Cooking in Hungary

Check out all the different types of flour.  Geeze!

So – my charge for Thanksgiving next week is to bring a chocolate cake (originally it was 'lil smokies wrapped in bacon - but I can't find 'lil smokies anywhere).  Chocolate cake, no problem right?  Well, that’s what you think.  I looked up recipes on the internet, but each of them had some seemingly strange ingredient- white wine vinegar, pure cocoa powder (not sure Nestle quick would work) self-rising flour, baking powder (while not normally a strange ingredient, my Hungarian lessons have not gone that far yet).  I finally found a recipe that sounded good, and used self-rising flour.  In case I couldn’t find that, I did bring the recipe for the cake using white wine vinegar, but it was a bit more complicated.  So – I set off for the Interspar to try and find the needed ingredients.  I also had my mom send her recipe for Spinach Lasagna which I love.  I certainly don’t need an entire lasagna so why not make it as a vegetarian option for Thanksgiving.  OK –so I get to the Interspar and of course right off the bat I’m having cart coin issues.  I have two 10 forint, and a 100 forint, but they take 20 forint coins.  I finally asked and they sent me to the drugstore to change in my coins.  Ok, challenge one overcome.  Next, I was off to find lasagna and cake ingredients.  The lasagna called for (is that how you spell lasagna?  Is it lasagne? Anyways…)  two pounds of cottage cheese.  Lucky for me, here they come in 150 gram packages.  SO – I purchased about 8 of them, not knowing the conversion.  I also purchased the Hungarian version of cottage cheese to see how it compared, and it molded before I tried it.  Onto the next ingredient – lasagna noodles.  I found them easily enough, BUT they were $8.00 a package, and I bought two.  Seriously.  Next thing – frozen chopped spinach.  After three times up and down the frozen foods aisle, I settled on what I thought was the closest thing – and it turned out to be Spinach puree.  OK great.  Time for the cake.  Self rising flour.  Hmmm…. So I approached the “baking” aisle and started to scan.  Well, since there are about 40 different kind of flours to choose from, I called three friends and my parents to try and figure out my dilemma.  Neither my parents, Megan or Vivvi picked up, but Jake did – the linguist – thank goodness!!  He went to ask a colleague, and she didn’t know the word (or it didn’t exist in the country) so she suggested adding yeast to regular flour.  Ok – no problem, I know EXACTLY what to do with yeast and flour to make it self-rising.  Man.  Now, I start the 25 minute search for yeast… ugh.  Ok – so I found the yeast, and returned to get the regular flour – when I spotted “rizs” flour.  Jackpot – that’s got to rise right?  It looks like “rise”, it sounds like “rise” – it’s gotta be it.  So I purchase the yeast and the rizs flour and call it a day.  Well, I get home to find out that “rizs” means rice.  Damnit once again.  I ended up settling on a different cake recipe and it’s delicious.  Unfortunately I now have an entire “test” cake in my kitchen – ok, the first row of pieces is gone… ok, maybe more than the first row of pieces… this is exactly what I need, an entire cake to myself.  Sheesh.