#paprika hendl

[aranciu]

I made this last year when reading Dracula Daily, but I was too much of a coward to post it. Now I am no longer held back by earthly matters such as "reputation".

This is the original text from the book, but wildly misinterpreted. enjoy

[cake-apostate]

Years into the future. Yet another Dracula movie/tv adaptation is to be released. You see the first shot of the trailer.

It is a bowl of paprika hendl. Jonathan takes a bite. He chokes, downs a flask of water... and then takes another bite.

The director is one of us. You cheer, for the curse of bad Dracula adaptations is broken.

[skeletonsloverockcandy]

One thing I’m seeing on this re-read of Dracula Daily that I’m already really enjoying, it’s all the little details we didn’t catch before

When we first started we didn’t know who Jonathan Harker was and to us he was just a silly little British man who was ignoring the obvious warning signs, so there was a comedic element to the dramatic irony of him going to Castle Dracula

But now that we know who Jonathan is and we care about him, it hits much harder all the subtle horror elements we missed while focusing on this good friend telling us about his travels

From the first entry, people picking up on the dog barking under his window and being like “is that Dracula? Does it start this early?” Being skeeved out by Dracula’s overly familiar letter to Jonathan, which at first seemed perfectly reasonable except for the name attached at the end, and picking up on all the terrible foreshadowing for what will be Jonathan’s living hell over the next month in his Castle.

And people this time picking up on the bravery of the wife of the innkeeper who gave him a crucifix, begging him to stay or wait, to not go to the castle, of the terror of knowing that Dracula was in correspondence with her husband to get the letter to Jonathan and the sort of subtle threat they must be under at all times, of the significance of “for your mother’s sake” knowing what Dracula does to children. She is no longer perceived as a random background character, but an active player forced to be a bystander who is trying desperately to help this ignorant soul in any way she can even if she knows it might be useless.

I love people realizing Jonathan is skeptical and off-put, but not enough to deter his mission. He’s not oblivious, just making an effort to remain open-minded to the culture and superstitions and beliefs he is not familiar with, since he’s aware it will be wildly different from his own (to the best of his ability for being an Englishman from the 1890s) and pointedly dismissing the things that might be red flags as an attempt to rationalize because nothing truly concerning has happened yet to provoke him to leave, and he doesn’t want to be deterred by something he’s getting worked up for for no reason yet, he couldn’t do his job otherwise and people are depending on him

Idk, I just like this deeper analysis and thought now that people are already familiar and attached to his character, and now know what happens, so they can properly point out when something is foreshadowing later events or themes in the novel, and they can pick up on it quicker

Even something as simple as people noticing the other meals mentioned in the first entry because of all the focus on Paprika Hendl last year makes me happy :)

I like that they are giving our protagonist more credit now, knowing the character he turns into later in the novel (a badass)

It is satisfying :)))

[catpriciousmarjara]

Conversation between a reddit user who migrated to tumblr and a tumblr user I saw on discord just yesterday.

Him: Why are people so obsessed with Dracula? Is it like a collective vampire fetish or....?

Her: Oh no it's not the Count we like! It's everyone else!

Him: ....like this Jonathan you go on about in #babygurl?

Her: Yeah! Our good friend Jonathan Harker who sends us the most delightful emails... Though he's been having a rough time of it recently...

Her: You should check out our cowboy too! He's wonderful!

Him: ........

Him: okay.

Him(about 20 mins later): What exactly is a Paprika Hendl?

[thatrandomblogsays]

Dracula Daily first email:

Vs Whale Weekly Second Email

**edit! It seems some of you would like to follow whale weekly without having to read Moby dick (understandable, Ishmael never shuts the fuck up) I will be making an abridged version a La memes for those friends! Follow #whale weekly memenotes & #moby dick memenotes get it? Like spark notes? to stay updated!

[fanfictionbard]

Vanilla Extract after Paprika begins taking off:

[secondbeatsongs]

[petermorwood]

Follow-up, as promised...

Further to this post, I went rummaging.

My stars, it turns out we've got some serious goodies at the back of the cupboard.

They've all been here long enough that @dduane and I will eat well this next week or so, but the first of them, mentioned often by Dracula Daily...

...“We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. (Cluj) Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale (AFAIK, fictional) I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (mem. get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called “paprika hendl” and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians.”

...is this one.

This is a standard bung-it-in-the-microwave ready meal (3 mins / 700w, wait 3 mins, eat) but there's no reason why it can't be prettied up a bit.

Taste report: the flavour was creamy, buttery, paprika-y, and entirely pleasant (if there were more of these I would scoff them) and the Nockerl (mini dumplings) were properly al dente and excellent, but it was by no means "thirsty", by which I assume spicy-hot. Okay, it wasn't labelled as such, but it was even milder than any Paprikahendl I've eaten in a restaurant.

I suspect that, like most ready-meals of this kind, including curries and chili-con-carne, its spice level has been dialled down to Avoid Shocking The Customers, though TBH most German / Austrian dishes labelled Scharf, Feurig or Würzig (all meaning spicy or hot) have been lacking in the oomph department, at least for me. (Some haven't, which is always a pleasant surprise.)

