Goulash, Hungarian food for the drunk and hangover victim.

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I made this last weekend to use up the remaining thin-sliced lamb, and also to honor my hangover. Fond memories of this dish comes from my solo trip to Prague last year, in a nice local beer brewery’s restaurant. Goulash is a Hungarian stew made with tomato, potato, carrot, onion and any red meat at hand and are often sold in bars. It is said to be the dish that you could never get wrong in Czech, always delicious with each place having their own variation.

Seasoning for this stew are salt, pepper, paprika, thyme, oregano and a little bit of chili. As standard procedure of making stew, the ingredients are stir fried first. I started with the lamb sliced to extract the fat to be used to grill the remaining ingredients. Water were added when the tomato caramelizing. Then it was put on low heat for an hour where the soup reduced to half creating a thicker consistence with the help of the potato starch.

Ingredient choice is very important for this kind of down to earth dish. I used 2 types of tomato this time, the normal big tomato and a handful of cherry tomatoes that had high sugar content. The result is a natural pleasant sweetness to the stew without needing to add sugar to balance the sour taste from normal tomato.

Along the stew i had my last glass of Chateau Couronneau Bordeaux Superieur, and that was the correct way to mark the end of a weekend.