Sunday Gravy with yeah right: Kulajda! Pro Vítězství!

Hey everyone! Damn good to see you all again!

Sunday Gravy coming into the home stretch!

We’re midway through preseason week 2. As excited as I thought I was last week I was barely able to stomach a couple of series of plays watching my team. You can only get so excited to see your back-ups in the road uniforms. At least this week most teams should show off the majority of their starters, and some will probably play most of the first half. It’s the week three games that will fucking suck with no starters playing.

Shit has been fucking hot outside lately and it doesn’t actually inspire me to drag my ass into the kitchen if I’m being honest. I had a couple of menu ideas that just fell by the wayside since they both involved slow roasting in the oven. The weather later today is actually supposed to be cooler with a nice marine layer giving us our cool grey blanket effect and if that is indeed the case I will get something in the oven.

I’ve got a pretty good idea what I want to do for the season finale of Sunday Gravy – just 2 weeks away – but it involves the oven.

/fingers crossed

The menu today was actually pretty friendly for cooking since it’s a quick soup that involves a low simmer on the stove top.

At first I was intending to make some fresh bread but motherfuck that! I had some of my weekly bread on hand and toast would be just fucking fine.

Our inspiration for the menu today comes once again from the fine folks at Universal Yums!

Take a look.

We’ve used them in the past too.

Each snack box also comes with a booklet containing fun facts, trivia and such but the first page inside the cover always features a recipe for a food that represents the featured country. Like so.

Although they did fuck up the name of the soup. It’s “Kulajda” not Kulajada.

Actually Kulajada sounds like a Muay Thai blaxploitation film.

Still confused by the title of this episode? Don’t be. We are basically making a Czech style cream of mushroom soup.

While the idea may have come from the Yums book up there, the actual recipe I used was a combination using the guidebook as well as from “Cooklikeczechs.com.”

I’ll let them give you some additional details about our soup.

“Kulajda is a Czech mushroom soup containing dill and potatoes, softened with cream. It’s characterized by a typical sweet and sour taste.”

“Kulajda originates in southern Bohemia (jižní Čechy), a forested region where mushrooms grow in abundance. That’s why this soup is sometimes called “jihočeská kulajda.”

Simple prep and delicious results. The fuck is wrong with that?

It’s damn well worth the effort too.

This has a very interesting mix of salty, sweet, creamy and sour along with the funk of the mushrooms. It is extremely tasty and pretty damn simple to make too.

Kulajda!

1 lb potatoes – peeled and cubed

1 container of fresh mushrooms – ours were shiitake, oyster and crimini – cut into bits

1/3 stick unsalted butter

4 tbsp all purpose flour

3 tbsp sugar

3/4 cup heavy cream

3 tbsp vinegar

3 tbsp chopped fresh dill

3 cups beef stock

Salt & pepper

A poached egg for each bowl of soup.

Start by getting some mushrooms.

A nice blend of mushrooms works really well here. I like the different textures and mouth feel of the different mushrooms.

In addition to just using the fresh mushrooms we also soaked a handful of the mushrooms in a bowl of water. The original recipes called for dried mushrooms that were reconstituted in water. The water was then added into the soup. I figured we could experiment a little with that.

Give ’em a bit of a chop.

Since we have just a handful of ingredients today it’s important to use the best ingredients you can find.

Remember the olive oil that I purchased for our Pasta Amatriciana a couple of weeks ago?

Let’s use that to sauté the mushrooms in.

Reduce down.

This should only take a few minutes. We just want to sauté for flavor and to cook out some of the water.

Next we will start the base of the soup by building the roux. 

That’s what the butter and flour in the recipe was for after all.

Begin gradually adding in the beef stock. Put in about half a cup at a time and slowly build the soup stock. Stir constantly. This is the important part, making the soup base.

For this soup we will need small cubed potatoes. Don’t want them too large here.

Thinking about the combination of the savory mushrooms and the cubed potatoes? That got your fucking attention, didn’t it?

Let the potatoes soak in some clean water for a bit to remove some of the starch.

Bring the stock up to a simmer.

We’re going to bring the temperature down to low, then we add in the mushrooms. Also add in the soaked mushrooms along with the water they soaked in.

Simmer for about 10 minutes then we drain the cubed potatoes and get them in the pot.

Now let’s get a look at the underappreciated secret ingredient of this soup.

Dill has always been an intriguing fucking herb to me. When used in it’s proper place it is fucking fantastic. But it doesn’t always play well with others. I’ve never used it in a slow roast or braise and it rarely finds itself in a gravy but have you had fresh dill with a deviled egg? Or minced fine and served with fish? Or in tzatziki?

That’s the shit I’m going on about.

Chop the dill up. Just the fluffy leafy part not the stems.

Nearing completion the soup begins to smell delicious. You can smell that shit, can’t you?

Turn the heat off on the soup. We finish the soup with the addition of the heavy cream.

Once the cream is incorporated we begin the prep of the finishing ingredient.

What will we do with this lovely orb?

That’s right! We’re gonna poach it’s ass!

Poaching is a tricky technique but once you’ve mastered it? It produces a fantastic product. I love the silky texture of a perfectly poached egg and the nice runny yolk it produces is fucking mind blowing.

For my preferred technique use a medium sauce pan and fill it about halfway with water, then bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and add in one tablespoon of white vinegar. Now using a wooden spoon start stirring the water in a circle briskly. We’re trying to create a vortex here. The idea being it will help keep the yolk and white compact while poaching.

See how we cracked that egg up there into a small bowl? That make it that much easier to slide it into the water perfectly thus keeping all of the whites from just floating all over the goddamn pot.

Here’s an overhead angle.

I find that a three minute poach is just right. You can go for four minutes if you’re afraid of a runny yolk but you all just KNOW my ass loves a nice runny yolk.

Now back to the soup real quick. Just before serving the soup add the vinegar, salt and pepper, the sugar and the dill and mix together thoroughly.

Ladle the soup into a bowl and place the freshly poached egg right on top.

Season as desired with some additional salt and pepper. Here’s a closer view.

The egg is cooked perfectly.

Here’s another shot using a different bowl of soup.

Go ahead and grab a taste.

This motherfucker hits every goddamn flavor note simultaneously. Your tongue will basically say “The fuck?”

Then? Then you start noticing the delicate flavors and the perfect balance of the salt, sweet, savory, sour and the funk of the mushrooms.

It’s a goddamn flavor tsunami!

You were right when you thought that those mushrooms and potatoes would make sweet, sweet love together. Why the fuck isn’t all cream of mushroom soup made with potatoes? Somebody dropped the goddamn ball on that shit!

Of course you already know the big time player in this bastard.

The dill.

Fuck yes it does.

This shit is magical! How did I live this long without this motherfucking soup?

Yet another thing I’m angry about not trying until I’m an old-ass bastard. Not really angry but it just feels like I’ve missed too many opportunities to eat this delightful dish.

Next time though, I’m serving this shit in the winter time. Eating a bowl of hot soup during a hot fucking day in August was kind of idiotic. Did that stop me from enjoying a second bowl?

Reader? It did not.

Once again this is why I love doing Sunday Gravy and trying new dishes. Because of days like today. I’ve got a regular goddamn keeper of a winter soup recipe. It’s quick, simple, inexpensive and perfectly fucking delicious.

Motherfucking touchdown.

Speaking of which, just a little over two weeks left in the offseason and the finish line approaches.

We got this shit.

Thanks to all of you for being the dedicated Gravy heads that you are. I couldn’t do it without you.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and we’ll do this shit again next week, alright?

Be well and stay safe folks.

PEACE!