***A food I lay claim to...***

I am parts Dutch, German, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh, with a smidge of Cherokee on my mother's side. I have a difficult time identifying with a particular food type though I do have favorites (Thai food, southern Mexican food, Indian food). My grandma is from former Yugoslavia and spent several years avoiding Nazis in Germany and before finally settling in Holland. Somehow, during all of this, she became an expert goulash maker. It is my single favorite dish of hers and she makes it whenever I visit and ask for it. I know, when I’m tired from a long drive and ferry trip to Vancouver Island, that when I arrive at her place late in the night she’ll have a steaming pot of beef goulash waiting for me.

When I backpacked through Hungary for two weeks, I spent each evening hunting down restaurants and trying their goulash. Some were like hamburger soup, others nailed it and made grandma-like masterpieces. In particular, one restaurant that fellow hostel-dwellers recommended called Fatal (ignore the name…) served me a huge dish of melting beef, tender dumplings, savory paprika sauce with dollops of sour cream on top. Heaven! I sent postcards to grandma every couple of days telling her about the various goulashes I had tried.

Grandma is getting old. I don’t know how much longer I’ll have her around and I’d never mastered her goulash. She never committed it to paper and when asked to tell me how she made it, she would say things like “a little of this, a little of that.” The last time I was up there, I asked her to make it. I practically perched on her shoulder like a gargoyle and watched every step. I finally felt confident.

Upon returning home, I ran to the store and purchased what I’d need to make Grandma Goulash. I pass along her simple gift to you, dear reader.

A package of stewing beef

Two yellow onions

2 tbsp vegetable oil

A couple of bay leaves

4 or 5 tablespoons of paprika

Enough water to just cover the beef

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Dice the onion and toss it in a soup pot with the oil and bay leaves. Add some salt. Cook over low heat until soft and translucent. Add the stewing beef and cook just long enough to sear the outside of the meat. Toss in the paprika and pepper, give a good stir, then add water and cover. Simmer this for 2-3 hours. Season to taste.
2. To make the noodles/dumplings, I’ve had to rely on my mother’s recipe which is not the same as grandma’s (next time I visit, I’ll watch her again). Also, I don’t really measure things out here. You’ll have to fiddle with it a bit.
3. Mix about 4 cups of flour with a pinch of salt and two eggs. Add enough milk to make the dough wet and very slowly slip off a spoon. It should be softer than bread dough…not something you’d want to stick your hands into but not soupy either.
4. Boil a big pot of salted water and drop teaspoon-sized balls of dough from a spoon into the pot. When they float to the top, give them another couple of minutes then drain. Return to the pot and add a couple spoonfuls of the beef stew to keep the dumplings from sticking together. Serve with strew on top and a little sour cream. Enjoy! (Make sure you have some veggies with this so it’s a little healthier.)