Strudel’s Distant Cousin

Hungarians boast that there is no such thing as a recipe for vargabéles (varga-BELL-esh): either you know how to bake it, or you don’t. Since this dish was first released from its pan 100 years ago, just about every home cook in Hungary has made it at one time or another - with a recipe or without one.

A distant relative of rétes or strudel, vargabéles is composed of two layers of fragile, almost-transparent puff pastry, sandwiching a fat pile of thin noodles. The nood