Soviet era Hungarian one was the tastiest. There should be a delicate balance between crunchiness , sweetness and ognionness with peppers being the base. Experiment!

    Reply

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