Not my Sunday dinner, mind you...my Sunday dinner will be a bag of frozen something hurriedly reheated between Sunday night chores. (I'm busier than usual this weekend, and I'm trying to clear out the refrigerator/freezer/pantry before the kitchen work starts.)
This would be my great-grandmother's Sunday dinner. My great aunt says this is verbatim "as Mama had written it down."
1 medium onion
1 teaspoon oil
Cut up chicken
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon flour
1 cup sour cream
Saute onion in oil, add paprika and salt. Cook slowly til tender. Blend flour in sour cream, cook 5 minutes more.
Now, I'm thinking there are some steps missing here, possibly because my great-grandmother wrote this down for someone who was basically familar with the process. "Cook the chicken" was a given, maybe. I'm also suspicious of the "teaspoon" measure, because ain't no way one teaspoon of paprika is sufficient.
My great-aunt's notes on the recipe are
The onion of course is chopped. I use enough paprika to make it look quite pink. And I use one tablespoon of flour in the sour cream and I usually add a little water to start the chicken cooking, and to keep it pretty moist during cooking.
So here is how I would make it:
I'd saute the onion in the oil, then add paprika (a couple of tablespoons at least, but I'm accused of being heavy-handed with paprika), some water or broth, and two split boneless chicken breasts (i.e. four pieces of chicken). When the chicken was done, I'd set it aside, reduce the heat to very low, and add the sour cream to the pan (I've been lazy about the flour, but I think adding it first keeps your sour cream from curdling. I've not had that happen wth this or stroganoff, but maybe I've been lucky. I understand that if you use yogurt instead of sour cream adding flour is even more important.) I'd whisk this into a nice smooth sauce, adding more paprika if necessary.
Then I'd serve the chicken over egg noodles with the sauce poured on top.
I haven't made this in quite awhile, what with not eating meat, but I pulled the recipe out today because I'm thinking the paprikas sauce might be a good way to use a big bag of frozen mixed vegetables in the freezer.
Oh, and regarding paprika: not this. You want at least this, which I've had no trouble finding in regular grocery stores (sweet or hot...I prefer hot, but that's just me. The rest of my family likes sweet.) If you're able to find it, the good stuff is Kalocsai. A Hungarian co-worker gave me a kilo of it after I gave her beigli at Christmas.
Posted by Nic at May 1, 2005 01:56 PM