Fun and Frogs

Once upon a time, a frog jumped into a bowl of kocsonya (meat jelly) cooling in a cellar of a Miskolc restaurant, and an unsuspecting waitress served it to guests.

We don’t know if the guests actually ate it, but since then, the expression “Blinks, like the frog in the Miskolc meat jelly” has come into common usage in Hungary. So Miskolc is the place to go to enjoy this treat (hopefully without the frog), and now is the season!

Kocsonya is prepared in late fall and winter by boiling (otherwise undesirable) pork pieces with vegetables and spices, skimming off (some of) the fat and leaving the broth to cool into a jelly dotted with juicy meat. It’s consumed cold with thick slices of fresh, white bread – for which Miskolc also happens to be famous. Hence the Kocsonya Festival, complete with culinary contests, concerts and a street fair (with fairgoers in frog costumes!), starting in 2000. Try this local culinary specialty in 40 varieties, while you laugh at jesters and other festival funnymen, listen to chansons or brass bands, and then dress up and attend the Kocsonya Ball!

You could combine a trip to this nowhere-else-in-the-world festival with a dip into the hot-springs Cave Baths at Miskolc-Tapolca, also something not found anywhere else…

For details and venues see www.kocsonyafesztival.hu/helyszinek/.

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