the GF Recipie Thread

[orwell]

In what kind of dishes would you tend to use paprika?

[Soddball]

In what kind of dishes would you tend to use paprika?

The Belgians sprinkle it on chips (US: Fries), and it's pretty good. I use it in curries and chillies. It also goes in Stroganoff.

[Michael Emrys]

I use it in curries and chillies. It also goes in Stroganoff.

I use it in all three. I also put a load of it in marinara sauce. I use Hungarian sweet paprika. They also offer a hot paprika, but if I am looking for hot, I go to a proper pepper of some sort: chili, tabasco, cayenne, chipotle, etc.

Michael

[Wybert Takahashi]

"Types of Hungarian paprika (Hungarian name in parentheses):

Special Quality (Különleges): The mildest and brightest red of all Hungarian paprikas, with excellent aroma.

Delicate (Édes csemege): Ranging from light to dark red, a mild paprika with a rich flavour.

Exquisite Delicate (Csemegepaprika): Similar to Delicate, but more pungent.

Pungent Exquisite Delicate (Csípős Csemege, Pikáns): An even more pungent Delicate.

Rose (Rózsa): Pale Red in colour with strong aroma and mild pungency.

Noble Sweet (Édesnemes): The most commonly exported paprika; bright red and slightly pungent.

Half-Sweet (Félédes): A blend of mild and pungent paprikas; medium pungency.

Hot (Erős): Light brown in colour, this is the hottest of all the paprikas."

Smoked paprika from Spain is available in most UK supermarkets.

Paprika and eggs? Eggs, onion, pepper, tomato, eggs, paprika, olive oil? Chilli?

For lunch I had something like that - fried courgette, onion, bit of spinach, tomato puree, garlic, paprika, chilli-paprika, pepper, made into four groovy shapes, fried eggs between them, ate them. It was OK. I was going to go all Moroccan on myself - paprika, cumin, coriander, all dried, sometimes all three used as a condiment.

P.S, no more breakfast problem, thanks John. There were good suggestions. I hear what you say about pre-preparing stuff - I know of some people who cook their entire weeks food on Sundays.

[REVS]

That smoked Spanish paprika is nice. If you've ever eaten Spanish Chorizo sausage, the main flavour is smoked paprika. It makes all the difference to a Paella.

Unless you're in Hungary don't worry about all those different types of paprika. Elsewhere all you'll find is hot or sweet paprika.

[Other Means]

Oops - messed up the quote function, should be:

Originally Posted by Hakko Ichiu

Use good quality lamb's or calf's liver. Soak it in milk for a few hours to get rid of the impurities.

Slice reasonably thickly. Coat lightly with seasoned flour that also has some smoked paprika in it. Saute high and fast, remove to the plate while still pink on the inside. Serve with a squeeze of lemon.

Good tip about the soaking, cheers for that. Is it the same with kidneys?

[Bigduke6]

Here is a recipe for authentic Hungarian goulash, the Madyar national dish taught to me by an authentic Hungarian Budapest native named Koti.

It is ok to vary the ingredient values substantially, this is just a guideline, goulash is a creative process.

- 1lb boned pork

- 1lb boned beef

- 1lb kielbasa sausage or similar, no hard salami though

- 3 - 4 good-sized onions

- 4 - 6 salad peppers depending on size, better bitter green than sweet red, but not Bell

- 2 - 3 lbs potatoes, peeled, if big quartered

- 2 - 3 cloves of garlic per lb of meat

- 1/2 lb peas, ideally garden fresh but a big can will do, if canned drain juice

- tomato paste, or maybe one tomato per lb of all other ingredients, not just meat

- 2 or so heaping tablespoons of paprika per lb of meat; more if powder is weak or substantial paprika "kick" is desired

- Sour cream optional

- Oil or lard for greasing purposes

- Something green like fresh parsley, dill, or spring onion

The ideal cooking utensil is a cast iron pot hung over a fire. A 4 - 8 quart pot is a reasonable substitute, in either case you need a lid.

Know the general goal: You are making a thick, hearty stew, but there needs to be some liquid, if its just chunks in a sauce you've got it too dry.

