Elvis Presley, the king of Rock’ n’ Roll, was undoubtedly the world’s most famous and most-loved artist of his time. His influence on popular music was extraordinary. He was known to almost every man and woman around the world, you only had to mention his name. John Lennon once said, before Elvis, there was nothing.
Elvis mesmerised his audience with his beautiful and characteristic voice. He could reach out to the young as well as the elderly all the same. Elvis had a song for everyone among the more than a thousand tracks that he had recorded during his lifetime. Many of his fans believed that God had sent Elvis to the people so that he can entertain, cheer and heal humankind. Elvis’ memory lives on to this day. Millions of people still listen to his songs, attend memorial performances, read books about his life, or try and mimic his voice, style and movement. His life is the subject of countless books and films. The Elvis Presley Fan Clubs are thriving relentlessly around the world.
I live in Budapest, Hungary, and I can tell you of a couple of links that our city has with Elvis. In 1982, the Hungarian Friends of Elvis Presley Club was founded. In 2011, the Elvis Presley Park was named. In the same year, Elvis was posthumously given honorary citizenship to the city of Budapest, for in 1957, in a primtetime television programme Elvis and the presenter Ed Sullivan had urged Americans to donate money and food in support of the Hungarian refugees fleeing Soviet oppresion after the failed revolution for freedom in 1956. We talk about Elvis a lot in the Club. We love to daydream with the members about what we would have done for Elvis, if we had been one of his associates, such as his friend, manager, wife, doctor or even his hairdresser, so that he could have remained with us longer and in health. In our imaginary world, the doctor would have prescribed fewer drugs for him, the friend would have been more supportive and understanding, the manager would have taken his touring outside of the US and so on. These conversations inspired me to have a think about how I would have liked to contribute to Elvis’s life, had I been given the chance.
I am a passionate cook, and so the answer for me was obvious, I would have liked to cook his favourite meals for him. Elvis loved food so I would have tried to make his meals a little healthier, a little more varied, but of course, all the while respecting the cookery of Elvis’s mother and his later cook in Graceland. And so this is how the idea of writing this blog came about.
I am not a chef, I trained as a paper engineer, but I have had the opportunity to travel a lot in my life. I love different cusines, aromas and spices that you get in different parts of the world and I often try out new recipes in my home to develop this hobby of mine. I have also accumulated a significant recipe book collection, some of which detail Elvis’s diet. I have organised many dinner parties for the members of the Club where I cooked some of Elvis’s favourite dishes. These parties were always very successful and popular. I didn’t only cook the food but I also prepared a short presentation about the dishes and Elvis’s life events relating to those dishes so the members could understand his world better.
With this blog, my intention was not about collating and translating recipes that are available on the internet or in other recipe books, as some of the ingredients in those old recipes are no longer available or are difficult to find if you live outside of the US. Also cooking technology and knowledge about nutrition has developed a great deal since the 1950s. Instead I wanted to think about how I would create one of Elvis’s favourite meals for him today. How could I improve it, add to it, make it a little healthier but retain the flavour, texture and the culinary experience that makes the dish and the ingedients unique. I also wanted to showcase new ideas and recipes using the same ingredients that made up Elvis’s diet. For example, Elvis loved corn bread. So I had a think about how I would make corn bread and what other kinds of dishes could I create using cornmeal, just to show the potential in this very simple staple ingredient. So, the recipes contained on this blog were created with this in mind.
I included some classic American recipes in the blog which I left unchanged, as these have stood the test of time and so there really is no reason to tinker with them. Such an example is the Fried Banana and Peanut Butter sandwich, a real American treat, and which has clear links to Elvis himself. For these dishes I made references to the origin of the dish or to the chef that made that dish for Elvis back in the day. I wasn’t aiming to create dishes in the nowadays fashionable fine-dining style, or to present them in a particular way. Neither did I want to add additional greens or fruits just to create a healthy recipe. I wanted keep the dishes as Elvis would have known them. But I did add my own inspiration and ideas to them here and there. Aside from trying to create somewhat healthier and more varied recipes, my versions are also influenced by my own Hungarian and Eastern-European cooking and henceforth I’ve incorporated some flavours, ingredients, or a regional variation of the dish in a handful of the recipes too.
I hope that you agree that the recipes on this blog are easy to recreate and the ingredients can be sourced by anyone, wherever you are in the world. I would like this blog to be for everyone, just like Elvis’s songs are. I hope that you will enjoy making these dishes, while, perhaps, listening to Elvis Presely in your kitchen at home.
Dear Reader, I invite you to join me on this journey to the culinary world of Elvis Presley. Let me present you the dishes with a little bit of historical and cultural background that will help us understand and get to know Elvis a little better. Allow me to take you to a world of dreams where a Hungarian fan cooks for Elvis Presley!