A collection of Hungarian recipes and home cooking

Hungarian Tidbits

Poppy-seed Pasta – Mákos Tészta

sweet poppy seed pasta

Poppy seed is widely used for a variety of sweet cakes and bakes in Hungary and this dish can’t be more simple to assemble.  All we need is some tagliatelle or wide strip pasta, poppy-seeds and sugar.  The only fiddly bit that the poppy-seeds must be grinded first, it’s quite a different taste from the whole ones that are sprinkled on top of baked goods. I grind the poppy-seeds in a coffee grinder, always together with some granulated sugar otherwise the oily poppy-seed paste would just stick.

Usually the pasta is generously covered with the poppy-seed, even more than on the picture, but it’s of course down to individual taste.

As a rough guide per portion:

  • 50g (1.7 oz 3/8 cup) of black poppy seeds
  • 50g sugar
  • 100g  (about 4 oz.) pasta

Cook the pasta according to package instructions, drain, sprinkle the poppy-seed and sugar mixture, combine, serve warm.

poppy-seed
Poppy-seeds whole and on the right, grinded with some sugar
mak-virag-gubo
The domesticated poppy variety and the seeds in the pod

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *