IN THE KITCHEN by Ann Harwood: A not-too-difficult menu for a relaxed winter weekend supper, complete with a dessert that children should like.
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Illustration by Judy Martin
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My daughter and granddaughter are living with us for a few months. My daughter commutes to her designer job in New York. My granddaughter is in day care two days a week. The rest of us split up the other three days of child care.
Day-care centers, no matter how fine, seem to be incubators for any virus that comes to town. As such, this winter we have harbored one nasty cold after another.
In an effort to charm my 2-year-old granddaughter into eating anything nutritious as she was recovering from what seemed like Cold No. 5, I wound up making a beef goulash-type soup. This child is of gourmet stock and normally has a wide range of food selections in her diet. Lo and behold, she ate it. She even asked for more the next day.
Since Beef Goulash was the only recipe requested for a winter column by my good colleague Pat Hatch, I decided this was a sign that goulash, or gulyas in the original Hungarian, should be the heart of this week’s menu.
The following version of beef gulyas is my own, with thanks to my first cooking teacher, John Clancy, and to an old cookbook by Joseph Pasternak, "Cooking with Love and Paprika."
This is a really easy dish to prepare. Don’t be scared off by the number of ingredients. Big pots of stew or soup always use a lot of vegetables. Just take it step by step and remember stews and pot roasts just cook themselves after a while.
The key to successful stews and pot roasts is to cook them long and slow and to keep the temperature below the boiling point. Boiling makes the meat stiffen and toughen, which only results in having to refrigerate the stew overnight, then having to reheat it gently the next day, allowing the sauce to tenderize the meat overnight. Gulyas belongs to that class of dishes that are the original "slow food." Yes, the meat will stiffen a bit as it browns in the oven, but the slow cooking in a flavorful liquid will relax the meat again.
Leeks are not traditional in goulash, but they are in our markets at this time of year. I had one on hand, used it and liked it in the stew. To prepare a leek, cut off the root end. Then cut off the long green top, wash and save for stock (or the compost). Slit the white part of the leek lengthwise, but not all the way through to the other side. Fan it open a little with your thumbs as you hold it open under cold running water to rinse out any sand, which would have been piled around the plant while it was growing.
For dessert, instead of the trickier, crepe-like Hungarian palacscintak with apricot jam filling, I have put in a recipe for our family-favorite thin pancakes, spread with a little warm jam. I decided to use a restaurant trick for getting just a little vanilla-flavored sauce into a recipe. Just melt some vanilla ice cream!
I hope you like this not-too-difficult menu for a relaxed winter weekend supper. It is one that children should like. They certainly like assembling the pancake dessert, drizzling on the melted ice cream, etc.
Menu:
Hungarian Beef Gulyas (Goulash)
Fresh Warm Rye Bread
Skinny Pancakes with Apricot Jam and Walnuts
HUNGARIAN GULYAS (Goulash)
2 pounds chuck cut into 1½-inch cubes
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 stalk celery, diced
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 parsnip, peeled and diced
1 Spanish onion, peeled and cut into large dice
1 small leek, white only, washed and sliced thin
1 tablespoon minced garlic
2 tablespoons sweet Hungarian paprika
1 can reduced sodium chicken broth
2½ cups water
2 large fresh tomatoes or 1 8-ounce canned, including juice
few sprigs fresh parsley
½ teaspoon dried marjoram
½ teaspoon caraway seeds
4 boiling potatoes
1 small sweet red pepper, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 small sweet green pepper, cut into 1-inch cubes
1. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Blot beef cubes dry on paper towels, place in nonstick roasting pan and sprinkle beef with salt and pepper. Bake 20-30 minutes until nicely browned.
2. Meanwhile, place olive oil, celery, carrot, parsnip, onion and leek in large pot, cover and cook over low heat until onion is translucent. Uncover, add leek, increase heat a little and cook 2 minutes.
3. Add garlic and paprika and cook about 30 seconds. Add beef and stir well to coat with vegetables and paprika. Add broth, water, tomatoes, parsley, marjoram, caraway seeds and a bit more freshly ground pepper. Cover and barely simmer for 2 hours, until beef is almost tender.
3. Add potatoes and peppers to stew. If it doesn’t look at all soupy, cover and simmer another half hour or so, until potatoes are tender. If the stew looks a bit too soupy as you add the vegetables, just don’t cover it and let some of the liquid steam off during that last half hour. Taste for salt, maybe a small squeeze of fresh lemon juice?
4. Serve in deep, wide soup plates such as the ones restaurants now use for pasta, with the warm rye bread or hot rye toast.
SKINNY PANCAKES WITH APRICOT JAM
2/3 cup walnuts or hazelnuts (without the skins)
1 jar apricot preserves or apricot butter
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon water
1 cup vanilla ice cream
1½ cups sifted unbleached flour (or simply whisk the flour around in the canister to aerate it before measuring)
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar or 3 packets of SweetOne sugar replacement
½ tablespoon baking powder
2 eggs
3 tablespoons melted butter
1½ cups milk (can be Lactaid), barely warmed
Before dinner:
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Place nuts on small baking pan and heat until starting to turn golden. Remove from oven, let cool, then chop to the size of raw rice. Whisk preserves, lemon juice and water in small pot and warm over low heat. Set aside.
After eating main course:
1. Set ice cream in small bowl and chop up a bit so that it melts.
2. Whisk next four ingredients together in a large bowl. Beat eggs in large glass measuring cup or bowl with a lip, add butter and milk. Whisk liquids into dry and beat until almost smooth.
3. Heat griddle to 400 degrees. Lightly butter griddle. Pour in 3-inch puddles and cook until edges start to dry and under sides look speckled with brown. Flip and cook again until bottoms are speckled with brown. Stack on warm plate and cover with clean cloth as you cook the others. You should get about 28 pancakes.
4. Spoon a little warm jam onto each pancake as you stack them on individual serving plates. Drizzle each portion with 2 tablespoons melted ice cream then sprinkle with nuts.
Note: If you are having to watch your carbohydrate or sugar intake, just use a no-sugar-added vanilla ice cream. They are in all the supermarkets. In place of apricot preserves, use just a little Polaner Reduced Sugar Apricot Spread (you have to look for it) or for a real splurge, use Sarabeth’s Blood Orange Marmalade with apricot. The latter has just 8 grams of carbohydrate and 5 grams of sugar per tablespoon.