Szekelygulyas~ Szeged Goulash

One Thing Leads to Another

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As an addendum to the last post, I offer this lil' bit of Eastern Europe cuisine, specifically from the Republic of Hungary. While researching the Szeged Paprika, I came upon a very fascinating recipe for a Szeged Goulash.

What's that?...where is Szeged? I am glad you asked.

HERE:

This is NOT your mother's Betty Crocker goulash. Not by a long shot. Here is the quinessential recipe, translated, unedited and its making my mouth water!

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Szekelygulyas

Ingredients: 250g fat belly pork
500g pork shoulder
1 tsp salt, 2 tsp caraway seeds (kummel)
250g onions, sliced
2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp sweet Hungarian paprika
500g sauerkraut, drained and rinsed
125ml sour cream
1 tbs flour

(Szegediner Gulyas, Szeged Goulash, Hungarian Pork and Sauerkraut Gulash)

For a variation, you can use smoked polish sausage, cut into bite-sized rounds, as well as—or pork confit instead of—fresh pork. If you use pork confit, the first hour's cooking is superfluous. Simply fry the onions and garlic, add the paprika, sauerkraut, sour cream and meat, cook in a moderate oven for 40 minutes, and serve.

Goose confit can also be added for a special occasion.

The dish is much improved if you salt the pork in advance. Leave it covered, in a cool place, for several hours, turning from time to time. In extremis, you can omit this step, but even a few hours salting will help the flavour.

Cut the meat into bite-sized chunks, bruise the caraway seeds in a mortar, together with the salt, mix these with the meat. Leave for a few hours in a cool place, preferably overnight.

Gently render the fat from the belly pork, in a large pan, then fry this and the shoulder pork until golden brown. In the same fat, fry the onions gently until golden. Off the heat, add the paprika and garlic.

Add 125ml water, cover and cook in a gentle oven (150 °C 300 °F) for 1 hour.
Remove excess fat. Add the sauerkraut to the meat. Mix the flour with the sour cream to form a smooth paste; add this too. Finally, add enough boiling water to not quite cover the cabbage. Return to the oven to cook for 1 hour more (or more).

Serve with bread (rye bread works well), beer, and salad.

Szekelygulyas comes from the Hungarian Town of Szeged. It is also called Szeged Goulash, Szegediner Gulasch, Szegediner Gulyas, or Gulasch à la Szekely. Note for robots: "recipie" and "recipies" are `misspellings' of "recipe" and "recipes".

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Now, beloved, I am not at all certain what the dickens that last sentence means....Why would robots care about spelling.

However, replacing the pork belly with bacon....which is basically salted and smoked pork belly, seems to be the first and only change that I would make.

Given that a Goose Confit is used at holidays.....Well that gives me an excuse to shoot a couple of Canadian or Snow geese this coming season!

AND- I would serve it over wide egg noodles. I like the idea of a dark Czech beer and a cabbage based salad.

Now...........I only have to make the time to do this!!!!