Gulag? No, Wait... Gulash! That Was It...

Alright! Almost 10 days into March now and we're going to finally post our final entry from February's Soup Month series.

Can you say, "on top of our game?"

Doesn't matter. I can.

Anyhoo, to cap off Soup Month we decided that we ought to bring out the ol' Austrian cookbook. An artifact once promised its own month of glory (see the triumph of laziness that was November), this slender tome has been in hiding for a good bit now. We'll see if we can't win back its favor. We never did write down the recipe for Apfel Streudel... it would be crazy not to stay in its good graces.

Some may argue that trying impress a cookbook is crazy enough.

Regardless, we're back in the last of Osterreich. Or at least in the land of the Austro-Hungarian Empire... gulash technically hails from Austria's paprika-rich neighbor. Same thing, right?

This guy knows.---------------------->  

So gulash, or Ungarishces Saftgulasch, if we go by the proper title in our book, is essentially a fancy beef stew with a tomato-y, well-spiced base. Hungary, as I referenced before, is widely known for its high-grade paprika exports... always has been. Paprika, if you know a little bit about it, comes in both hot and sweet varieties. Our recipe today uses the sweet variety, though we're eager to experiment with its hotter counterpart in the future. Something we'll certainly be keeping in mind when we do, however, is an old Hungarian saying: "Good paprika burns twice." Confused? Wikipedia, in its infinite knowledge, explains. "Paprika contains strong spices; these may cause a burning sensation in the mucuous membranes of the anus." Eek. A rootin' tootin' good time for sure... O_o

As is the case with most of the Austrian recipes we plan to feature, I've made gulash once before in a group setting during my Austrian Cuisine course in Salzburg. I had some idea, therefore, what our end product ought to look like... but not a good one. I probably just chopped onions last time.

Oh well. It wouldn't be C.C. material if we knew what we were doing.

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  What You'll Need

(Serves 4-6)


1 oz. cookin' oil
5 oz. finely chopped onions
1 t. finely chopped garlic
3 T. sweet Hungarian paprika
2 lb. beef chuck, cut into 1/2 in. cubes
1/2 t. caraway seeds
1 1/2 pints chicken or beef stock or water (we used beef)
1.2 t. (or so) salt
To taste: freshly ground pepper
1 T. tomato paste
1 lb. tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and finely chopped (approx. 1 1/4 cups)
2 medium sized green peppers, with seeds and ribs removed, finely chopped
1/2 t. marjoram or oregano

The Process

Heat the oil in a 4-5 quart heavy saucepan* until a light haze forms over it, then reduce the heat to medium and add the onions. Cook them for 8 to 10 mnutes, or intil the onions are lightly colored. Add the beef cubes; fry until the meat turns light.
*We used an electric frying pan. Note that if you do this, you'll have to adjust the cooking times accordingly as the increased surface area with cause faster evaporation / heating


Add a T tomato paste and stir for about one minute. Remove pan from the heat and stir in the paprika until the onions are well coated (and it BEST be Hungarian or else).

Add stock or water and season with caraway seeds, salt, pepper, garlic, and marjoram. Bring the liquid to a boil and partially cover the pan. Simmer for 1 hour, or until the beef is almost tender.

Add the tomatoes and the peppers** to the stew. Partially cover again and cook over medium heat for 25-35 minutes, or until the beef is tender. Taste for seasoning.
**As is generally the case, we managed to mess something up here. We forgot to buy green peppers, using a red pepper and a can of diced tomatoes with chopped green peppers already included... Not a very professional shortcut and not one that I'd recommend, but I'm just tellin' it like it is. We're not pros. NEVER forget (the Alamo soup).

Serve the gulash with dumplings***, potatoes, or Spaetzle.
***We made dumplings, Austrian-style "knoedel", which we'll detail in the next post.

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There you have it. Gulash at its finest. Don't worry if it doesn't look like much... its finest isn't saying much. Gulash is an ugly dish (like many we've shown recently), but an interesting one if nothing else. It's the spices that make a difference in this beefy stew, adding a little bit of "OIC whatchu did there!" to your dish.

