"Real Hungarian Goulash," a New History Project, and Family Recipe No. 4

My great grandmother Virginia Goettl sat at the kitchen table of my parents' Denver apartment when someone started the tape recorder. 

"I was born in 1906 in Europe," she began. "I was a year old when I—"

My grandma, Virginia's daughter Betty, cut in. "Whereabouts in Europe, mom?" 

"I was born in Bosnia... Bosnia was a province of Austria-Hungary that they recaptured from the Turks in the early 1800s," she explained after my hearing-impaired grandpa mistakenly thought she said Boston. 

It was a quiet family evening in August 1982. My parents were there (my mom was seven months pregnant with me) with my grandparents and my dad's cousin Julie. You can hear the sound of plates being cleared in the background as my dad and grandma set out to capture Virginia's story. "Okay, what we wanted to record mostly was about history, about family history..." Betty starts to explain at the beginning of the tape. 

Earlier this year, I borrowed the three tapes they created, and started what I've come to call the "Family History Project." My great grandparents had a life of unplanned adventure after my great grandpa John was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1929. Their story is beyond the scope of a single blog post. 

Those tapes, though, and some of the simple and straightforward statements that emerged from them have shed unexpected light on questions I've had about my family history. 

Since my first family recipes post about kiffels, I've wondered why my "German" family prepared so much Hungarian food. 

We have a cookbook of different family recipes that my aunt collected for a reunion in 1999. All of the ones attributed to Virginia indicate a strong eastern European influence. And it's not just hers, but several of her relatives' recipes for goulash and paprikash, as well as my mom's kiffels, all point to a past situated well outside the borders I grew up associating with my family. 

I don't have all the answers for why my family continually talked about their strong German roots yet were actually located in the southeastern territories of Austria-Hungary. 

But the straightforward sentence, "I was born in Bosnia," explains why I grew up with the hearty and comforting flavors of foods infused with Hungarian paprika. 

It made me excited to try a recipe for "Real Hungarian Goulash," that my Aunt BJ submitted, explaining that her Aunt Helene Kailer made the stew for her after her first son was born. Preparing the simple, tomato-based beef stew connected me to a part of my family's past that I now perceive more clearly. 

I will continue exploring the various facets involved in my Family History Project, examining how a disease led the Goettls from Ohio, through the Deep South, and eventually landed them in Phoenix, Arizona. I can see that path laid out in the food we love, and the recipes we've shared with one another. 

So, we'll start at the beginning, with the Hungarian food that I grew up believing was German. Here is Aunt Helene's goulash. And, as my mom was careful to instruct me, be sure to get the Hungarian paprika in the red tin! It's the best. 

Real Hungarian Goulash

A note from Aunt BJ: The key is good paprika! Hungarian paprika is sweet and delicious. (Don't use Spanish paprika.)

Ingredients: 
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 large sweet onion, chopped (or two smaller onions)
1 red bell pepper, sliced into thin strips
5 Tbs. Hungarian paprika
3 lbs. beef stew meat or a cut up roast
1 can tomato paste
1 1b. bag baby carrots (optional) 
16 oz. noodles (I used Ancient Harvest Quinoa Rotelle to make it gluten free)
Parsley

Directions: 
1. In a dutch oven or stock pot, heat oil to low. Add chopped onion and cook slowly until onions are transparent (about 15 minutes). 
2. Add red bell pepper and continue to sauté until tender (5-10 more minutes), stirring regularly.
3. Cover the onions and peppers with the stew meat, and allow meat to brown.
4. Stir in paprika and tomato paste, and then add enough water to cover the meat. Add carrots (if desired). Cover and let cook over low to medium-low heat for 1 1/2 hours, uncovering the pot for the last 30 minutes so that the stew thickens slightly. 
5. Serve over noodles, and garnish with parsley. 

Family Recipes, Part 1: Easter traditions and reasons to chart your own course

When it comes to holiday traditions, Easter can be confusing. For many Christians the celebration of Christ’s resurrection stands at the heights of the sacred calendar. Yet most of traditional practices — including the name of the holiday — have pagan roots. Where did the word Easter and its bunny come from? Well, that would be a reference to Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility whose sign was a rabbit.

If you’re a Protestant, you have even less traditional ground to stand on, because following the Reformation, Easter celebrations were rejected as too papal. It was Catholics who established the tenets of the Christian Easter feast. Protestants didn’t come back to the fold, so to speak, until the late-nineteenth century. By that time, they also had the benefit of enjoying candy Easter eggs (Cadbury introduced the first chocolate egg in 1875), jelly beans, and Easter baskets stuffed with treats.* 

While the Easter table might lack the kind of nostalgic grounding in tradition that one experiences at Thanksgiving and Christmas, I find this freeing. For us, Easter has become a time to create new holiday memories and traditions with our friends. Since it takes a two-hour drive or a four-hour flight to spend the holiday with family, I try to incorporate family by including some traditional family recipes on the menu. 

For this year, I’ve adopted the traditional Hungarian kiffel (something we usually eat at Christmas) to our celebration of the resurrection. The kiffel combines cream cheese pastry and a touch of jam for a mixture of savory and sweet that’s hard to resist. This also kicks off a series on traditional family recipes that I plan to continue sharing on the blog. I figure, what better way to explore the history of what we eat, than to delve into the foods I associate with my family history?

Whenever I eat a kiffel, I think of my dad sneaking a few each time he passed through the kitchen and my mom telling him to save some for the rest of us. It makes them all the more special to think about my grandma and great grandma making them before me. While our families will be celebrating Easter across the country, our little Alabama duo will think of them fondly and enjoy a cookie in their honor. It’s not a bunny or an egg — but who said those had all that much to do with celebrating the resurrection in the first place? 

Photos by Stephen DeVries. 

Great-Grandma Yahraus’s Kiffel Recipe (gluten free)

Note: I adapted the recipe below to my gluten free needs. For those making the cookie with wheat flour, see my notes in parentheses.) 

Ingredients: 

• 1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese (cold)
• 1 cup (two sticks) unsalted butter (cold) 
• 2 1/4 cups All-Purpose Gluten-Free Flour Blend (2 cups if using wheat flour)
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder (1/2 tsp. if using wheat flour) 
• 1 rounded Tablespoon sour cream
• 1 egg yolk 
• Jam or other filling of your choice (I varied mine between orange marmalade, blackberry jelly, and chocolate chips)

Directions: 

• Sift together flour and baking powder. 
• Using a fork or pastry cutter, cut in cold butter and cream cheese. 
• Working with your hands add in sour cream and egg yolk so that the dough forms a soft ball. Be careful not over mix the dough — if it has a marbled look, that’s okay. 
• Divide into two balls, wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour (can be refrigerated overnight). 
• Preheat oven to 375ºF
• Working one ball at a time, unwrap roll out on a sheet of parchment paper dusted with tapioca starch. Roll out dough until it is 1/8 inch thick.
• Cut dough into 2” squares and place a 1/2 tsp. of filling in the center. Fold into triangles or cylinders. 
• Bake for 10-13 min. (Mine were perfect at 12 min.) 
• Sprinkle with powdered sugar. 

*My information on the history of Easter came from Cathy K. Kaufman’s “Easter” entry in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (1ed.), Andrew F. Smith, ed., Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Accessed online at http://www.oxfordreference.com.libdata.lib.ua.edu/view/10.1093/acref/9780195154375.001.0001/acref-9780195154375-e-0280?rskey=iQtsmi&result=7 on 18 Apr. 2014.