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.
There are many cookbooks in this world, too many. Sometimes, when I enter a bookstore and stop in front of shelves of them, I fall into a deep depression just looking at all that glitz and glamour.
Many cookbooks include sumptuous photos of meals; they make your mouth water. On the other hand, they look more like picture books for children than cooking manuals. I am against cookbooks with photos! For one, they make the book more expensive. Besides, they make the reader look stupid, as if he (or, more often, she!) needs to see the food in order to trust the recipe. And then, when the reader, following the recipe, makes the same meal, it looks very different on the plate. The meat is not as pink as in the photo, the bread crust is not as crispy, the salad not as green. Even the expensive tablecloth doesn’t look half as good as in the photo!
Yes, I must admit that glamour, glitz, snobbery, and expensive ingredients put me off. There are, of course, many reasons not to write a simple cookbook, as one is inevitably discouraged to do so every step of the way. But, by the same token, this is precisely the reason for me to write a simple cookbook of my own. You have to have a passion for food (which we pigs usually have!), some basic idea of what it’s all about, and a clear concept of what you want to put on the plate. And in this case that is traditional Hungarian cuisine.
My book is an antisnobbish book with simple, tasty, and easily available ingredients that you don’t have to hunt for in foreign countries, I guarantee you. In my cookbook you will find recipes I cooked and tasted myself, recipes I learned from my mother back in Budapest. She had a box full of them, written down by my grandmother in her neat hoofwriting in green ink on small pieces of cardboard the size of a postcard. My grandma believed that these cardboards were more practical than a notebook or a book, because it is easier to handle a cardboard than turn a page, with an often greasy hoof. Now I have the same box in front of me. But unlike Grandma, I happen to think that a box is really an awkward way to keep recipes. Especially when you are getting ready to leave the country and have to stuff all your possessions into one single suitcase — which is exactly what happened to me in 1989. My cookbook, which you are holding in your hand or hoof right now, is a book of the same size as Grandma’s cardboards, hardcover and no photos, except, of course, for the goulash on the cover.