One more thing: I hear from Moles living in distant places that there are tunnels being built in faraway territories, such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and others, mostly ending with -stan (this ending seems to have some secret meaning). Even if they are supposed to have both democracy and bananas now, Men there are not pleased and want to leave. So they dig and dig, and try various other methods of coming here, believing (wrongly) that what awaits them is paradise. But obviously not many tunnels have reached us yet. If it were so, we moles would be the first to know.
I am ending my presentation with—I dare say—incredible information: In the meantime, somewhere in the deserts of the Middle East—as well as in the Never-Never Land called America—huge walls were built at their borders. But it is simply hard to believe that, after the Berlin Wall, Humans would repeat the same mistake again. If so, the only thing we Moles can conclude is that there is no help for them, because they really are their own worst enemies.
VI
FROM GULAG TO GOULASH: THE INTRODUCTION TO MS. PIGGY’S HUNGARIAN COOKBOOK
I am not a professional cook. The life of a pig is not easy, and the life of one who is an intellectual and immigrant from Hungary is even more difficult, first of all because no one ever expects a pig to be an intellectual, an immigrant—or an amateur cook, for that matter! As if a pig in connection with any of these characterizations would be a contradictio in adjecto. In addition, there are many intellectuals who are unsympathetically called “pigs.” This is usually the case when they sink morally, not only literally, too deeply into mud. Not to mention that we pigs are called intellectuals—also contemptuously, of course!—when we aspire to something higher than our generally low status in society.
My name is Magda. I am a female pig of the illustrious and almost extinct Hungarian Mangalitza family. Here, in London, friends call me Ms. Piggy after the famous puppet from the TV series The Muppet Show. Allegedly I resemble her, with my curly blond hair, being nicely rounded and very opinionated. And also “hot,” because that goes without saying for any female of Hungarian origin in this male-dominated world. However, she is Miss, while I insist on being addressed as Ms. That complicates my life even more, as if it weren’t complicated enough already.
I have to say that, in the first place, writing this cookbook has given me the chance to go back in time. A sentimental journey into the kitchen of my mother and my grandmother—which actually was one and the same until we moved to Budapest—remembering and re-creating the smells and tastes of my childhood. I recall my grandma taking down the dried hot paprika from the rope in the storeroom, where it had been hung to dry. As she pulverized it with her mortar and pestle, I felt the sharp smell in my nostrils. I also remember the strong smell of cabbage from my mother cooking Székely goulash and the smell of barack pálinka brandy. Sometimes I get carried away… My family comes from a small village near Kecskemét, where I used to spend my summers surrounded by the puszta plain and plum tree orchards. In the late autumn, the main occupation in our village used to be cooking apricots to make strong pálinka brandy.
My parents moved to Budapest in the seventies. They simply wanted a better life for their children, and a free education was the way to bridge social differences. Back then, and until twenty years ago, Hungarians lived under a political system called socialism. Or what in the West was wrongly called Communism (because of Communist parties’ leadership in Socialist countries). Why wrongly? Because Communism, in the fulfilled vision of its theoreticians Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is the last stage in the development of human society, a kind of “end of history,” as we would say today. Socialism was only a step along the way. Fortunately or not, depending on the political beliefs one holds, this whole Socialist practice of life, together with the Communist dream, collapsed in 1989. I was twenty-seven years old.
I have to make yet another personal remark in connection with this cookbook—I ended up writing it by chance. Not only am I not a cook, but by profession I am a political scientist. However, what does my diploma mean here, in London? During these last twenty years since I left Hungary, even though I hold a degree in Scientific Socialism from Eötvös University in Budapest I was forced to do all kinds of odd jobs. At first I was a babysitter, then a nanny, and proud to become the first pig who ever got official permission to do this job. After that I worked as a salesperson in the food department of Harrods (which came in handy for my CV later on!), then as a teacher of English for Hungarian immigrants, until I finally got employed on a TV cooking show. At least this job is fun, and I get decent money and a lot to eat. To tell the truth, my PhD would not be worth much even in Hungary, as I graduated during Communist times. So many of my colleagues who taught Marxism found themselves jobless in the “brave new world”—to quote Aldous Huxley. Moreover, a whole generation of scholars, if not two, suddenly had their pasts invalidated—even if they weren’t teaching Marxism, even if they had never been sympathetic to Marxism at all. Take my friend Aniko, whose specialty was American feminist literature: She has spent much of the past decade requalifying for the same university position just because her Communist-era doctorate was no longer taken seriously. Consequently, many of us left the country after 1990. It is a sad fact of life that my education is more or less worthless in both countries, but I am reconciled to it. This cookbook testifies to that.
I slowly advanced to assistant cook on the TV show Cook and Enjoy, now in its fifth season. The star of our program is the not yet famous Oliver Marshall—please, note the nice twist in his name! I am one of the very few creatures who has a real insight into his cooking and who knows that he will never become as famous as Jamie Oliver! Among other tasks, I have often had to sample the food he cooks; this is what we pigs do best. And this is how this book came about. I often told Oliver: Listen Ollie (we call him Ollie because, for obvious reasons, he hates to be called Oliver), you could add a bit more pepper to that stew, or, listen Ollie, I would cut the onions more finely, because they need to actually melt… and so on. I have a lot of ideas of my own. One day he said, “Well, Ms. Piggy, since you are so smart, why don’t you cook all by yourself, eh?”
He did not mean it seriously; his intention was to be ironical. But the producer of our show heard him and immediately thought that this, indeed, was an interesting idea. A pig who cooks? Better still, a pig writing a cookbook! Let’s say, a Hungarian cookbook—because I am from there, am I not? “What do you think about that?” the producer asked me. “And then, perhaps, I could get you your own TV show,” she added. I am not crazy about having my own show; it is a lot of work and a big responsibility for a single pig—even for a proud Mangalitza. I remember how the audience used to laugh at poor Miss Piggy on The Muppet Show, thinking that she was vain and stupid. But I accepted the offer: Who, in my position, wouldn’t? Considering that I can certainly cook better than Ollie, and I can write, too. Besides, there is a direct connection between cooking and politics: As a political scientist, I would argue that politics is—cooking.