Balatonboglár | Lake Balaton “Hekked”

Hungarian gastronomy is a world of irrationality. There is no better example of this than our most „Lake Balatonian” fish: the hake. Hungarians have never been able to look a hake in the eye,- because hakes arrive in our country headless (and gutted, deep-frozen, on a boat) and in our more poetic moments, we might even think that, ultimately, the headless hake symbolises the total headlessness that characterises Hungarian culinary.
When you arrive at Lake Balaton in the summer, there is a sweltering heat. You put on your bathing suit, slip into your slippers, put your rubber mat on your shoulder and set off for the Hungarian Sea. On the way you will surely stop at a buffet to eat a good hake at last. Definitely a hake. Because you like lángos too, but now you only want hake: the fresh smell of the lake, the soft caress of the Lake Balaton breeze, the magnificent sight of the baby-blue sky all add up to a Pavlovian reflex that makes you want to have a hake. You are supposed to have popcorn in a cinema, salty sunflower seeds at a football match, Hungarian sauerkraut soup when you have a hangover and hake at Lake Balaton. This is such a strong law in the Hungarian soul that it doesn’t even need to be included in the Basic Law: it is irrefutable and indisputable.
So the Hungarian queues up in front of the buffet, waits for at least half an hour and when it is finally his turn, he greedily points his finger at the biggest hake, drooling. It has no head, there is hardly any fish bone in it, its spine comes out in one piece and you can feast on it like a pig. This is what the Hungarian needs, not the skeleton of Rákóczi! The Hungarian takes a sip of his spritzer and begins to devour the hake.
The hake that was caught in Argentina, Chile or Peru or perhaps off the coast of Namibia or South Africa, had its head cut off there, and was gutted there by South American or African workers. The hake, the name of which is originated from the English „hake”, was once a „hack”, but is now a “hekk”. The hake, which is rather tired of our endless fish soup disputes, as has already travelled a lot: the distance between Zamárdi and Buenos Aires is more than 7,000 miles as the crow flies. But that’s the way we are. We preach fish soup and eat hake.