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pep.

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  1. pep.

    Modernist Goulash

    Melting the butter. The bacon rinds. Spices. These onions are not yet yellow enough. After depressurization. Removing the beef "chaff". Unfortunately, no pictures of the finished dish as the battery of my camera ran out (one of those old IXUS without any battery indicator ).
  2. pep.

    Modernist Goulash

    I just noticed that I didn't report back on my second batch. First off: it was big improvement on the first one, but not a complete success (at least not in the way I intended). Here's the recipe I used: Freshly ground beef: 100 % Cubed onions: 200 % Butter: 23,5 % Bacon fat/rind: 6,5 % Paprika (sweet): 8 % Cayenne pepper: 2 % Water: 50 % Vinegar: 3 % Garlic: 5 % Majoram: 0,75 % Caraway: 1 % Vodka: 2 % (may have been 4 %, I apparently didn't write it down) Salt: to taste I wanted to add an additional 5 % tomate paste, but I forgot to do that. The overall yield wis 812 g ground beef as the baseline was a bit under 2,5 liters, or around 290 %. The sauce was very thick after putting it through the passe-vite (lots of tiny pieces of meat). In the traditional recipe, the broth is less viscous. Next time, I will pass it through a superbag to filter out the broken meat fibers. The taste was very good. However, the whole mixture was very thick even before cooking (obviously) and barely fit into my pressure cooker. This resulted in scorched bottom. For goulash, this is OK as it adds a bit of smoky flavor and traditionally, slight scorching is considered good. However, it made cleaning the pan more time consuming and was not what I intended. I think I'd need to add an additional 50 % of water to prevent that next time. The preparation itself was almost the same as last time: I roasted the onions (a but darker this time) in the fat, added the paprika and cayenne and immediately deglazed with the water/vinegar mixture. Then I added the rest of the (finely ground) spices and the meat and stirred. Just before closing the pressure cooker, I stirred in the vodka. I let the whole thing cook for one hour on high pressure, followed by natural depressurization. The resulting mass was almost solid and I pressed out the moisture with the passe-vite. My guests really liked the different texture of the meat (much more tender than usual, intense meaty flavor (not cooked away as with traditional braising), pink color. Shank slices cooked 72 hours at 55°C. Pictures will follow in a seperate post.
  3. Unlesse you have also got a problem eating beef tartare or carpaccio, I just don't see why you would do that. I'm with you for not cooking supermarket ground meat at such a low temperatures, though.
  4. Hi, my brother and my mother are going to Lisbon this weekend. I'm looking for some restaurant recommendations in the 50 to 60 EUR range (per person, not including beverages). That would be around 70 to 85 in US$. Both appreciate good food, but are not willing to overspend themselves like I do Further recommendations for cheaper (but still good) "routine" locations (either lunch or dinner) would be welcome, too. Greetings, Peter
  5. My first association also. Doubt it is an ashtray - it's missing the indents for a cigarette. My guess would be a relish dish. You're probably right and I noticed the missing indents, too, but the whole look still screams "ashtray" to me.
  6. An acquaintance of mine notified me that his favorite supplier will slaughter a young Mangalitsa pig in two weeks (young means it will weigh about 60 kg). So what parts should I get to do something interesting? I don't have the equipment for making my own sausages, but I do own a meat grinder (well, two if you count the KA attachment). And a sous-vide kit of course ;-)
  7. pep.

    Modernist Goulash

    Here are the promised pictures from batch 1 (strangely, I couldn't upload any photos yesterday): The bagged shank waiting for the water bath. Mise en place I: onions, lard, paprika ... Mise en place II: ... garlic and spices. Soon to be ground meat (miscellaneous stewing cuts). My somewhat ancient grinder ("inherited" because my mother didn't actually use it anymore). After grinding with the coarse plate. Melting the lard before roasting the onions. Still white ... Onions deglazed and paprika added. Here everything has already been included (meat, spices etc.) – the next step was pressure cooking for an hour. This is what the broth looked like after relieving pressure using the "in the sink" method. Nice layer of fat on top! On the left, the strained broth. The meat residue on the right looked a bit like used coffee grounds (unfortunately, you can't see how dry it was on the picture). The passe-vite waiting for cleanup (the jars held the lard, also to be cleaned).
  8. pep.

    Modernist Goulash

    Because that's extra (ground) meat just for the broth. The 100 % meat/80 % onions ratio is for the traditional method of simmering the onions with the chunky meat on top. I will add the extra juice from the sous-vide bag when serving the goulash, so the total meat/onion ratio will be more like 100 %/66.6 %. I'm counting that the flavor extraction from the ground meat will be greater than in the traditional method.
  9. pep.

