Frau Dietz's Gulas

Until I ate gulas in Hungary, I never really quite knew what it was.  I remember ‘goulash’ being on the menu at school but my recollections are of chewy brown lumps of fatty meat in a puddle of brown liquid that occasionally offered a small chunk of something orange or red.  It certainly didn’t have much flavour, and I think it was served with rice.  When I ate my first, real, proper Hungarian gulas cooked by a real old Hungarian lady in real Hungarian wooden hut on a campsite in, yes, Hungary, I discovered what a proper, warming, flavoursome delight gulas should really be: slow-cooked, tender lumps of beef in a heated, hearty, brothy soup served with home-baked bread and lashings of red wine.

I continued, however, under the misconception that there must be some secret ingredient, some unobtainable herb or spice that meant I would never be able to recreate such a divine yet utterly humble dish.  Until yesterday.  B has been banging on for days about how much he loves gulas, and yesterday I thought to myself well then, let's just make one.  I think it’s actually the first time I’d ever thought that, so imagine my surprise when I after 30 seconds on the internet I discovered that it’s in fact a very simple and friendly recipe with minimum braincells required to make it happen.  I found out what the basic ingredients and the optional extras were, coming up with my own sort of version from what I learned on the internet and a couple of cookbooks: adding potatoes and red peppers it became more of a stew – and a Czech one at that, apparently – and though some recipes call for both caraway and marjoram, I would probably use both so little in future that I plumped for buying just one - the one that seemed to be the consistent one across all the recipes I came across: caraway seeds.

Ingredients (serves 2 with seconds and enough leftover for lunch):

1 packet of what the Germans actually call goulash beef, ie about 400g cubed chuck steak

1 large onion, or 2 small, cut in half and then thinly sliced into half-rings

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 red pepper, sliced lengthways into 1cm-thick pieces

3 or 4 medium-sized potatoes, cut into large chunks

1 tbsp paprika – Hungarian if you have it, but mine appears to be Indian

½ tsp cayenne pepper

½ tsp caraway seeds

1 tin tomatoes

1 pint hot stock (I only had chicken, but I’m guessing beef would make the flavour even richer)

Salt and pepper

Method

Soften the onions in oil over a low heat for a good five minutes, till translucent, then add the garlic, stir, and leave for a couple of minutes.  Next, turning the heat up a notch or two, add the beef and the caraway seeds together: when the beef its completely sealed, add the paprika and the cayenne pepper.  Give it all a good stir and then pour in the tomatoes and add the stock.  Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer gently for an hour and a half.  It will smell GOOD.  Now gently plop in the potatoes followed by the red peppers ten to fifteen minutes later.  Subject to seasoning with salt and pepper, your gulas is basically done when the potatoes are ready, so stick a knife in one after half an hour or so and see how they’re doing doing.  Altogether, mine stayed on the hob for a good 2 hours and 20 minutes, with the lid off for the last 20.

B reckoned that there could have been a few less caraway seeds in and I think I added one too many potatoes… but boy, was it tasty... and comforting... and warming... and hmm... I think I need to make that again.