Preparation:

Cut meat into cubes 1/2" square

Peel onions, chop but no need to go fine. Clean garlic cloves, chop fairly fine or just hammer the suckers so they'll fall apart on their own. If you want to be labeled a Hungarian peasant rather than nobility, or even worse Ukrainian or Romanian not Hungarian, add extra garlic.

Fry these items in the pot until onions are sort of soft and the meat is browned. If the meat is fatty you can get away without using grease, otherwise great pot to prevent burning. Add some salt and pepper or paprika if you feel like it. There are different schools especially on the timing of the introduction of paprika powder into the goulash, so use your best judgement.

Once this is done pour enough water into the pot to cover the meat/onion mix. Obviously, whatever liquid/grease that accumulated in the pot during the browning process, stays in the pot.

Clean peppers of seeds and tops, slice into thin slices if you are shooting for "country style" goulash, chop fine or even pulp in food processor if you are going for smooth impress-the-foreigners goulash. Also, some schools of goulash preparation introduce the fresh pepper relatively late, not now. Either way works, I prefer early/country as I like soft spicy peppers swimming around in my goulash.

Once you have made your decision, dump the pepper mass into the pot, add more water so the pepper can simmer too.

Peel potatoes, quarter if necessary, and dump into pot. Fresh potatoes with their skins on are considered a delicacy, but if it's a conventional potato skin must come off. As before, add water, now you want to have enough liquid to keep most of the stuff below water level.

Decide whether you are going to cheat and use tomato paste, or if you are going to keep to ancient Madyar tradition and sacrifice some tomatoes. If paste, dump in about one tablespoon per lb of meat. If tomatoes, peel and throw into pot, or cheat more cleverly by running tomatoes through food processor, and throw tomato mass into pot. DO NOT let Hungarian guests know there is tomato skin in the goulash as this is considered a shameful Gypsy trick. More or less tomato, either way, is possible depending on your taste.

Add paprika as indicated, and salt and pepper to taste. The liquid should at this point taste kind of weak and bitter, weak because the goulash hasn't boiled down yet, bitter because all but the best grades of paprika are kind of bitter by themselves. An alternative to salt is adding a beef or pork boullion cube or even two, but don't tell any one if you use this cheat, if Hungarians find out they will force you to memorize noun inflections in their evil language, which will drive any non Finno-Urgic insane in under a half hour.

Simmer goulash for at least two hours, three is better. Liquid will reduce over time so add water periodically keeping the "thick stew with some liquid" goal in mind. Stir periodically so it doesn't burn. In poorer families the goulash is more liquidy, in bourgeois families interested in conspicuous consumption the goulash is thicker. Your liquidity depends on your socio-economic aspirations.

When you are about 30 minutes to one hour from done, you be the judge, throw in the peas. This is also a good time to add more paprika both for taste and color, also black pepper.

Be careful with the salt though as the goulash is boiling down and what tastes undersalted right now will taste oversalted only 5 - 10 minutes later. Err on the side of salt caution here, you can always salt to taste when everything is done.

This is another window for dumping in the slice pepper, do it now rather than at the outset of the simmering process and the pepper is somewhat crunchier and adds less fresh pepper taste to the goulash.

When the goulash gets to the point of sort of a thick soup with a ton of stuff swimming about, and tastes right to you, ithe goulash is ready to serve. The standard is there needs to be some liquid so you can get slurp and a couple chunks of meat and potato in every spoonful. Meat should be very soft, if not cook longer. Serve in a large, wide soup plate.

If you wish to show natural Hungarian friendship with the Slavs surrounding your Danubian plain, put a dollop of sour cream in the goulash. Purists will of course tell you you have sold out to the Russian Empire, so exercise care here. Still, the sour cream visually makes an excellent and appetizing contrast with your red-brown goulash.

Similarly, if you want to express pragmatic Hungarian acceptance of Germanic efficiency and civilization, serve your goulash with pumpernickel bread and beer. There are purists that will get on your case here as well, telling you it's red wine or nothing, only Austrians and the uncultured (one in the same according to most Hungarians) would drink beer with goulash.

The idea is that wine is a home-made product while beer is purchased, and goulash by tradition is an outdoor food consumed by hunters and stolid farmers and shepherds and horse archers and so on.

