Hungarian sweet poppy seed noodles (Mákos tészta)

is an everyday dish. Pasta dishes are a very important and unique part of Hungarian cooking, there are sweet recipes as well as savory creations. Poppy seed is very important for our cuisine, it can be used in yeast breads, sweet rolls, pastries, and coffee cakes. It is more of a weekday dish, we normally serve it after a one-pot soup, like goulash or bean soup. Your children will love it.

This dish is really quite simple to make, just boil some good egg pasta (tagliatelle or wide strip pasta), toss with a decent bit of melted butter, powdered sugar and lots of ground poppy seeds. A coffee grinder or seed grinder is a necessary equipment to grind up the poppy seeds. Grind the poppy-seeds always together with some granulated sugar. Poppy seeds are very high in oil, without sugar the oily poppy-seed paste would just stick. The standard ratio of poppy to sugar is two to one.

Recipe

Ingredients for 4 people:

• 500 grams (17.6 ounces) dried wide stripe or tagliatelle pasta
• 1/2 stick (4 tablespoons, 2 ounces) of butter
• 100 grams (3.6 ounces) of ground poppy seeds
• 50 grams (1.8 ounces) of powdered sugar
• salt

Directions:

Cook the pasta in salted water according to package instructions, rinse under cold running water, drain.

Mix the ground poppy seeds with the powdered sugar.

In a pot melt the butter. Pour the pasta over the melted butter and mix it all together.

Sprinkle on the sweet poppy seeds and serve.

Enjoy!