    Modernist Goulash

    OK, I'll have to postpone the second batch until tomorrow, it's too late today. After actually eating a dish with the first batch of broth (instead of just tasting it), I've come to the conclusion that it is too diluted. I will have to reduce the first batch a bit, and for tomorrow's version I'll leave out the additional 100 % water. The onions should provide enough liquid in the pressure cooker.
  10. Thanks! I'm developing my own goulash version based on a traditional recipe, modified for cooking the meat (soud-vide) and the broth (pressure cooker) separately. I'll make another batch tomorrow (I just finished bagging some compressed water melons. Compression with a clamp machine and an external container is rather tedious, I have to say. If only the chamber machines were not as expensive *sigh*). I don't want to add wine or port, so I'll use the 2 % vodka instead. Interesting that the beef stock features more than double the amount of alcohol (I gather that the meat is the 100 % for the stocks?).
  11. pep.

    Modernist Goulash

    I cooked the goulash broth on Thursday: 1.3 kg thinly sliced onions 550 g freshly ground beef 200 g lard 50 g paprika 4 small pressed cloves of garlic 1 tsp. majoram 1 tsp. crushed caraway 120 ml water mixed with approx. 10 ml of vinegar 500 ml water I put the pressure cooker onto high heat and browned the onions in the lard. According to the traditional recipes, they should become yellow-golden (not too light), but not brown. Oh, and you should stir constantly. At this point I was sure that my humble 4.5 l pressure cooker would be too small for the amount of ingredients, but it worked out in the end. Barely. I certainly should get one of the bigger beasts. Anyway, of course I got bored by stirring, so I set a kitchen timer to 4 minutes and went away to do something else. As can be expected, the onions on the bottom where far more browned than they should have been (but not yet burned). I decided that this was enough color and Maillard. I stirred in the paprika and immediately deglazed using the watered vinegar. Then I added the other spices (garlic, majoram, caraway, a small bit of black pepper, some salt) and the meat. I stirred everything and put the lid on the pot. I waited until the second ring (high pressure, approximately 13 psi) was visible and turned down the heat. I let broth cook at high pressure for an hour. Then I turned off the heat and let it cool down for a few minutes. However, I got impatient and used the cold water in the sink method to relieve the pressure. When I opened the pot, I was surprised that the overall volume seemed to have increased! The color was perfect and with some additional salt, the taste was great, too. Not all the onions had dissolved and of course there still was the ground meat in the broth. Of course, I could have kept it that way, but the texture of the ground meat is completely wrong for goulash. So ladled the stuff into my passe-vite and pureed it with the 1 mm disc. The left-over meat had the look and texture of used coffee grounds, every bit of moisture was pressed out into the broth. As I misread a label in the supermarket (and clearly wasn't thinking straight), I bought 4 bags of onions at 1 kg each. While slicing, I was halfway into the second bag before I noticed What should I do with 2.8 kg onions? Make another batch of goulash broth, of course. This time I'd like to make the following adjustments: beef 100 % onions 200 % lard/butter fat (I haven't got any lard left): 30 % paprika 8 % cayenne pepper 2 % water 20 % + 2 % vinegar water 100 % I'll measure the spices when I do the second batch. I'd like to add some alcohol as well, as per the MC stock recipes. However, I haven't got the books so I wouldn't know how much the recipes in there recommend. Greetings, Peter PS: I have some photos from the first batch, I but there is something wrong with my account and I can't upload them at the moment.
  12. Since I haven't got the books (yet): How much alcohol (Vodka) is suggested in the stock recipes? I'd like to try that technique with a second batch of goulash broth I'm preparing today (viz. Modernist Goulash). Greetings, Peter
  13. pep.

    Modernist Goulash

    Update: Yesterday, I put the shank into the waterbath at 55°C. At first I thought that I would be late as always (planning ahead for a meal is fine, actually doing it is another thing altogether , but the meal has been postponed to Sunday, so I should get 72 hours for the meat. Since I thought I was late, I put it in at 1 am, so I forsook trimming the fat and resealing and just used the frozen packages I made earlier. This of course means that I had to buy another 500 g of "goulash meat" (not shank this time, it's non-specific junks of meat sold for stew) to use in the broth. I'll prepare everything according to the normal recipe, except that the meat is ground. Then I'll pressure cook the broth for one hour. I'll probably filter the solids out with a sieve or my passe-vite. Addendum: My traditional goulash recipes do not include browning the meat, so I won't do that either.
  14. pep.

