The Apple Flower Team from Derecske (Attila Breitenbach, Szabolcs Balogh) won the 5th Hungarian Food 2022 Cooking Competition.
The team won the competition with the fancy name of the flavors of Hortobágy (beef with juniper, slambuc, lecsó, sage butter sauce). The second place went to the Lifestyle Hotel Mátra, the third to the Blöff Bistro.
During the handover, Gellért Sölch, Undersecretary of State for Strategic Affairs at the Ministry of Human Resources, emphasized that “after his difficult months due to the coronavirus epidemic,“ life has returned to hospitality”, according to the latest data. According to him, the turnover of restaurants in the last seven months significantly exceeded the data of the same period before the epidemic by HUF 43.5 billion, which means an increase of about five percent and an increase of one and a half times compared to the epidemic period. He believed that the Hungarian food competition was also about brave chef knowledge and respect for Hungarian cuisine. The award also embodies national belonging, he added.
Master chef Károly Varga, chairman of the jury, called the competition a historic moment because according to him, Hungarian dishes were born that will be consumed with great respect in 30-40 years.
According to István Asztalos, the president of the Association of Hungarian Chefs of Diet, the brainchild of the competition, the fight will strengthen national cohesion and not incidentally promote the birth of new Hungarian dishes. He noted that in the year of the Petőfi bicentenary, poetry was linked to gastronomy and they tried to “bring gray cattle back into Hungarian cuisine” because they had recently been pushed out of the offer of Hungarian restaurants.
Competitors had to prepare an innovative but popular new dish consisting of a maximum of four elements, so that it could be prepared in most medium-equipped kitchens, even in large portions, and meet Hungarian needs. The food and his fancy name had to be linked to the life and poetry of Sándor Petőfi, and it was important to use gray beef, butter, and any eco or domestic branded products from Hungary as raw materials. An important criterion was that the net cost of raw materials could not exceed HUF 1,500.
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