Budapest impressions and hungarian beef pörkölt/paprikás

I fell in love – with Budapest, the great  city I returned from a few days ago. So  please forgive me for the amount of pictures in this blog post … but it was hard enough to choose only those few out of the roughly 600 photos I’ve made through my stay. And instead of wasting a lot of words trying to describe Budapest, I let the pictures speak. Just a few words may be allowed: friendly people, impressive Art Deco architecture and design all around, beautiful kávéház (coffee houses) with artful and delicious cakes – a clear Habsburg legacy – a market hall with countless kinds of paprika powder and hungarian sausage.

Coming back home from Budapest, already a nice surprise waited for me: The titel Bastelwunder given to me by Anna who collects wonderful DIY pages on the internet (Find other Bastelwunder here.). I’m really proud that my little blog is in a big row with other inspiring creative blogs. Wow!

Inspired by my trip to Hungary, I digged out an old paprikás recipe I once got from a half Hungarian. Paprikás or pörkölt (which literally means “roasted”) describes what in the world outside Hungary is referred to as goulash, a thick stew based on meat, onion and paprika (with endless variations of course). Although the ingredients are about the same, gulyás (goulash, which literally means “herdsman”) describes a different dish, a meat soup.

Anyway, the essentials in preparation apply to pörkölt as well as to gulyás:

1. Use lard. It is important to achieve the particular flavour.

2. Paprika needs fat to develop its full flavour. That’s why you should always roast it, but carefully: it easily burns and gets bitter then.

3. Time. Like with every stew, a long cooking time is one of the secrets to taste.

Hungarian pörkölt/paprikás (4 P.)

See also the pörkölt recipe of Reni, my favourite hungarian food blogger

ingredients
1 kg braising beef, f.ex. shoulder, some beef or pork bones, 1 large onion, 1 green bell pepper, 2 tomatoes, 2 garlic cloves, 1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds, 2 tablespoons sweet paprika, 1 teaspoon hot paprika, 1 teaspoon smoked paprika, 1 bay leaf, 2 tablespoons lard, salt, sip of red wine, sour cream

preparation
Cut beef into chunks. Chop onions, bell pepper and tomatoes. Heat lard in a big pot at medium temperature. Add onions and sauté until translucent. Take pot off the stove and cover onions with paprika. Add beef, bones, bell pepper, tomatoes and other spices. Put back onto stove and stir for about a minute. Be careful not to burn the spices, otherwise the paprika will become bitter. Add two cups of water and about 2 teaspoons salt. Simmer on low heat for 2 hours until beef is soft and the stew has thickened. Add wine and cook for another few minutes. Remove bayleaf and bones. Season to taste with salt.

Serve warm with a blob of sour cream on top and bread, potatoes or galuska  (similar to swabian Spätzle, a special kind of egg pasta which recently got qualified as “Protected Geographical Status” by EU law) as side dish.

Jó étvágyat!