Hungarian Kohlrabi Soup

This weekend the Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix takes place in Budapest. Budapest is a city of mixed memories for me, as Mark and I visited it a couple of years ago on a Danube cruise that had to be abandoned due to severe flooding, so we spent our few days in the city in rather unpleasant circumstances. However it looks like a beautiful place and one we would like to visit again and have chance to really enjoy. One good thing about the trip was that our boat was moored near to the famous market, where we enjoyed browsing around the fabulous food stalls.....

Naturally we bought some paprika to bring home, but we had to leave all the fresh foods as at that point we had no idea when we would be coming home!

Caroline Makes is looking for Hungarian dishes for the Formula 1 Foods challenge this time


My first thought was, of course, Goulash or Gulyas. We were served it several times - all slightly different, and all delicious, and I've made it many times since then. But we were also served lots of wonderful soups, so I thought as I've blogged about goulash before, I'd try making a soup.

So for inspiration I turned to my lovely book about Hungarian food, Culinaria Hungary. If you are not familiar with the Culinaria books, they are wonderful reference books for foodies and travellers alike - Amazon sells them and the prices are amazingly low for books that are not just recipe books but complete, and wonderfully illustrated guides to the history and geography of each country, seen through the medium of the foods it produces and eats.

Among the recipes was a kohlrabi soup, which features kohlrabi, parsley and little else - ideal as we have lots of both in the garden at the moment. I'll not share the exact recipe, as it is copyright to the authors, but I chopped kohlrabi and softened it in butter, then thickened with flour, added plain water, no stock, cooked until tender then stirred in cream and lots of parsley. The cream was supposed to be soured cream, and that indeed was what I thought I'd bought, but I'd picked up single cream by accident! I really should have added a squeeze of lemon juice to the soup for sourness, but I didn't think about it at the time.