Clara Czegeny & Chef Helen Czegeny (Ilona Szabó)
Local News - November 22, 2008 - Brantford Expositor
Brantford, Ontario, Canada
Hungry for Hungary
Mother-daughter team create new cookbook
Posted By HEATHER IBBOTSON, EXPOSITOR STAFF
Do you crave cabbage rolls, drool over dumplings or get all atwitter about torte?
Recipes for these favourites and
more than 300 others are included in the latest 312-page edition of
Helen's Hungarian Heritage Recipes.
The cookbook, based on the
culinary magic of Helen Czegeny, of Brantford, is self-published by her
daughter Clara Czegeny, of Paris.
The bulked-up fourth edition of
the Hungarian cookbook debuted this summer, bursting with 325 recipes
from the sublimely elegant Dobos Torte to the sublimely simple cabbage
noodles.
The Czegenys will be at Coles at
Lynden Park Mall on Saturday for a Taste and Sign from 1 p. m. to 3 p.
m. where samples of goulash will be available as well as signed copies
of the cookbook.
Nearly 3,000 copies of the cookbook have been sold since its first printing two years ago.
"I never dreamed something would
come of it," said Helen, who remains amazed at the constant demand for
the recipes she simply kept in her head.
Along with hundreds of
mouth-watering recipes, the updated and expanded edition includes
trivia, anecdotes, memories and traditions penned by Clara.
Recipes in the final chapter,
Passport to International Fare, are a tribute to Helen's culinary
talents in preparing classics and favourites from other lands.
Cooking is as natural to Helen as breathing.
STARTED COOKING AT 12
Now 82, she has been cooking since she was 12 when she began working for her great-aunt in the village of Hajduhadhaz, Hungary.
Helen and her husband, Alex,
slipped out of Hungary in 1947 and went to Sweden, where they lived and
worked on farms, until 1953 when they immigrated to Canada.
Her husband worked mostly at
Massey Ferguson, but the family spent some years as tobacco
sharecroppers in the Oakland, Scotland and Mount Pleasant area. Helen's
hearty cooking was a natural hit with hard-working tobacco labourers at
harvest time. The Czegenys returned to Brantford in 1963.
The cookbook was Clara's
brainchild and originally was printed as a keepsake for family members
in celebration of Helen's 80th birthday in 2006.
Everyone in the family was
astounded and delighted when the book began to take off and requests for
copies began pouring in, Clara said.
The self-publishing route has worked out well, Clara said, adding that maintaining control over the venture is important to her.
"This is fun and I want it to stay fun," she said. Still, putting together a cookbook is no cakewalk.
Helen prepared her recipes from
memory. The ingredients, amounts and instructions were recorded and the
results taste-tested. Recipes were fine-tuned if needed and then
prepared again.
Somewhat challenging was the
conversion of Helen's pinch-of-this and handful-of-that ingredients into
proper cookbook measurements, Clara said.
Many a midnight was passed in the kitchen conducting taste tests, she said.