If you want to show off garnish your goulash with chopped green stuff such as parsley. No one will harass you about parsley yes or not, but by this point you should be pretty hungry and parsley chopping can be a pain. Delegate this task if possible.

This recipe will serve about 6 - 8 depending on appetites. Leftovers will taste better tomorrow, usually substantially better.

NB: High paprika quotient allows goulash to remain tasty in your refrigerator for weeks at a time, for practical purposes it always gets eaten before it could even begin spoiling.

[Hakko Ichiu]

Good tip about the soaking, cheers for that. Is it the same with kidneys?

It's true for most of the organ meats, AFAIAA, except tongue and maybe heart, which are really muscles. You can use other things, including acidulated water, but milk is traditionally French and northern Italian.

That smoked Spanish paprika is nice. If you've ever eaten Spanish Chorizo sausage, the main flavour is smoked paprika. It makes all the difference to a Paella.

Smoked paprika is now one of my favorite "cheat" ingredients for adding flavor, especially as I don't cook with pork products. It's a great way to get some rich, smoky goodness into any number of dishes.

BD6: Sausages in goulasch? I've eaten goulasch all over Hungary, as well as other corners of the K. u. K., and I've never seen it with sausage. Maybe I didn't know the right Hungarians. Or maybe they ate all the sausage before I got there. Nice recipe though.

[volfrahm]

After looking at some Thai red curry recipes I found out that using a vitamix wouldn't be so useful. It's strange because when I used to order Thai food for delivery I would get a plastic container which was mostly a thick liquid with sliced vegetables and chicken. I would've thought a vitamix would be useful, at least for the liquid.

Here's a typical recipe for Thai Red Curry

HEAT the oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat and cook the onion for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. ADD the curry paste and garlic and cook, stirring, for a minute. ADD the coconut milk, stock, fish sauce, sugar and salt, then bring to the boil. ADD the red pepper and zucchini, cover with a lid, then reduce the heat to medium and simmer for 12 minutes. WHILE the curry simmers, cook the rice. ADD the chicken to the curry and simmer, covered, for a further 8 minutes. ADD the cornstarch paste and stir continuously until the curry thickens, then stir in the lemon juice and basil. SERVE on a bed of rice.

Could you dry chop the onion, zucchini, red pepper on high for 1-2 sec with the pieces being large enough? I've tried this already with red cabbage and red bell pepper for a coleslaw, and they became too small.

Would it be wise to put the curry paste, garlic, coconut milk, vegetable stock, fish sauce, and sugar into the vitamix? Besides the garlic being chopped very well, what benefit would there be when compared to just putting them into a regular pot?

In the end I'm going to have to use a pot for letting the chopped veggies/meat or tofu simmer with the liquid.

If I added tofu, would it have to be baked prior to letting it simmer with the rest?

So far, I'm finding that my vitamix is mainly for salad dressings and blended salads. The soups have been more misses than hits.

[Bigduke6]

Hakko,

What can I say, that's the way my native guide and her girlfriends made it. Not that sausage was a key element, the message I got was that pretty much any reasonable stew meat would do, venison and boar were mentioned specifically. Not horse though.

I've had restaurant goulash outside of Hungary, never in it. the restaurant stuff was soupier and saltier, had carrots, and never as good as what the locals were making for themselves.

The issue my Hungarians really argued about furiously though was the raw peppers; big or small, slice or chop or pulp, long simmer or short.

[REVS]

I've cooked this simple Serbian Goulash many times, and it works fine. You can vary the amounts of meat and potatoes. I've just copied and pasted it from the website where I found it originally. And the longer you cook it the better - the cooking time is for good quality lamb. Slightly inferior stuff might need 20 minutes more. And I also find that browning the lamb for 5-10 minutes prior to adding the water makes all the difference.

