Astronauts of the only Soviet-Hungarian space mission ate the same as any Hungarian a lot of times during her or his lifetime: pörkölt. 

All Hungarians heaved a sigh of relief glancing up to the sky on 30 May 1980. "They also eat pörkölt above” everybody said.  Pörkölt is a special Hungarian stew, ’they’ ment Bertalan Farkas, the first, and so far the only Hungarian astronaut on a space mission and three Soviet spacemen, Leonid Popov, Valery Kubasov, Valery Ryumin. As a stage of the Intercosmos program Soyuz-36 spaceship and Salyut-6 space station gave a rendez-vous each other in these days.

Some moments of the mission

It was the first time, when Soviets allowed the guest astronaut to bring own food supplies. And the Hungarian food industry, cooperating with the communist party found the solution: developing a new generation of the canned food. Soviets were familiar with it, they had been using canned food on the spaceship from the 70’s, for example, on Soyuz-Apollo mission in 1975. But it was unimaginable for Americans. They had their breakfast and dinners on Apollo ships and on Skylab, as at home in the dining room.

Canned food for astronauts (Photograph: urvilag.hu)

So canned pörkölt was just one of the dishes on Soyuz-36. I tell you, what was the menu for the team: goose liver pât, roasted chicken in aspic, ham, smoked beef-tongue, two differet types of lunchoen meat, Hungarian layered savoy cabbage, pörkölt (pork), bean salad with weenies and an unknown dish named ’appetite-bites á la hongrois’. (According to an article it was similar to brawn.) We must suppose, the menu might had been pretty good, becouse according to the newspapers, the Soviet cosmonauts put on some pounds.

Where to taste it?

I recommend Rozmaring Restaurant (1036 Budapest, Árpád fejdelem újra 125., GPS 47.532752, 19.044813). Disrict 3 of Budapest, or Óbuda on it’s historical name, is a picturesque part of the city. The restaurant is situated by the bank of the Danube. While you have your lunch or dinner, you can enjoy the view of the longest European river.

Order veal stew with paprika, buttered dumpling noodles, it is a special variant of standard pörkölt.

It is easy to find The Rozmaring, but it is fun to visit it on a food tour. 

Recipe

I have cooced it

I am neither a chéf nor a gastroblogger, but I like cooking. I made a portion of pörkölt to show you, it is easy.

Main ingredients for standard pörkölt (Photograph: Kerékgyártó György)

It is a pork pörkölt with some drops of sour cream and parsley. Side can be boiled potato, rice or pasta. I made with pasta, becouse it is my daughter's favorite. If you have it with rice or with egg barley, it wil be able to became a new dish (Photograph: Kerékgyártó György)