Gulyás with Nokedli

June 10, 2020

My grandmother died a few weeks ago. A week after her 99th birthday. It didn't come as a surprise. Over the last year she has been quite sick. But when it happened it hit me and my family harder than I thought it would. You simply cannot prepare for something like this: death, loss, grief. I am very bad with death. I mean, is anyone good with it? I don't think I can comprehend yet what has happened. My dad called me the morning it happened. Already then, in that moment, I knew something was up. He doesn’t usually call that early and it was something I had imagined many times. At least for the past year. To receive this call.

All I wanted in that moment was to be with my family. To help prepare for the funeral and to be there for my mum to help her go through her mother’s things. But I couldn’t. I live in Copenhagen with my wonderful wife and my one-year-old daughter. I am originally from Wiesbaden, a small city near Frankfurt, Germany. You know, the airport where most of you have passed through on a connecting flight. The easiest thing would have been for me to pack my things, take my family, and board a plane bound for Frankfurt. Like so many times before. But we couldn’t. The global COVID-19 pandemic has led to a travel ban throughout Europe. Not only that, but just a handful of people are allowed to attend funerals. So we had to stay here, at home in Copenhagen.

Yet I long to feel at home, like when I am in Wiesbaden. And for me the one thing that helps in most cases is food. My mum is a great cook. Her cooking has been heavily influenced by my dad's side of the family, which has some roots in Hungary. My paternal grandparents lived as a German minority in Hungary until the communist post-war regime expropriated and deported them to Germany. Despite being deported from their home, their hunger for Hungarian cuisine continued. I suppose, like me, it connected them to a place they could no longer be. So my mum learned how to make a very, very good Gulyás. In time, she showed me how to make it and now I share my love for this dish with my wife and my daughter. To me, this is the definition of comfort food. It is warm, hearty, rich in flavor, slightly spicy because of the cayenne pepper, acidic because of the tomatoes, and creamy because of the crème fraiche. For me, this tastes like home, the place I long to be. Guten Appetit.

For the Gulyás:
4 tbsp vegetable oil
500 grams of fatty beef steak, cut into chunks
1 large onion, thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
5 carrots, peeled and sliced
1/2 celeriac, cut into small cubes
200 ml red wine
1.5 l beef stock
4 tsp tomato purée
2 large tomatoes, cut into small cubes
4 Bay leaves
1 tsp caraway
2 tsp sweet paprika
2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp strong mustard
Salt
Pepper
2 tsp corn starch
150 ml crème fraiche

For the Nokedli:
2 eggs
300 grams flour
1 tsp salt

For the Gulyás:

1. Heat the oil in a large pot and fry beef chunks until dark brown on all sides (this step takes time)

2. Just before the beef is well-browned, add onions and garlic and fry for another 2-3 minutes.

3. Then add the carrots and celeriac and pour in the red wine and bring the pot to a boil

4. Add beef stock, tomatoes, tomato purée, and bay leaves. Season with caraway, sweet paprika, cayenne pepper, mustard, salt and pepper

5. Boil for at least two hours or until meat is very tender

6. When the meat is tender, put corn starch in a little bowl, add a bit of the liquid from the Gulyás, mix, and add back to the Gulyás. This should make it a bit a thicker. Add crème fraiche and final seasoning

For the Nokedli:

1. Bring a large pot of water to boil

2. In a bowl, mix all ingredients together until a slightly runny dough, yellow in color. If it is too dry, add a bit of water

3. Take a tablespoon and dip in pot with boiling water, now scoop out a little bit of dough and transfer into pot with boiling water. Repeat until all dough has been transferred. When the dumplings are floating on the surface, they are cooked. This usually takes only 2-3 min.

4. Drain with colander.

5. Serve Nokedli with Gulyás and a dollop of crème fraiche.

Matthias Trischler is a 31-year-old German PhD fellow, living in Copenhagen with his wife and daughter.