1. Saute 2 onions in olive oil until golden brown

2. Add 1 1/2 kilos of diced lamb

3. Add 2 bay leaves and 4 heaped tablespoons of tomato paste

4. Add enough water to cover the meat

5. Allow to simmer for approximately 20 mins

6. Stir in a tablespoon of fresh paprika and a large red chilli

7. Add 2 kilos of chopped potatoes and let this simmer for approximately another 20 to 30 minutes before serving

Serves 4-6

[Michael Emrys]

Big Duke,

Thanks for the great goulash recipe! I've been looking for one and this looks like a winner. A couple of points:

You mention salad peppers but specify that they must not be Bell peppers. This leave me wondering just what kind you mean. Could you be more specific and give me a name or names?

Secondly about the peas, I would suggest that rather than use canned peas as an alternative to fresh, that you use frozen peas. The ones available in the US at least are virtually indistinguishable from fresh peas once cooked.

Michael

[John Kettler]

Paprika does go well with eggs, at least, the deviled ones we eat in the States. Paprika's also good with poultry, since I happen to know of, but have yet to eat, a traditional (Polish?) dish called Chicken Paprikash, q.v.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Bigduke6]

Micheal,

That was an excellent question, kudoes for asking. It turns out I was misleading every one. In fact, you want to use Bell Peppers, despite the fact I wrote you don't. The reason I made this error is, I thought the peppers the Central/East Europeans use for stuffing weren't the Bell Peppers you use in the states, as the European ones are smaller, thinner-skinned, and more of a lime green than a dark green, and perhaps a bit more bitter and spicy, than the generic Bell Pepper found in most state groceries.. But your question made me check and the answer is clear, in fact both are capiscum annuum, and so Bell Peppers.

Wikipedia also tells me there are all sorts of bell peppers. The kind the Hungarians use is, unsurprisingly, the Hungarian Wax pepper. I'm not sure you would be able to find that in your grocery store, but I am pretty sure you could find something close. Here's the Italian/Greek version of the pepper, which you should be able to find:

Use something like this and you'll be pretty close.

Hmm...I can't seem to stick a picture in this post. Well, a Tuscan or a Greek pepper is what you are looking for. What you don't want is the dark green roundish kind, you are looking for light green longish kind. Fresh not pickled, obviously.

Apologies for misleading the gourmandic masses, recipe amended.

On the frozen peas, fine idea.

[Bigduke6]

This recipe reposted as I can't figure out how to edit the message I posted, there's no edit button. Between that and how I'm having trouble posting pictures, I'm really one happy user of this new forum.

Anyway, here is a recipe for authentic Hungarian goulash, the Madyar national dish taught to me by an authentic Hungarian Budapest native named Koti.

It is ok to vary the ingredient values substantially, this is just a guideline, goulash is a creative process.

- 1lb boned pork

- 1lb boned beef

- 1lb kielbasa sausage or similar, no hard salami though

- 3 - 4 good-sized onions

- 4 - 6 salad peppers depending on size, better bitter green than sweet red, but not dark green round Bell peppers, but rather light green thin-skinned Bell peppers. Hungarian Wax is best variety. Tuscan or Greek will do.

- 2 - 3 lbs potatoes, peeled, if big quartered

- 2 - 3 cloves of garlic per lb of meat

- 1/2 lb peas, ideally garden fresh but a big can will do, if canned drain juice

- tomato paste, or maybe one tomato per lb of all other ingredients, not just meat

- 2 or so heaping tablespoons of paprika per lb of meat; more if powder is weak or substantial paprika "kick" is desired

- Sour cream optional

- Oil or lard for greasing purposes

- Something green like fresh parsley, dill, or spring onion

The ideal cooking utensil is a cast iron pot hung over a fire. A 4 - 8 quart pot is a reasonable substitute, in either case you need a lid.

Know the general goal: You are making a thick, hearty stew, but there needs to be some liquid, if its just chunks in a sauce you've got it too dry.

Preparation:

Cut meat into cubes 1/2" square

Peel onions, chop but no need to go fine. Clean garlic cloves, chop fairly fine or just hammer the suckers so they'll fall apart on their own. If you want to be labeled a Hungarian peasant rather than nobility, or even worse Ukrainian or Romanian not Hungarian, add extra garlic.

Fry these items in the pot until onions are sort of soft and the meat is browned. If the meat is fatty you can get away without using grease, otherwise great pot to prevent burning. Add some salt and pepper or paprika if you feel like it. There are different schools especially on the timing of the introduction of paprika powder into the goulash, so use your best judgement.