The response, overall, was mixed. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't overly memorable either. Using the electric frying pan, neglecting correct pepper color, and screwing up spice proportions somewhere along the line (I'm just assuming) probably detracted from what the gulash could have been. As I mentioned earlier, we made knoedel with this dish and I still can't quite get the recipe straight on that one. It's a work in progress, anyway.

Overall, we give this one a mediocre rating plus points for intercultural style. A pseudo-thumbs-up, if you will.

If you're HUNGARY for something different, give it a try.

Oh come on, did you really think I could avoid that lame joke throughout the whole post?? As good as I may be, I'm not THAT good.

Best of luck.

The New Alamo Soup

Don't worry; it's nothing like the original Alamo Soup.

For those of you who remember, the Alamo Soup (http://twotreus.blogspot.com/2009/08/we-all-make-mistakes-alamo-soup.html) was a tragedy. An abomination. A hideous freak of nature that should never have been created. Still, our motivation for creating it was sound; Udon noodle soup is pretty delicious, and we wanted to try something Japanese that didn't look too difficult. Our problem was that we went about it entirely the wrong way, and decided to just wing it.

Well, this time, we decided to just wing it after researching it a little bit.

Surprising how much of a difference that can make! Instead of just a guess at what should go in, we had more of a hypothesis... in that it was an educated guess. We looked at a few different recipes, and just sort of mixed and matched a little bit; a lot of it came down to how much we could find at the local Heinen's. Nevertheless, the New Alamo Soup turned out to be a triumph! It was authentic, tasty, and relatively easy to make. Luke and I both said that we would eat it again, as did Luke's friend Chuck who happened to show up just in time for some of the tasty Conquista-soup.

Ingredients

We had an interesting time gathering the ingredients, since many of them aren't domestic; we spent some quality time in the Asian aisle (mostly searching for ingredients that ended up being elsewhere.) If we couldn't find something, we just substituted it for something similar; it worked out fine! Anyways:

Basically what we're making is a very noodley soup with tempura shrimp and vegetables in it. Udon has a somewhat sweeter base, which you can adjust by adding salt or soy sauce. The tempura shrimp and veggies give it some substance beyond the noodles. Perhaps it's just the novelty of it that makes it taste good; or maybe it's just good.

For the soup:

~ 10 oz. Udon noodles - they're usually thick and round, but the only kind that we found was flat. It really doesn't affect it at all, but if you're a texture person, do what you gotta do. We bought ours uncooked; I'm sure precooked works just as well (precooked noodles would probably weigh more than 1o oz? You can always add or subtract while cooking.)

~ 1 green onion - otherwise known as "scallions." ~ about 3 large fresh shiitake mushrooms - we had a choice between fresh, kinda fresh, and dried; we took the fresh ones because we only needed a few and we were using them that day; plus it was cheaper that way. Grabbing them out of the mushroom bin without packing is greener too, right?

~ Soup base - most recipes recommended "Dashi stock," but we couldn't find that anywhere, so we just used a couple packets of White Miso Soup Base. Get as much as you need; about 5 cups worth. We probably didn't get enough, but that problem can always be solved with soy sauce.

~ 4 tbsp. Mirin - a sweetened sake. Don't use regular sake; mirin is sweetened for culinary use.

~ 5 tbsp. Soy sauce - "67% less sodium? What is this junk? Gimme the salt!" -Luke

~ 1/3 tsp. salt - you can also add salt to taste after serving. If you went a little heavy on the mirin, you should probably throw some in there. For the tempura:


~ 1/2 pound cooked shrimp* - easy to find, they're usually in a bag in the freezer department. Some recipes recommended fish cakes; we couldn't find those.

~ 1/2 pound sliced zucchini and yellow squash* - that's what we used, feel free to experiment with anything you find appealing.

~ Tempura batter - we used McCormick.

~ Vegetable oil (a generous amount) - for frying the shrimp and such. * you can use just a pound of shrimp or just a pound of veggies; we wanted to try them both, but it's up to you.

Preparation; Cooking

~ Slice n' Dice - Chop up the mushrooms (we used three large ones) and a green onion. Mushrooms should be cut into strips, the green onions should have the root part cut off and the green part sliced up diagonally.

