Greetings DFO family!

How goes it?

I come to you from work again, late in the day on a Friday and it feels like I’m walking through a goddamn war zone.

Chaos reigns!

How are the Olympics treating you so far?

I thought Gaga was great and I loved the metal shit. Was that Gojira? Beautiful venue.

I’ve never been to France. I’ll correct that soon. I have so much traveling planned.

Got to tell ya. I’m thinking about moving back to El Segundo soon. These freeways are crushing my soul. I could save like 150 bucks a month on gas alone! Sure there will be more planes, but less fog horns! Plus I could get back to walking on the actual real beach. Which can not be duplicated by a really nice walking path.

Think we’ll regroup after we get back from Ireland. But the voice is strong.

Gonna get right to it today.

Inspiration for our meal came from a post a couple of weeks back when I made the balsamic glaze chicken and the fondant potatoes.

I love the main image from that post still very very fucking much.

In that post I made fun of the first couple of seasons of Sunday Gravy where, let’s just say food photos were a work in fucking progress.

I mentioned this one specifically.

That’s goulash from season 1. Trust me, it was really goddamn tasty too but holy shit. That fucking photo.

My idea here was to basically remake the entire dish with hopefully a much better pictorial this time.

Thought that might be interesting.

Yep. Basically the same recipe – with the addition of some caraway to the proceedings – but this time we’ll be serving the goulash over potato pancakes. Oh shit yes.

Hungarian goulash!

A boneless chuck roast – about 3 pounds or so cut into chunks

One large onion diced

5 cloves of garlic minced

4 cups of beef stock

1/4 cup of red wine – I’m using a 2021 California pinot noir today but pretty much any red wine will do.

Some glugs of vegetable oil

6 oz can of tomato paste

Lots of freshly ground black pepper

Some flour

Salt

A metric shit-ton of paprika. If you can get hot Hungarian paprika use a mix of that along with Hungarian sweet paprika. Actually it’s about half a tablespoon of the sweet and half a tablespoon of the hot.

1 tsp of dried thyme

1 teaspoon of caraway seeds slightly ground

2 bay leaves

2 tablespoons of good balsamic vinegar

Our menu begins today as many good menus do, with a great big slab of fuckin’ meat!

And a metric shit-ton of paprika. The real shit!

Heads-up here! If you’ve never fucked with the hot shit just be forewarned. Motherfucker has got a legit kick to it.

And as an added bonus some caraway!

I give the caraway seed a few pulses in the old spice grinder. Don’t want to get one of them little bastards stuck between your teeth. Voice of experience here.

Get your best hacking knife out and do what it does best on that slab-o-cow.

Just cube it up into the size of your preference

Toss the meat around with some flour and then dump some oil in a pot and get to browning.

Season well with salt and pepper at this point. About 4 minutes per side, then flip them over.

Here’s another player today. You want to use the best you have available.

Yes I do indeed use balsamic on the regular. To a surprising amount actually. It’s in all of my vinaigrettes and I’ll even add it to other stews for the kick and the tang.

After the meat has been browned deglaze the pot with the vino.

We’ve been through this before. Scrape up all of them crusty bits and such while enjoying the heady aroma being imparted upon your senses.

Then toss in the onions, caraway seeds and the tomato paste and cook them together for 6-7 minutes before adding the garlic.

Next we have a secret flavor weapon.

Yes we did!

Instead of store-bought bullshit beef stock we are using the last of our leftover consome from our birria episode.

We’re dropping flavor haymakers like we’re Mike Tyson or some-fucking-body over here. This ain’t no goddamn wallflower goulash. This is a goulash explosion.

Now add the stock to the pot.

Stir, stir, mix, mix.

Add the browned meat back to the pot then slap a lid on this fucker and put it into a preheated 325 degree oven for 2 1/2 hours. Or you can cook it on the stove top if you like a little more flavor control.

We had all sorts of shit cooking up in here this day so we went slow oven cooked action.

Our next item was busy taking up the kitchen and stove top space anyway.

As our accompaniment we are doing potato pancakes.

Here’s a rough approximation but brother Taj cooked these so I deferred the recipe to him.

Potato Pancakes:

3 large russet potatoes peeled

1 medium onion

2-3 eggs slightly beaten

2-3 tablespoons

1 teaspoon of baking powder

salt

pepper

oil for cooking, we will use a mix of melted butter and olive oil

Prep them. Remember, squeezing out as much of the moisture from the potatoes is key here. Go ahead and fuck up a kitchen towel to get it right. It’ll wash out.

Cook them.

Drain them on a paper towel.

Sprinkle with salt just as they come out of the skillet for better salt adhere-age.

The goulash has cooked for about 2 1/2 hours. We gave it a quick stir once midway through the cooking process.

Should be done now in fact.

That smell will knock you the fuck out. Paprika first, then beefy goodness, finally the balsamic comes at you.

Flavor bomb!

You know how this shit works.

Grab a couple of potato pancakes and top with the goulash.

Now isn’t that a slightly better photo than its predecessor? Just so I wouldn’t be cheating on all of ya, I used the original plate too instead of one of my fancy serving plates that you’re used to.

I’ll let the summary from our first go round wrap this up for us today.

“This goes really well with a red wine or a nice imported German lager. Fuck, this would go well with a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 but we’re trying to maintain some decorum.

This dish should have a little bite from the paprika, a little tang from the balsamic vinegar and a lot of savory goodness from everything else. I have absolutely no Germanic blood in my bones, just like I have no Italian but that doesn’t excuse us from making a delicious dish that is indigenous to the region.

Learn the food, learn the region, learn the history and make it your own.

Tchüss!”

Sorry for the rushed effort today. I was indeed rushed as fuck at work when I wrote it. We got through it though didn’t we?

Shit yeah. We’re on to August and we’ve got preseason games starting next week.

Gonna drag my ass to the finish line of this season but dammit! I’m getting there.

Enjoy your Sunday everyone.

Thanks for being there.

PEACE!