    Modernist Goulash

    Not really. Maier-Bruck specifically states that if you use meat other than shank, you should cook the onions first and add the meat later. This would mean that there are two reasons for the long and slow cooking: To tenderize the meat by changing the connective tissue to gelatine, and to dissolve the onions into the sauce. However, popular wisdom has it that goulash gets better as it is reheated. That would seem to indicate a mariage of the flavors improves the endresult. Then again, conventional wisdom also claims that burning the goulash slightly while reheating is also good for the flavor. Thank you, that was very interesting reading. Yes, the 1:1 ratio for meat and onions is used very often. Maier-Bruck mentions it, but claims that it results in goulash that is slightly too sweet and recommends 1:0,8 as the best ratio. As for side dishes, the most basic one is white bread/rolls (Kaisersemmeln). Semmelknödel (bread dumplings) are also very common nowadays. But you can really eat anything starchy with goulash. With the Semmelknödel, you get Bauerngulasch, with Polenta it becomes Triester Gulasch. Real Spätzle come from the western regions of Austria and Germany so they are not a traditional side for goulash. However Haluška (Czech)/Galuska (Hungarian) may look similar to the uninitiated. Spätzle are made from a very liquid dough, through kind of sieve. The dough for Haluška is much firmer, more like pasta dough, and the individual pieces are torn off/formed by hand.
  15. pep.

    Modernist Goulash

    I'm in Australia and shipping of the book to me from Amazon.com only cost $10. Yes, you are right. It is much cheaper than I imagined. However, I'd have to pay an additional EUR 12 fee for the postal service handling the customs inspection, as well as 10 % VAT on the combined merchandise and shipping costs. I'm not sure if there are any actual tariffs levied on books, but if there are, those would be on the total sum as well. On the other hand, the Dollar-to-Euro conversion is quite good. Mhm ...
  16. pep.

    Modernist Goulash

    A good goulash recipe? I've got a dozen here before me (well, three actual recipes and a bit more than dozen variations). All from Franz Maier-Bruck: Klassische Österreichische Küche: Saftgulyás (goulash with lots of sauce) Rindsgulyás (beef goulash) Ungarisches Gulyás (Hungarian goulash) Karlsbader Gulyás (goulash in the style of the city of Karlsbad/Karlovy Vary) Debreziner Gulyás (goulash with a special sausage) Serbisches Gulyás (Serbian goulash) Fiakergulyás (coachman's goulash) Herrengulyás (lords'/masters' goulash) Andrássy-Gulyás (probably named after the Hungarian count Gyula Andrássy) Bauerngulyás (peasant's goulash) Bosnisches Gulyás (Bosnian goulash) Esterházy-Gulyás (named after the Hungarian noble family Esterházy) Gulyás auf Fiumer Art (goulash in the style of the city of Fiume/Rijeka) Kaisergulasch (emperor's goulash) Károly-Gulyás (Károly is "Carl", but I've got no idea which one it is named for) Lungenbratengulyás (tenderloin goulash) Maximiliangulyás (emperor Maximilian's goulash) Palffy-Gulyás (another noble family) Gulyás auf Pester Art (in the style of the city of Pest - no part of Budapest) Gulyás auf Preßburger Art (in the style of the city of Preßburg/Bratislava) Salongulyás (drawing room goulash) Serbisches Gulyás (yes, we had that before - slightly different variation) Gulyás auf Triester Art (in the style of the city of Trieste) Zelny-Gulyás (Czech variant of Szegediner goulash which is not really related to "real" goulash) Gulyás auf Znaimer Art (in the style of the city of Znojmo) The recipe for Saftgulyás from Maier-Bruck's seminal book: 1 kg of sliced beef shank (each slice should weigh 30 to 40 g) 150 g lard 800 g sliced white onions 1 dash of vinegar in 1/16 l of water 40 to 50 g mild paprika 2 crushed cloves of garlic 1 tsp (dried) majoram 1 tsp crushed caraway salt optionally 1 Tsp tomato paste Sauté onions in lard until they are golden/slightly brown. Stir in paprika and deglace immediately with vinegar/water. After a bit of simmering, add the meat, salt, and spices. While stewing, it shouldn't be covered completely. When the sauce is reduced to much, add a little bit of water (not too much, just so that it doesn't burn). This will have to be repeated until the meat is tender and the onions dissolve. At this point, add water to barely cover the meat and continue to simmer for another ten minutes. The sauce should be thick and fatty.
  17. pep.

    Modernist Goulash

    For goulash, you normally use shank meat. Unless I'm completely mistaken, that is one of the toughest cuts available. In restaurants were goulash is a "signature dish" of sorts, the meat cubes are usually quite large. In a typical portion, you get one or two large chunks of beef. At home, most people cut smaller cubes. As for the plating, yes, I'm thinking in the direction of what you call "deconstructed goulash" in your post. Nothing terribly original, but a small puddle of sauce, the pink, fork-tender meat on top. Maybe a sous-vide egg and a gherkin consommé to make it a deconstructed Fiakergulasch (depending on context, a Fiaker is either a horse carriage or the coachman thereof - here the meaning is obviously the latter). It would be missing some kind of Vienna sausage, but I hate those.
  18. pep.

