Hungarian chicken with spätzle

Hungarians don't call this chicken "Hungarian style" because it wouldn't make sense. If the chicken was born in Hungary, it will always be Hungarian, however it is cooked. They refer to it as paprika chicken, that is, paprikás csirke.

There are many types of paprika. There are sweet and spicy ones - some really spicy - and without them Hungarian cuisine would be quite an orphan. The Hungarian national dish, goulash, could not be made without paprika.

The chicken that we are going to make can be made spicy and especially with a lot of sauce, with which we are not only going to bathe the meat but also the Spätzle, which is a very characteristic pasta from Central Europe. Actually, in Hungary, Nokedli are used for this purpose, which look like gnocchi but are made just like Spätzle. Well more or less. I'm sure the Hungarians disagree on this.

INGREDIENTS (4 people) :

To make the chicken:

• 4 chicken quarters or a chicken made in 8 halves
• 2 large onions
• 1 cup of crushed tomato
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 3 teaspoons of sweet paprika
• 1 teaspoon of hot paprika
• Half a cup of sour cream
• Wheat flour
• Salt
• ground black pepper
• oil 

To make the spätzle:

• 250 grams (9 oz) of durum wheat flour *
• 3 eggs 
• 50 ml (1/4 cup)  of warm water
• A teaspoon of salt

* Durum wheat flour should be used, not the normal one used to make bread or cakes. It is not always easy to find. If you can't find it, the easiest thing is to buy couscous or bulgur - which are made from durum wheat - and reduce it to flour using a processor, mortar or whatever. Even a glass blender works quite well for this task.

Chicken preparation:

First of all, season the chicken thighs - or the pieces you have - and coat them with flour. In a large pan, fry them until golden brown. We reserve.

In the same oil we fry the grated onion and the laminated garlic cloves and without the central green germ.

When the onion is transparent, add the grated tomato and let it cook.

When the sauce has bound, pour a cup of water.

Introduce the chicken and add more water until it covers it. Cover the pan and cook until the meat softens. It should be very soft, so that it almost falls off the bone. When this happens, sweet and hot paprika are added. Add the half cup of sour cream (it can be made with whipping cream adding the juice of half a lemon) and stir well so that the sauce is uniform. We rectify salt.

It should be left with plenty of juice, at least halfway up the pan.

We reserve, keeping hot.

To make the spätzle:

Mix the beaten eggs with the warm water and salt. Little by little we add the flour well sifted to avoid lumps. Beat until a smooth and homogeneous mass remains. We spread the resulting dough on a smooth surface with the help of a rolling pin. In Germany there are presses and other utensils to cut strips of equal size but we can do it simply with the help of a sharp knife.

Bring plenty of water to a boil with a little salt and add the cut strips to it.

After 5 minutes, more or less, they will float on the surface indicating that they are done. We extract the spätzle and run them through cold water so that they do not stick together, then drain them.

Now we can plate.

We place the pieces of chicken that correspond to each diner occupying half of the plate. The other half is filled with spätzle. With a soup ladle we collect the broth and pour it over.

It's really yummy.