👨‍🍳 Recipe of letcho, its 📖 historical interest and 🔪 preparation

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📜 A little historical background about letcho what I prepare for you! Very delicious, trust me.

Letcho belongs to the traditional, famous, 20th century Hungarian food classics. Although letcho is also a Balkan dish, today it is considered one of the cornerstones of

Hungarian

gastronomy.

Since the , the word letcho has been exported together with canned goods. I am mainly thinking of the Globus Konzervgyár as a historical root, which unfortunately ended its career in . Production ceased in , when Globus sold its trademarks to a Czech company and closed the factory. 😢

In my description, lecsó ➡️letcho ➡️ letscho meaning totally same thing. The pronunciation of these words is also same.

Tomatoes and peppers were introduced to Hungary by the Turks

Peppers and tomatoes from the New World reached Hungary via Turkish mediation. Although it would be tempting to consider the Turkish Gothic and the menem that developed from it as its predecessor, at the same time, due to the hundreds of years that passed between the Turkish occupation and the appearance of Lecsó, this is unlikely. The Bulgarian gardeners who settled here from the had a typical dish, which they prepared from peppers, tomatoes, or other vegetables that were currently ripe.

I tell you, following historical sources

In , the famous hungarian magazine „A Hét” published a cookbook entitled „A Hét cookbook”. It contains a recipe called „Rácz Omácska”. In some Slavic languages, omácska means, sauce. The recipe boils peppers and tomatoes together into chunky sauce. In , in , the First „Magyar Konzerv- és Ércárugyár”, founded by Manfréd Weiss and Bertold Weiss, was already exporting lechos under the registered brand name Globus. Appendix of the addendum to the Austro-Hungarian trade agreement, renewed in , mentions lecsó verbatim: "Containers filled with hermetically sealed so-called lecsó, i.e. salad mixture made of tomatoes, onions and peppers, are to be treated as canned tomatoes."

⚖️ From the historical archive of antikvarium.hu, this photo, in the name of spreading Hungarian historical culture, was of course taken over by many websites.✅

The „Új Idők Receptkönyve” describes the recipe for „lecsó for the winter”,

⚖️ The image comes from antikvarium.hu, and this cover is an antiquarian material that can be used free of charge for any knowledge spreading.✅

and the magazine „Magyar Szakács” describes the lecsó from Bácska.

The first occurrence of the word as a local word from Díosjenő, lècső, lècsó = green pepper with tomato, appeared in the

issue of the „Magyar Nyelv” magazine, year , collected by Sándor Horváth.

According to some experts, the word is a distorted version of the term všeličo (mixed, all kinds) used by the Slovak-speaking population of Kistompa, located less than 20 kilometers away. Although green peppers and tomatoes were known and cooked in the , in large quantities compared to letcho, they were only available after the upsurge of the aforementioned Bulgarian gardeners' activities in Dunakeszi in the . Based on the above, it is likely that it spread through cooks from Nógrád who worked at the houses of the middle class in Pest, first in the capital, and then - partly thanks to the canning industry - nationwide.

Let's see the ingredients of letcho

40 dkg tomatoes

80 dkg of peppers

1 head of white onion

10 dkg bread szalonna

20 dkg sausage

1 tablespoon red pepper powder (optional)

2 tablespoon oil, but it's also optional, if you have bread szalonna,the fat produced during heating is more than enough

Salt, to taste

💭 I guess right now you're thinking about what does bread szalonna mean❓

You must have remembered it when I wrote about 🔗 a traditional Hungarian dessert specialty, but in this post, similarly difficult situation is here. Bacon is not the same as „szalonna”❗

Bread szalonna alias Hungarian bacon is a very fat bacon 😜

🥘 It's not difficult to prepare, let's see the details

1. To prepare the letcho, scald the tomatoes, peel them and cut them into wedges. Wash the peppers, remove the veins and seeds, then cut it into finger-thick rings or any other shape is also fine, it doesn't matter anything, because it will wilt during cooking anyway. Peel the white onion and dice it into small pieces or use a blender as I did. Cut the bread szalonna into small cubes as well.

2. Place the bread szalonna into pot or pan with the sausage and fry it over moderate heat. After add the mixed white onion in it, then remove from the heat, sprinkle with red pepper (optional), throw in the tomatoes and add salt to taste. Return to the heat and boil uncovered for a few minutes. Be careful not to add the white onion too early, only when the bread szalonna and sausage are really fired. White onions should not be fried for a long time, because they burn to coals❗

3. Stir in the paprika and cook until soft over moderate heat, half-covered, for 15 minutes, then taste and add salt again if necessary. We offer it with fresh bread. Be careful when use salt, because how salty it is depends on the sausage and the bread szalonna.

⬆️Photos above you can see the process, how I made for you this delicious and famous traditional Hungarian food, the letcho. 🤔 The many photos are also due to the fact that I wanted to test whether the slide show is feasible in a simple Steemit post.

I advise you, definitely look around to see if there is a hungaricum shop in your area, because for example, if you want to add red pepper powder for the letscho, then I recommend Kalocsai.

About the peppers

For example, if you look at the peppers on @lichtblick user's 🔗 „ The Last Peppers and A Green Salad” post, obviously you could coock it also with peppers like that, but the real thing, is the Hungarian peppers for the letcho!

You see, Kalocsa is famous, not only for its porcelain 😊 See you later my friends, enjoy your meal!👋