Gulyás, goulash or pörkölt

"In the case of goulash and paprika, these include the long route that peppers took through the Ottoman Empire, the role of the cowboys of the Hungarian Great Plains, the emigration of Hungarians at the end of the nineteenth century and the evolution from soup to stew in the ‘New World’." Michelle Marie Metro-Roland

We had goulash the other night for dinner - when the grandsons were being delivered to us for an overnight stay. It's a family favourite. So I thought I would look into it and ponder on the evolution and variations of the dish. And, of course, I found lots of sites, who basically told me the same things over and over again, so I felt a bit ashamed of trying to do the same, and am currently trying to take a slightly different approach that will include the history - picture at left, and the personal - picture at right from the opening credits of 2001. I will explain, I promise.

As I said the history and variations were covered on the web. Indeed for a pretty detailed history and account of its cultural importance and evolution you can do no better than go to the Smithsonian site. In summary it is an ancient dish deriving from a stew made by shepherds - shown in the painting above - the stew was made, dried and stored in bags made from the sheep's stomach and taken with them on their travels. Later the meat used changed to beef, Gulyás, which you might think of as the Hungarian word for goulash is actually the word for cow herder or cowboy. And the stew that they made is really a soup - much thinner than the dish we know and was made in an iron pot over a fire.

This dish is called gulyásleves (cowboy's soup). Obviously it had no paprika and no tomatoes - indeed some purists say no tomatoes anyway - until these ingredients were brought back from the new world. Hungary became very proficient at turning the peppers into dried paprika and it is now considered the best paprika and is a huge industry for the country, boosted these days by smoked paprika which is very trendy.

But it was a peasant dish until the Hungarian empire folded and was absorbed by the Germans/Prussians, and the aristocrats sought to maintain their national identity by restoring gulyásleves and pörkölt (which is really the goulash we now now and is basically the soup boiled down to a thick stew) to national prominence. But do read the Smithsonian article for the full story. I didn't mean to say as much as I have about the history, but obviously I couldn't stop myself.

The modern story is goulash - which is an English term and generally means a thick stew flavoured with paprika. And goulash as we know it is actually more akin to pörkölt, which actually has nothing to do with pork - it can be made with any kind of meat - flavoured with paprika and caraway plus maybe, mushrooms, capsicum and sour cream. No wine or tomatoes say the purists. But for an analysis of this sort of thing turn to Felicity Cloake, who does her usual good job on making the perfect goulash (below left). She also quotes Delia Smith's recipe (below right) as being a good one.

My own version however, comes from somewhere else completely - hence 2001, the film. For it is a version written by Nika Standen-Hazelton in her book The Continental Flavour - a Penguin cookbook I purchased many, many years ago. (It was published in 1961.) She maintains that it is a recipe from Richard Strauss, the composer, he who wrote Thus Spake Zarathustra, the opening bars of which so memorably opened 2001, A Space Odyssey. He was Austrian, so this is an Austrian goulash and actually should be made with veal. For goulash is common all over middle and central Europe. This is one of those cookbooks I haven't used much but which contains an all-time family favourite.

When my sons left home - well when they finally returned from their overseas years and settled more permanently in Melbourne - I decided they needed to know how to cook a few things, and so I made them a cookbook called The Dearman Top Ten. It contained recipes of their ten favourite dishes plus a whole range of other advice to do with cooking. It was a gratifyingly and surprisingly, huge success, so I do recommend that if you are in this position ever - children leaving home - it's a really good thing to do. But enough of patting myself on the back, although - one last thing - indirectly, writing that book, led, I think, to this blog. Here is the recipe as written in my book:

GOULASH

This is the recipe as it originally appeared. It’s supposed to be the favourite goulash of the Austrian composer, Richard Strauss who wrote that music that was used to open 2001: a space odyssey. I’ll explain the minor differences as I go along.

1kg of veal (I use beef - rump is good, but you can also use blade or stewing steak, though these will take longer to cook) cut in 3-4 cm squares and free of all fat and gristle.

2 medium sized onions sliced

2 large tomatoes (or a small can if tomatoes are out of season) peeled and quartered (I chop them)

150 mls. dry white wine

100 mls sour cream

2 teaspoons caraway seeds

Tablespoon of paprika

Juice of 1/2 lemon

About 4 tablespoons of hot beef bouillon (I crumble in a beef stock cube and add some water)

Pepper to taste

60 grams butter (or you can use olive oil instead)

Season beef pieces with salt and pepper. Heat butter to foaming (or oil, until there is a haze) and brown the meat. (I put all of the meat in in one go and cook over a high heat until it changes colour. But you can’t really brown it this way. If you want to brown it you will need to do it in batches. Add onions and tomatoes, and stir until the juice has been reduced and practically none remains. While the meat, tomatoes and onions are cooking mix all the other ingredients in a jug. Pour into the pan, mix well, cover tightly, lower heat and simmer until the meat is tender - about 3/4 to 1 hr. Check at intervals to see that the meat is not too dry or sticking to the pan. If it is, add a little more hot water. Serve with rice or noodles and a green salad.

And this is what it looks like:

Having now investigated the variations of this nationals dish I find it strays from the 'pure' in several ways. Tomatoes, wine, beef stock and sour cream are not traditional - well the sour cream seems to be dobbed on the top at the end usually, not cooked with the meat. I also serve it with rice which is definitely not traditional. Noodles or small dumplings of the Eastern European kind are more common. The meat I use is rump. The recipe says veal. Felicity Cloake recommends shin. Up to you really.

In Nika Standen-Hazelton's book, this recipe is followed by a much simpler one for Hungarian Goulash - which I see she mistakenly translates as gulyás. But she precedes the recipe with a useful summary of European variations - possibly not fully authentic, but, I have no doubt, in common use.

"Goulash is the national dish of Hungary and should be considered a generic name for a variety of dishes made with either beef, veal, pork, lamb, game or a combination of meats. These are cooked the gulyás way, or, in plain words, stewed. usually Hungarian goulash contains paprika to the cook's taste. Other seasonings used besides paprika, salt and pepper are caraway seeds, marjoram and garlic.

The recipe below is a good basic recipe which can be varied. Dry white wine or bouillon can be used instead of water. 1lb of cooked sauerkraut can be added about 1/2 hour before the simmering is completed to make a Transylvanian (Slekeley) goulash. Sauerkraut is added and the sour cream omitted to make Szegediner goulash - and in this case the sauce is thickened with flour. Sometimes raw quartered potatoes and/or tomatoes or tomato sauce are simmered with the meat. In any event, goulash should have plenty of onions in it."

So basically do what you like as long as you have paprika and, I think, caraway, in with the meat. Which considering that the original dish had no paprika is an interesting comment on evolution.

Who knows what will happen to it in the future.