Lecsó looks faintly like the French ratatouille, however, the main ingredients of this typical Hungarian summer one-course meal are pepper, tomato and onion. There are countless versions of lecsó, everyone has their own recipe for making the perfect lecsó. It can give rise to serious disputes how to chop onions and slice peppers, whether onion should be fried in rendered lard, oil or bacon fat, peel or not to peel the tomatoes.

Anyway, one thing remains certain that it’s impossible to make tasty lecsó from watery peppers and tomatoes grown in greenhouse. You definitely have to wait until the sun ripens the vegetables to obtain the best and most aromatic base materials. If you can’t buy wax peppers, yellow bell peppers will do, as they are the closest to the Hungarian wax peppers in terms of flavour. The smallest are the best, as they don’t release so much liquid during cooking.