This is the recipe of Professor Emeritus Vilmos Csányi, ethologist, academic, and writer. It is not a traditional Nógrád dish. The name comes from the fact that Professor Csányi’s house was in the village of Nógrád. According to Professor Csányi, the more complexly a civilization performs a task, the more advanced it is — judging by the ingredients, this is a very civilized fruit soup. 🙂 But don’t worry — the preparation is very simple, almost rustic.
Details
Servings: 8
Preparation time: 1 hour
Ingredients
- 2 kg sour cherries, pitted
- the cherry pits
- 1 bottle Merlot wine
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 liter water
- 50–100 g sugar
- 150 g jumbo raisins
- 50 g finely ground almonds
- 100 ml cooking cream
- 100 ml whipping cream
- 200 ml sour cream
- 3 heaping tablespoons flour
- 1 teaspoon cloves
- zest of 1 lemon
- a knife-tip of cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon grated ginger
- 100 g dried apricots, quartered (recommended, optional)
- 50 g figs, chopped (recommended, optional)
Instructions
Crush the cherry pits thoroughly and boil them in 1 liter of water for 10 minutes, then strain. Combine the resulting extract with the wine, cherries, sugar, salt, pre-soaked raisins, cloves, ginger, almonds, and (if using) apricots and figs. Bring to a boil, then stir in the mixture of sour cream, flour, and cooking cream. Cook for about 5–10 minutes, sprinkle with cinnamon, and chill to 6 °C. The texture should be creamy.
Before serving, stir well and and garnish with whipped cream and mint leaves.
Notes
In addition to the main flavors, the background flavors that harmonize with the composition are also important — these come from the almonds, the bitter cherry-pit extract, and the ginger.