    Modernist Goulash

    Since a large part of my freezer is currently filled with vacuumed beef for making goulash, I've been thinking of doing it with a modernist twist. Caveat: I haven't been able to get Modernist Cuisine yet (I've a standing order for the second printing via amazon.de, but I've got no clue if they will actually get any of the books. Ordering from amazon.com is too expensive because of transatlantic shipping, unfortunately). Douglas Baldwin has a sous-vide goulash recipe in Sous vide for the home cook, but it's actually quite traditional using 80°C as the braising temperature. I was thinking more along the lines of cooking the meat at 54,5°C for 48 or 72 hours and making the onion sauce (traditional Viennese Saftgulasch contains 80 % onions for every 100 % beef) separately in the pressure cooker. Has anyone tried something like this before? I would add the fat trimmings to the onions (either as large pieces to remove later or finely diced/ground) to give some substance and beef flavor to sauce. And instead of water, I'd probably add beef stock to compensate for the missing meat.
  19. Over here (i.e. in Austria) the alcohol laws are quite relaxed, maybe too much so. Although I remember that thought they were too strict when I was a teenager It is a bit different in each Bundesland (roughly "state", but with the area of one of your larger counties), but in general once you are 16, you are allowed to buy and drink wine and beer. Everything distilled (including pre-mixed drinks in recent years) is off-limits until you are 18. Theoretically, 16 is the lower limit, but I distinctly remember that when going to Ontario for a student exchange at that age, that I already knew enough about alcohol and its effects on my body to know when to stop drinking. Some of the Canadian students organized a secret booze party that left several of them (including my host) practically comatose. Unfortunately for the organizers, one girl wasn't a student of the same school, but rather the daughter of one of the teachers. Predictably, she ratted them out when questioned by her mother about the beer smell still lingering on her.
  20. I didn't know there were places with this policy in the US. Seems like a very reasonable policy to me. (As a European, I regard the age limit of 21 as completely insane. It needlessly criminalizes behavior that will happen anyway.)
  21. pep.

    Decaf tea

    Personally I'd recommend to drink more tea and thereby build up a tolerance level for the caffeine Maybe I'm a bit of a snob, but besides an occasional Earl Grey or Chinese Jasmin tea, flavored teas doesn't hold much appeal for me. My preference lies with (Chinese) green teas and I rather doubt that the decaffeination process for green tea leaves a result that is drinkables without added flavors. Besides, I haven't seen decaf teas around here very often.
  22. Stroh rum. I try to replace it with "real" rum, but nothing get's you quite the same taste in your pastries. Supposedly, the essences used are all natural, but I really doubt that.
  23. Hah! That's what I mainly use his book for – stocks and sauces. And as a reference work for determining what the classical preparations would look like, before figuring out replacements. Not enough money for all those truffle-stuffings here, unfortunately Of course I never did any of the stocks using his quantities. When your largest stockpot takes 9 l*, 10 kg of veal bones are not gonna fit in, no matter how small you hack them * I'm still kinda uncertain whether I should upgrade to a 25 l stock pot or a 10 or 13 l pressure cooker. Eventually I'll probably get both ... if only my kitchen were not so small *sigh*
  24. I was a bit surprised when I realized that US home cooks generally do not own scales. Except for eggs, which are almost never given by weight, almost all other ingredients in European recipes for home cooking are given in kg and g (liquids in l and ml). Produce like onion, cloves of garlic etc. is sometimes simply counted, but that makes scaling a pain. (And how should I know which onions a recipe's author thinks of as "medium"? Most of the time, stuff like that is not a problem, but when a recipe for filled onions intended as main course for four, home many should I use as side dish for 12? ) Anyway, I can heartily recommend the Soehnle "Page" digital scale. It is flat, has an easily cleanable glass surface and works very well. If you need to cook professional quantities, there is a "Page Pro" version available. Like MaxH, I store it upright in the cupboard. As for professional cookbooks, besides the already-mentioned Escoffier and Under Pressure, I've only got one that I would count as semi-professional: Der große Pellaprat, a German version of the L'art culinaire moderne by Pellaprat. In its scope and style, it is very similar to the guide culinaire (which maybe can in part be attributed to the fact that both translations were overseen by Walter Bickel), but the recipes are scaled down to home quantities. So maybe "pro" can be summarized as "huge quantities and terse recipes". However, I'm not sure if that really is true. I think that some of the terseness may come from the encyclopedic format, so it would only be indicative of a certain class of pro cookbooks. I'm sure there are professional publications explaining techniques in detail (i.e. textbooks for cooking schools). I just don't own any of them.
  25. Yes. But the argumentum e contrario is not true: Just because someone has appeared in the American media doesn't mean they are important to the world at large.
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