~ If cooking noodles - bring some water to a boil and put in the uncooked noodles. Drop the heat and let it simmer for about 5 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water. Again, remember the Alamo; asian noodles cook fast!

~ For the tempura - follow the directions on the box. For the stuff we used, we mixed a cup of the batter with 3/4 cup ice cold water. Then we heated some oil in a frying pan (a good amount of oil,) dipped the shrimp in the batter one by one and put them in the frying oil. Leave them in there for 3-5 minutes, flipping once. You can eyeball them to see when they're golden brown. If you're tempura-fying both shrimp and veggies, do them separately.

~ Soup - if you got your hands on some Dashi stock, bring 5 cups of that to a boil. If you are using the white miso soup base, bring about 5 cups of water to a boil and add the base. Toss in onion, mushroom, and cooked noodles; simmer. Add mirin and soy sauce, stir it all up, and it's ready to serve.

~ Serving - I recommend putting your tempura stuff in the bowl first and pouring the soup over it. If you want to feel really cool, you can try eating it with chopsticks; otherwise, I'd suggest a fork.

The Consensus

Both Luke and I went into this one with low expectations, given our previous "experience" with Udon noodle soup and our failure to find some of the right ingredients. In the end, however, the New Alamo Soup makes up for the failure of its forbear; it's a tasty, noodley soup that also makes you feel pretty cultured after making it. Granted it's not a massive success or by any means our greatest achievement, but we would both make it again, and it's an interesting and different addition to soup month.

Alamo Soup now has a new meaning. Rather than "always remember to stay away from burnt chicken and random onions," we can now see it as "always remember that you can arise from your mistakes with a little investigation and enough soy sauce." That's how Texas did it, right?

Luke has a plan for next week in soup month! I'll give you a hint... it's Austro-Hungarian, it's decently weird and lumpy, and it starts with a "g" and ends with an "ulash"! Keep in touch, folks!

Gumb-owned.

When we started this blog back in the summer, we never really expected it to go much of anywhere. We were bored, to be honest. I had graduated from Wittenberg University, Matty was out of school for the summer, and we hadn’t written much of anything for a while. Never did we think we'd post anything that could be considered overly useful let alone “timely”.

Oh, how we’ve grown. *sniff*

If you watched our Chicken Crab Valentine video, you know that we assigned February a theme: Soup Month. Unlike Austrian Month where we actually created a few Austrian dishes before becoming simply too lazy to post our findings, this month we fully intend to follow through on our promise. Today's dish IS a soup of sorts: Shrimp, Chicken, and Andouille Gumbo.


Our decision to feature gumbo, when combined with our previous arbitrary selection of jambalaya, might lead one to believe that we possess some semblance of clairvoyant powers. Pursuing two of New Orleans’ most iconic dishes directly prior to the Saints upset victory against the favored Colts in the Super Bowl last week does seem suspicious. Can it be that we truly have the gift of future sight?

I wish. Or maybe I don’t wish. What if the future is a terrible place and knowledge of its existence sank us so deeply into a pit of depression that we never wrote again? What if we realized that all of our time spent writing this blog never got us anywhere? No, I suspect one doesn’t require the ability to see the future to glean that bit of info.


I'd hope that if we were clairvoyant we'd have a better use for our time than messing up recipes and writing about it every now and then. To be honest, I watched the big game surrounded by a sea of blue Colts jerseys in Indianapolis a few hours ago actually. I was as surprised as anyone that New Orleans won.


ANYWAY [back to the actual cooking part of this blog], our true reason for featuring Cajun food of late is simply because it is delicious. If you need one more reason to make gumbo, "Fat Tuesday" is less a week away! Make your Mardi Gras awesome* and get you some gumbo.
*Gumbo probably won’t make your Mardi Gras awesome. More likely you’ll feel vaguely authentic, as if you were wearing a grass skirt in a Hawaiian hotel.

Now before you read this recipe and think, "Hot diggity! How am I gonna afford all of this?? 12 cups of onions? Daggum! Bump this malarkey**!", take a deep breath.

