We went to El Portalet in Bossòst again.

Beef with cèpe mushrooms, quinoa, roquette, roast potato and caramel mustard	Veal cheek with broccoli, black beer, horn of plenty mushrooms, pinapple, fennel and thyme	Gambas and codfish tartar with baby beans, black olives and tomato bread	Turbot with pigs trotter, sea snails and mango
Marinated Presa with asparagus, pistachios, apple and parmesan ice cream		Goose rillettes, black garlic, smoked eel, fennel salad, pineapple and rhubarb

Duck roll with mushrooms, foie-gras, crispy nuts and maple syrup

Raspberries and pistachios with hibiscus, vanilla and yoghurt cream

Soft and crispy chocolate with coconut and cereals, salty praline and apricot sorbet

Peach fritter with almonds, passion fruit, and maize-curry ice cream

Ever since my 3 years in Budapest, I have been regularly cooking Pörkölt with the delicious sweet, but hot, peppers from Hungary. We now grow these peppers or “paprikas” in the garden here in France.

In fact “goulash” in Hungarian is more often used as the version of this dish as a soup. This is how I make it:

– Fry two or three large onions, sliced
– Add your meat (beef, veal or chicken) diced into bite sized pieces
– When the meat is browned, add both sweet and hot Hungarian paprika powder (the amounts depend on how spicy hot you want it to be)
– Add some ground caraway seeds also
– When the spices have impregnated the meat, add some diced tomatoes (or tomato pulp from a can) and red wine (or white wine if you are using chicken)
– Sometimes I add chopped carrots as well
– Season with salt, cover and cook in a low oven (150°C) for 2 hours
– Serve with rice or steamed potatoes and decorate with chopped marjoram and sour cream
– As a variation, and to replace the rice, I sometimes add cooked sauerkraut cabbage for a few minutes at the end.
– You can also make this dish with fish but, in this case, cook the sauce first for about 45-60 minutes until it starts thickening and tasting good, then add the fish at the end.

This is incredibly easy to do on the plancha.

For those of you that don’t know, a “plancha” is a thick cast iron plate that you heat up on the stove. You can grill practically anything on it. Mosts planchas have a flat side and a ribbed side, for this recipe I used the ribbed side which give the meat that criss-cross design you see in the picture.

Slice your vegetables into ribbons, I used green asparagus and courgettes but you could also use aubergines or peppers. Toss the vegetables in some olive oil and grill on the plancha turning frequently. Actually this way of “searing” the vegetables really gives them flavor.

When the vegetables are nearly ready grill the thin slices of pork on both sides.

Toss the warm vegetables in a vinaigrette made with honey, mustard, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Serve with the grilled meat and decorate with thyme, rocksalt and some crumbled goats cheese or gorgonzola.