at Em's request: my mother's goulash recipe (and I'm glad for a reason to finally start writing down recipes)

But, you know how it is with those family recipes... most of this measurements are guesswork.
The following dialogue took place at least 20 times today:
Mama, "and then you add such-and-such-"
Me, "How much?!"
Mama, "I have no idea..."

So, anyway, here it is:

1 kg lean beef
1 kg onions
Paprika (about 3-4 tablespoons)
Salt, pepper to taste
Caraway seeds (1/2 teaspoon)

Chop onions into small dices, put into a pot with a little oil until they have a golden-yellow colour.
Cut meat into dices (1 inch) and add to the onions, stir steadily for about 3 minutes, then take the pot off the heat.
Add paprika (until everything has a nice orange colour), salt and caraway.
Put pot back onto the hotplate, add water until everything is covered.
Let simmer for 1 ½ to 2 hours, stir occasionally and add more water if necessary.
After about 1 hour, add another 2 cups of water. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Mix 2-3 tablespoons of flour with water to make a smooth dough, then add to the goulash to thicken it (it shouldn’t become too thick, though, so add slowly (my mother found it difficult to find a way to describe it, she finally settled for “a sauce-like consistency”).
You can also add a small piece of lemon peel (while it’s simmering), or a bit of ketchup/tomato paste, my school cookbook also mentions vinegar (1 tablespoon), garlic and marjoram – you’ll have to experiment!

ETA: We eat it with bread dumplings, pasta or Spätzle (for which I think ther's no English word, and I don't know how to make them without a "Spätzle sieve", so I'm not bothering to translate the recipe). And beetroot salad.


Bread dumplings (copied out of my school cookbook):

¼ kg of dry white bread, cut into small (~1cm) dices
0.3l milk
2 eggs
salt
1 onion
4 tablespoons of flour
(chopped parsley)

Chop onion, brown it in butter.
Mix all the ingredients, knead, let it rest for 10 minutes.
Form dumplings (with wet hands), roughly tennisball-sized, and cook in boiling salt water for about 10 minutes.

Last edited by Magpie (2008-02-01 11:53:12)

I hope you like it!

Oh my, Magpie. I _have_ to make that! I've been wanting to try goulash in like, forever.

*plots, wonders where she can find caraway seeds*

Hiragana wrote:

Oh my, Magpie. I _have_ to make that! I've been wanting to try goulash in like, forever.

*plots, wonders where she can find caraway seeds*

Caraway seeds shouldn't be that hard to find. You should be able to get them at a large supermarket.

-X

Em wrote:

Magpie, does your mother make Chicken Paprikash? I've made it once before, loved it, and lost the recipe. But, it's an Hungarian dish, so maybe not.

never heard of that...

Magpie wrote:

Em wrote:

Magpie, does your mother make Chicken Paprikash? I've made it once before, loved it, and lost the recipe. But, it's an Hungarian dish, so maybe not.

never heard of that...

I love chicken paprikash.

1 whole chicken (about 3 1/2 pounds), cut into 8 pieces
1 Tbsp butter, softened
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 large onions, thinly sliced
1 Tbsp sweet Hungarian paprika
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup chicken broth
2 Tbsp sour cream

1 Preheat oven to 450°F. Pat chicken dry with paper towels. Mix butter with garlic. Use fingertips to spread mixture underneath the skin on the breasts and thighs.

2 In a small roasting pan, stir onions with paprika, salt, and 1/4 cup of water. Arrange chicken pieces in the pan. Cook chicken for about 10 minutes on 450°F, then lower the heat to 375°F and continue to cook an additional 30 minutes. Chicken is done when the internal temperature of the chicken reaches 175°F (use a meat thermometer), and the juices run clear when the thickest part of thigh is pierced with a knife. Note that breasts cook faster than the thighs, so you may want to take those out if done first, and let the thighs cook a few minutes longer.


3 Remove chicken pieces to a platter and let sit for 10 minutes. You may want to cut away the meat from the bones, and cut the chicken pieces into smaller pieces (entirely optional). Skim and discard fat from onion mixture in the pan. Add chicken broth to the onions. Placing the roasting pan on a stovetop burner, bring to boiling over medium heat, stirring to loosen the browned bits. Stir in sour cream. Serve chicken with onions spooned over it.

I love trying new recipes, but i live alone with cats, so i don't cook very often anymore, except for friends.

Chicken Soup

This was the recipe that really made me think, "I want to learn how to cook" – although I still haven’t found time to really learn anything. Quite apart from being very yummy, it’s (as far as I know) an old family recipe that came from my father’s mother (and my mother has only learned it a couple of years ago).

And you know how it is with family recipes, there are no definite measurements, just “a bit of this and a bit of that”. Drove me crazy when I was writing it down, but what are you gonna do?

Well, anyway –

1 whole chicken, or 2 legs, depending how much you want to make (a whole chicken makes a huge pot of soup that feeds our entire family for two days).
4 whole carrots (or less if you’re making a smaller pot)
a piece of celeriac
1 onion (with peel)
a piece of leek
salt, pepper
40-50g of butter
2 tablespoons flour
peas (we usually use 1/4kg of frozen peas for a large pot)

Put chicken, carrots, celeriac, onion and leek in a (big) pot with cold water. Add salt and pepper, bring to the boil - or rather, turn down the heat just before it begins to boil.
Let simmer for 2 hours, adding water if necessary, then strain – put soup into another pot, add the chicken meat (after getting rid of skin and bones); slice carrots and return them to the soup as well.
Melt some butter in a pan, mix in the flour with a whisk – it should become foamy, but not brown or lumpy! It should still be more or less liquid, if necessary add some more butter or oil. Stir into soup.
Lastly, add the dumplings (see below) and peas.


Bread crumb dumplings:

30g butter
3 eggs
4 tablespoons of water
white bread crumbs (once again, an unspecified amount)
salt, nutmeg

Let the butter melt, them stir until it becomes frothy. Add eggs and water and stir carefully. Mix in enough breadcrumbs to make a soft dough. Season with salt and nutmeg and let it rest for 5-10 minutes before forming little dumplings (about 1 inch in diameter), putting them into the simmering soup and cooking them for 5-10 minutes.


Great. Now I’m sitting here, stomach rumbling and drooling.

Last edited by Magpie (2008-02-15 16:41:04)

It sounds like a really good recipe. I think I'll try it this weekend. Thank you for sharing it.

Nummy looking soup there mags. Chicken soup ftw.

I like mine thick. Heaps of vegetable puree. And corn. It's got to have corn :P

Which is a neat trick for those of you silly enough to be health conscious. Instead of using a roux (the butter and flour as described in magpie's recepie) you can add more vegetables and then puree half of them after it is cooked and that will make it thicker.

-X

Em wrote:

Gen - you need to come up with a chicken soup pizza recipe. :oP

Hmm. So I do...

Step 1: Make one quantity of Magpie's chicken soup

Step 2: Order pizza

Step 3: Line the inside of a large bowl with the pizza.

Step 4: pour in chicken soup.

That's about it :P

-X

Two of my recent experimentations (off the cuff based on what was available):

(1)Chicken in Balsamic Vinegar and Cinammon
(2) Minty Fish, Thai style

Cooking directions rather than recipes because recipes make me nervous:
(all found at the blog for those who know)

Last edited by Hiragana (2008-09-24 08:28:39)

Fish bliss.

*sagenod*

To think it took me so long to `speriment because I was afraid of the unknown (Australian fish). I now need to try the rest *grin* - any suggestions?