Once this is done pour enough water into the pot to cover the meat/onion mix. Obviously, whatever liquid/grease that accumulated in the pot during the browning process, stays in the pot.

Clean peppers of seeds and tops, slice into thin slices if you are shooting for "country style" goulash, chop fine or even pulp in food processor if you are going for smooth impress-the-foreigners goulash. Also, some schools of goulash preparation introduce the fresh pepper relatively late, not now. Either way works, I prefer early/country as I like soft spicy peppers swimming around in my goulash.

Once you have made your decision, dump the pepper mass into the pot, add more water so the pepper can simmer too.

Peel potatoes, quarter if necessary, and dump into pot. Fresh potatoes with their skins on are considered a delicacy, but if it's a conventional potato skin must come off. As before, add water, now you want to have enough liquid to keep most of the stuff below water level.

Decide whether you are going to cheat and use tomato paste, or if you are going to keep to ancient Madyar tradition and sacrifice some tomatoes. If paste, dump in about one tablespoon per lb of meat. If tomatoes, peel and throw into pot, or cheat more cleverly by running tomatoes through food processor, and throw tomato mass into pot. DO NOT let Hungarian guests know there is tomato skin in the goulash as this is considered a shameful Gypsy trick. More or less tomato, either way, is possible depending on your taste.

Add paprika as indicated, and salt and pepper to taste. The liquid should at this point taste kind of weak and bitter, weak because the goulash hasn't boiled down yet, bitter because all but the best grades of paprika are kind of bitter by themselves. An alternative to salt is adding a beef or pork boullion cube or even two, but don't tell any one if you use this cheat, if Hungarians find out they will force you to memorize noun inflections in their evil language, which will drive any non Finno-Urgic insane in under a half hour.

Simmer goulash for at least two hours, three is better. Liquid will reduce over time so add water periodically keeping the "thick stew with some liquid" goal in mind. Stir periodically so it doesn't burn. In poorer families the goulash is more liquidy, in bourgeois families interested in conspicuous consumption the goulash is thicker. Your liquidity depends on your socio-economic aspirations.

When you are about 30 minutes to one hour from done, you be the judge, throw in the peas. This is also a good time to add more paprika both for taste and color, also black pepper.

Be careful with the salt though as the goulash is boiling down and what tastes undersalted right now will taste oversalted only 5 - 10 minutes later. Err on the side of salt caution here, you can always salt to taste when everything is done.

This is another window for dumping in the slice pepper, do it now rather than at the outset of the simmering process and the pepper is somewhat crunchier and adds less fresh pepper taste to the goulash.

When the goulash gets to the point of sort of a thick soup with a ton of stuff swimming about, and tastes right to you, ithe goulash is ready to serve. The standard is there needs to be some liquid so you can get slurp and a couple chunks of meat and potato in every spoonful. Meat should be very soft, if not cook longer. Serve in a large, wide soup plate.

If you wish to show natural Hungarian friendship with the Slavs surrounding your Danubian plain, put a dollop of sour cream in the goulash. Purists will of course tell you you have sold out to the Russian Empire, so exercise care here. Still, the sour cream visually makes an excellent and appetizing contrast with your red-brown goulash.

Similarly, if you want to express pragmatic Hungarian acceptance of Germanic efficiency and civilization, serve your goulash with pumpernickel bread and beer. There are purists that will get on your case here as well, telling you it's red wine or nothing, only Austrians and the uncultured (one in the same according to most Hungarians) would drink beer with goulash.

The idea is that wine is a home-made product while beer is purchased, and goulash by tradition is an outdoor food consumed by hunters and stolid farmers and shepherds and horse archers and so on.

If you want to show off garnish your goulash with chopped green stuff such as parsley. No one will harass you about parsley yes or not, but by this point you should be pretty hungry and parsley chopping can be a pain. Delegate this task if possible.

This recipe will serve about 6 - 8 depending on appetites. Leftovers will taste better tomorrow, usually substantially better.

NB: High paprika quotient allows goulash to remain tasty in your refrigerator for weeks at a time, for practical purposes it always gets eaten before it could even begin spoiling.

