Hungarian Goulash vs Paprikash
Aren’t those little peppers bright and perky? I chopped just one for dinner.
The headline for the Medium story proclaimed The Day I Discovered My Grandma’s “Hungarian” Goulash Recipe Was Really Homemade Beef-o-Roni by Taressa P.
“I’ll explore this further in my next story. In the meantime, I urge us to look back in our family food history and make some much-needed corrections, so you don’t embarrass your Gam… by bringing her bangin’ beef-o-roni to an international potluck and call it Hungarian goulash, too.”
from Taressa P’s The Day I Discovered My Grandma’s “Hungarian” Goulash Recipe Was Really Homemade Beef-o-Roni
It took a second reading to catch the author’s jest. That she mistook her grandmother’s comfort food was the hook that sailed past me; no accounting for family nostalgia, evidently. But recipes I can relate to.
Back in the dark ages, I think it was the 1980s, a woman architect from that part of the world wrote out a recipe for chicken paprikash slow-simmered with tomatoes, sour cream and a distinctive touch of heat. Either she served it for an office luncheon, or perhaps had just described it, thinking I’d like it. I do remember how enthusiastically she shared it.
To be clear, in those days women didn’t always rush with recipes to try. And no great surge since. Along with the recipe, she also handed me enough of her secret spice, which I used until the spice ran out.
“I get this sent over from Hungary every year!” Ethnic pride or just her personality.
Though I indeed tried; it became special dish for weekend dinners with guests, and I didn’t practice it frequently enough for the recipe to remain in long term memory — regretfully, because it was a great chicken dish.
I remember you first floured and browned the chicken pieces — may the chickens rest in heaven. I recall the smell of sautéd chicken filling the small townhouse kitchen before proceeding to the next steps involving tomatoes, onions, etc., now forgotten along with her written instructions. Poof.
Ilona still had her Hungarian accent. She was married to another immigrant from the same area. She was someone you either liked for being so fulsome a personality, or found a bad novel to read. To be around her made life feel a touch warmer. Effervescence is the term.
Her husband had been hired as a senior designer for the Harry Weese office in Miami where I was occupying a seat at the time. The office was still being staffed up, and I suppose she came as part of his package, though in reality, he turned out to play a lesser role in hers. I left that office in 1979, having wrangled a transfer to the Washington office. I was surprised soon after when she also arrived in Washington.
God, I wish I remembered how she passed on her family recipe.
I’d been the first to see the light and drive a yellow rental truck — twenty-five feet of beastly truck with all my family’s processions to freedom from Miami. I hold nothing against Miami except that it’s located at the butt crack end of Florida, that odd land of misanthropes and stray refugees. Great pot, though. Oh, I kid, I kid.
Ilona was heading for a more personal freedom — from her ex.
Lesson One: never marry a person from your own profession or you’ll bore the hell out of each other. Lesson Two, if you missed Lesson One, never work in the same office as your spouse or everyone gets to watch your divorce in real time.
Ilona figured that out the hard way. Her ex was probably an OK dude, though I never got too close to him, and he couldn’t match her personality. He seemed all about ambition and ego; she was all about living, great dinners included.
Sadly, all I can remember of Ilona’s recipe was that it involved a genuinely spicy paprika, until then, something I hadn’t known to exist. Paprika had been that reddish powder stored among the other outdated spices that my mother sprinkled on deviled eggs for color when guests came to the house.
Ilona’s paprika was some kind of different because it had heat. My real father was a Mexican postman, best I can tell.
Since then, I’ve discovered Spanish smoked paprika. I suspect it’s very akin to what Ilona gifted me a baggie full of that many years ago, but I’m inspired nonetheless. It beats the hell out of red powder on deviled eggs. In fact, to my surprise, paprika’s first ingredient is cayenne. Yes!
Somewhere between my mother’s cooking and today, looking back, I find the 50s had too many canned and dried essentials — like canned tomatoes, frozen fish sticks and garlic powder.
To my grandmother who raised us while our mother worked, a garlic clove was to be treated as serious heat in a dish, Granny being the daughter of a girl from County Clare. Thus garlic should be tempered.
Garlic powder resembles the real thing as much as — D would say it just doesn’t — and yet my mother would sprinkle garlic powder on cream cheese and call it a snack. I might eat it just the same today and smile for the memory, though D would just shake her head for marrying an Irish lad.
Being inspired tonight and considering the fresh-bought salmon fillet awaiting tonight’s grille, I opened the new container of Spanish-style smoked paprika, crushed seven or so garlic cloves, plucked a habanero pepper from the plant that’s still living large now inside — grabbed the olive oil and went about making a new rub.
De-seeding a habanero takes away the volcanic intestinal distress and leaves the flavor to be united with the smoked paprika, turning the whole mess a deep scarlet, promising happiness.
Layla the husky’s grilled salmon piece doesn’t get but a sprinkling of salt, but she loves the crispy grilled skin coming off the grille as much as I do, so I sacrifice it — D says it’s not so good for me anyway. On the other hand, huskies require 30% fat diets when they’re burning it off sledding downhill in the snow like she does.
Heading out to light the grille, I heard the plaint of a late Canadian goose flying home, felt the cold enter my body and smiled. I’ve been grilling salmon for so long I can do it in my sleep. The paprika-habanero-garlic rub I’ll spread liberally over the flesh.
On indirect heat, skin side down for the first 8 minutes so the rub won’t burn but still seals the flavor, then flip it and go for a second eight. This way, the salmon never dries out. Like sushi, sorta. Grilled this way, you can gently peel off the skin, flip the fillet over and serve. The reddish golden color from paprika makes a nice presentation.
If I can ever run across Ilona again, I’ll need to ask her what was in that paprikash recipe I loved so much. And I won’t tell her I cheat with the habanero peppers now. We still have seven beautifully orange peppers on the plant, happy to be inside now that it’s dropped below freezing.
Earlier in the evening, Layla finally gave up her watch on the deck and retreated to her bed to await a taste of salmon skin. From three rooms away, she can sense more than hear a knife going against the salmon skin. Layla’s smart, but then she’s a husky. We’ll just have to see how this latest rub turns out.
And to be clear, I very much doubt spices from a store-bought box tastes anywhere as good as warm pasta with red sauce home-made at your grandmother’s hands. Ain’t no way.