I'm going to make my own Paprikahendl in the next while because I got some sweet and hot paprikas from Polonez in Dublin, and right now, DD is in the process of making Paprikaente, based on several Paprikahendl recipes and a couple of duck breasts found at the back of the freezer. I don't know if that's authentic or not, but it smells great and I don't care. :->

*****

I've suggested in another post why Jonathan Harker found this dish "thirsty".

It wasn't because he he had a wimpy English palate unaccustomed to spicy food - the Edwardian era was familiar with fiery curries from Raj India, and even featured cayenne pepper as a table condiment, complete with its own caddy and (often devil-topped) spoon...

My opinion was that Paprikahendl (Austrian) / Paprikás csirke (Hungarian) was a peasant dish, with the main part of the meal a big dish of noodles or dumplings. Those would be perked up with a sauce based on some elderly chicken which had stopped laying, well-spiced so a little could flavour a lot.

Those noodles have lots of names - nockerln on the packet I posted, also nokoldel, csipetke, spaetzle, tarhhonya and so on - and were what filled people up, with the meat accompaniment more of a relish or seasoning. In the same way, for instance, Yorkshire Pudding used to be served with gravy as a first course, so the second course of meat would go further.

Rice / bread / couscous/ pasta / mian / potatoes / fufu / polenta etc. did the same; many of these are served alongside rich, spicy, buttery etc. dishes and are now suggested as fire extinguishers for "over-hot" foods because the proportions of bland vs rich / spicy have shifted.

Back when, dinner would have been lots of name-the-regional-bland carbohydrate, along with a little bit of over-hot (or -garlicked or -herby or -smoked-bacon / sausagey) protein, which might have tasted excessive alone but would have given flavour to all that bland.

*****

Side-note: it's another possible reason, besides conspicuous consumption, for lots of spice in (rich people's) medieval dishes; in winter and spring, all that spice would have made smoked / salted / dried meat more interesting.

The business of "spices masked bad meat" is rubbish, and originated as recently as 1939 thanks to historian J.C. Drummond, who didn't know what "green" meant in food context. Green cheese = fresh cheese, green meat = un-aged meat.

Drummond assumed a recipe to change the flavour of "green venison" was to cover that it had gone off. It was in fact meant to tenderise it as if hung a few days in the cold store, but "medieval people were primitive" has always been more acceptable pop history than "medieval people were pretty smart".

*****

Harker, eating the chicken-and-sauce as The Meal (Stoker doesn't mention accompaniments or Bulk Carbs like noodles, spaetzle, etc. so you'll have to trust me), would have been like someone taking a swig of hot sauce or chomp of chilli pickle and then declaring the entire meal over-spiced or "thirsty", unaware of the proper proportions of What Goes With What.

A hotter, spicier, "thirstier" Paprikahendl would definitely go with a big mound of these little noodles, so I plan to see - and taste - how it'll work.

And how it'll look, too. :->

[disco-tea]

Wait so they sealed Jonathan’s diary…y’all Mina isn’t getting the paprika recipe 😭

[torturedpoetemotions]

Okay moment of truth. Here is the paprika hendl:

And...

Omg it's tasty!! The chicken is really juicy and tender! The sauce has a really subtle smoky flavor? Balances really well with the sharpness from the parsley and the mellow green pepper flavor. It's has some spice, but it's not unbearable. I'm sorry to say even if it WAS hot paprika, our good friend Jonathan is just. Very British.

[nonasuch]

I do hope Jonathan’s terrible horrible no good very bad business trip hasn’t ruined paprika hendl for him forever. that would be tragic

[toaster-trash]

I’m forcing one of my irl friends to read Dracula, and we were talking about Jonathan Harker during a free period (as you do) and I mentioned paprika hendl, and he said:

“Oh I completely forgot about that. You know the way everything written in a book has to come round again? Putting in my predictions now – they’re going to stake Dracula, and plot twist, final boss, the real villain was paprika hendl all along.”

Genius.

[resourcefulsatan]

I received my first letter from Jonathan Harker today, and I LOVE this! He recommended getting the recipe for Paprika Hendl, so here it is for anyone who wants to try it. (edited to add the other dishes mentioned) Paprika Hendl Chicken Dish Nokedli Pasta for the Hendl Basic Mamaliga Romanian Polenta Impletata Eggplant stuffed with forcemeat

[thatrandomblogsays]

Dracula started us off with a debate that involves researching historical recipe seasoning on whether paprika hendl was spicy or Jonathan was just British

And whale weekly kicked us off with every Hebrew speaker / possessor of a Hebrew dictionary going: that’s not the word for whale? It’s not even close? The hell Melville?

[meerawrites]

So called “free thinkers” whenever Jonathan Harker informs us of his travels.

[terrified-spider]

ohhhhhh holy shit i made paprika hendl because it was bored and i remembered i've wanted to make it for a while after it was mentioned in dracula and holy shit it was worth the 2+ hours I spent on it