[Wybert Takahashi]

Smoked paprika is now one of my favorite "cheat" ingredients for adding flavor, especially as I don't cook with pork products. It's a great way to get some rich, smoky goodness into any number of dishes.

What kinds of dishes? I put some in chilli once, other than that, I don't think I've used it much.

volfrahm, I don't think the chopper is very necessary for the Thai curry - but you could make your own paste in it, or just liquidize the onions. I wouldn't add corn starch to it. With Thai and Vietnamese (must try) curry, it often looks very liquidy, and so people add corn starch or keep boiling it down - but once poured over rice, it seems as if the liquid dissappears, the rice drinks it, or something.

You could have cashews cooked in the dish, and garnished with fresh chillies and roasted peanuts, coriander..

[Michael Emrys]

This recipe reposted as I can't figure out how to edit the message I posted, there's no edit button. Between that and how I'm having trouble posting pictures, I'm really one happy user of this new forum.

There is an edit button at the bottom of your post, but it apparently disappears after some time limit has been passed.

There is also an Insert Image button on the row of buttons immediately above the message composition window, a bit to the right of center. I think it only works to accept the URL of an image already on the web though. I may be mistaken, but I think we still lack any means to attach a new image to a post.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Let's try it this way:

Use something like this and you'll be pretty close.

Okay, I figured out what you were doing wrong. You needed to go one page farther. Click on the picture on the page you gave, and you will go to a page you can link to. Copy and paste that address in your post here and Bob's your uncle!

Michael

[Hakko Ichiu]

What kinds of dishes? I put some in chilli once, other than that, I don't think I've used it much.

Any dish that calls for smoked pork products as a seasoning: e.g., stews, daubes, gumbos, etouffes, chowders, etc. It should be something that has a saute or sweat step somewhere, so that you can bloom the paprika in the oil. I'm not sure I'd want to add it to a liquid straight, as it would just kind of float on top and not be very nice.

[Michael Emrys]

BTW, I do have some familiarity with pepperoncini, but only in the pickled form. I don't much like their hard, waxy texture, and as a garnish they are a little hotter than I prefer, but perhaps cooked neither of those would be much of a problem.

Michael

[Bigduke6]

Same as me. But for sure the picture of the pepperoncini lookes alot like the Hungarian Waxed, and odds are if they're not the same they're very close. Raw not picked obviously, the picked ones would be a no go. In goulash the sliced peppers are there as much for body as taste, and if the pepperonici were to harsh you could always turn the dial back on the paprika power, or just add more tomato or (if no one was looking) a bit of sugar.

[Wybert Takahashi]

Any dish that calls for smoked pork products as a seasoning: e.g., stews, daubes, gumbos, etouffes, chowders, etc. It should be something that has a saute or sweat step somewhere, so that you can bloom the paprika in the oil. I'm not sure I'd want to add it to a liquid straight, as it would just kind of float on top and not be very nice.

Ah, thanks. I also haven't ever used smoked pork products. Or made a stew. But smoky sounds nice. I wouldn't have thought of blooming it, so thanks for the tip.

[REVS]

BigDuke6 said "add more tomato or (if no one was looking) a bit of sugar".

In most dishes where I cook with tomatoes I like to add a pinch of sugar, even if someone is looking! The sugar balances out the acid in the tomatoes, and you're just left with the tomato flavour. The only exception to this rule is that sometimes I also add a touch of chilli powder, say when making tomato-based sauces for pasta. Not too much chilli, just a bit.

[volfrahm]

How important is adding lemongrass in a Thai curry? Always trying to avoid eating lemongrass can be a pain when eating; and it can hurt when eating in a hurry.

[Wybert Takahashi]

I'm guessing you have the dried green looking stuff cut up in jars. The easy solution is to live near an Asian supermarket and buy fresh stuff. The second solution is to extract the sweet liquor from the grass. How to do that... I tried boiling the dried green stuff seperately in a little water for many minutes, making a dark green liquid... but it didn't seem to taste like much... perhaps one needs half a jar to get any flavour... or get one of those little metal teabag/bouquet garni things...