My Granny's Gift

The people of Budapest and Vienna love to indulge in desserts, and usually accompany this with a coffee latte or a murderously strong espresso. This gave rise to a huge number of coffee houses and patisseries, where Tomi first acquired his taste for both. This collection. however, is largely based on the home cook's recipes which aim at satisfying the family's desire to have these glorious tastes available without the trouble and expense of going out, and it is also extended to include some simple and popular rising dough and pasta based dishes that you would never find in a patisserie. It is not intended to compete with those of the famous and well-known chefs, only to lead you to appreciate the sophistication and variation as well as the amazing range of sweet food available, largely outside of the Anglo-Saxon experience.

Some years ago, Tomi remembered that among the items he inherited, there was a set of recipe books from his grandmother. Looking at these brought up many memories of favourite tastes, the secrets of the housewives of those days. He decided to start experimenting with baking, and was reasonably successful. Starting with practically no baking skills, but remembering how these cakes looked, after reading the first one he vividly recalled watching his Granny in their kitchen in Budapest preparing for the weekend. The kitchen was the one and only place when he came home from school to sit down and do homework, and occasionally Granny would ask him to 'do a little stirring' for one of her cakes, while she was getting on with other chores.

This book would like to encourage you to try to generate these desserts, without concern about your level of expertise or how it is going to look in the end. To assist your attempts, the pages are sprinkled liberally with photos taken during the ‘experiments’, and expand on some of the techniques when they first arise. The photos mentioned are Tomi’s own, taken at a time when he was elbow-deep sometimes in flour and butter, or rushing between kitchen table and oven. They're not intended to compete with the professional variety, but show the various stages of progress so that you can check for yourself how you are doing.

Many of his childhood memories came back to him while going through these recipes about a by-gone age in a little known country. You will find, interspersed with the recipes, some snippets he gathered during his Granny’s afternoon knitting, darning and gossiping sessions regularly held at their home. There are also included some illustrations of the environment at a typical Budapest home, and in the coffee houses, to entertain you during your enterprise.

Enjoy the process and the final results!