**Using proper cooking language, of course.

We know. It says it serves 16 for a reasons. If you live somewhere other than an Army base and/or on Bourbon Street,we expect you to be halving or even quartering this recipe. Yes, this requires division and multiplication, something that we are notably poor at (see Chicken Crab Valentine as a reference point). We managed well enough though, so take heart. We made half the recipe for 4 people and ended up eating it on 3-4 separate occasions, so consider yourself warned. This recipe makes a ton no matter how you look at it.

Also note that you can prepare this stuff ahead of time. We didn't read that part and Matty spent a woeful few hours chopping vegetables with our special guest stars (ok, it's our mom and sister) before I ever even made it home from work. Don't make this mistake - split the task of making gumbo up and it will be much, much less stressful for you than it was for us.


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From Epicurious.Com. If you're interested, here is the recipe as listed on that site.

Shrimp, Chicken, and Andouille Gumbo
As described in the December 2006 issue of Bon Appétit magazine

“A cook's dream: The base is made ahead, and the shrimp are added at the last minute. Best of all, the gumbo tastes even better the second day.” <-- Unlike us, I suggest you actually read this part ahead of time.

Yield: Makes 16 servings --YES, SIXTEEN.

Ingredients

1 cup vegetable oil

1 cup all purpose flour

6 large onions, chopped (about 12 cups)

6 red bell peppers, seeded, chopped (about 7 cups)

8 celery stalks, chopped (about 3 cups)

16 garlic cloves, chopped

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup chopped fresh thyme

6 bay leaves

2 28-ounce cans diced tomatoes with juice

4 8-ounce bottles clam juice

4 cups low-salt chicken broth

4 pounds andouille sausage, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick slices

3 pounds skinless boneless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch cubes

2 16-ounce packages sliced frozen okra

4 pounds peeled deveined medium shrimp

Minced fresh Italian parsley

Steamed rice

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Preparation

Phase I : This phase can be done up to two days ahead of the intended consumption date.

Step 1: The Vegetables: Cut the heck outta some vegetables. There's a lot of 'em, so take them out as best you can.

Step 2: The Base - Heat oil in heavy 13-quart pot over medium-high heat until very hot and almost smoking. Add flour and stir constantly until mixture is dark reddish brown, about 5 minutes. Add chopped onions, chopped bell peppers, and chopped celery and cook until onions are soft and brown, stirring frequently, about 20 minutes. Add garlic and cayenne and stir 2 minutes. Add wine, thyme, and bay leaves; bring to boil, stirring occasionally. Add tomatoes with juice, clam juice, broth, sausage, and chicken; simmer until chicken is cooked through, about 15 minutes. Add okra and simmer until tender, about 10 minutes.

If you are making the soup base ahead of time, cool slightly at this point. Chill uncovered until cold, then cover and keep chilled. Bring base to simmer before eventually continuing.

Phase II : Finishing Up

Add shrimp to pot and cook shrimp until just opaque in center, stirring often, about 5 minutes. Season gumbo to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish with minced parsley and serve with steamed rice alongside / underneath.

Enjoy.

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Tips

• This recipe is pretty straight-forward. You chop, you make the base, you toss in the shrimp at the end. IF you follow the directions and don't do everything at once, you'll have fun. Learn from our mistakes.

• Also, make sure you really have all of the supplies that you need. We had to substitute Italian sausage (NOT the same, mind you) for half of the andouille because Heinen's only had one pound when we went. Be prepared.

• We recommended this recipe to someone on Twitter who made it for 15 people and had huge success with it. He said he added a Tablespoon of extra cayenne pepper to kick it up a notch - you may want to as well.

• Do not reheat too many times once the shrimp is in! They quickly become soft to the point of becoming a pretty gross texture.

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Our Results

It was pretty good, we both decided, though we made our share of mistakes (see the Tips).We would make it again, assuming we got it right. After all, it has okra in it. Mmmm... okra. If you made this recipe as we now have it edited, we believe you'll have a hootin'-good, delicious time. I estimate it will go something like this:

We certainly hope you have a blast.

We anticipate this being the last publicly available recipe we'll be using for a while because, to be honest, things are a lot more interesting when we either find some obscure recipe in an ancient tome or straight-up invent a dish based on what we found in our cupboards. Expect a return to our roots...

Until next time.
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P.S. If you're REALLY bored, feel free to watch our step-by-step video of the undertaking! It gets... interesting.