Ghouls & Goulash

By Monica on October 13th, 2007

Last week it was 90°F here, now it is 36°F and frosting at night. Quite a change to acclimate to! Chilled to the bone this week, I thought I’d make a big pot of goulash to stick to the ribs and warm us up. Now, I realize that this looks like something the dog yakked up and I tried very hard to make it look more presentable, but it is what it is!

I used Czechvar (aka Budvar) beer in this recipe. While not my favorite Czech beer, I’m fortunate that my backwater grocery store carries even this. Feel free to use whatever pilsner or lager you prefer. You can also serve this as a stew, but at this time of year I am seeking out food items to place on top of dumplings like a bear preparing for hibernation.

1 bag Morningstar Farms Steak Strips, cubed
2T vegetable oil
1 medium onion, diced
2t caraway seeds
2T sweet Hungarian paprika (not hot!)
1/4t pepper
1 six oz. can tomato paste
1 bottle of beer
1/4t salt
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4t marjoram
2 carrots, chopped (optional)
2 red potatoes, diced (optional)
1 1/2 cups V8 or vegetable juice (use less if omitting carrots & potatoes)
2T flour

In a stew sized pot, heat oil and cook onions and caraway seeds until onions are soft. Add cubed faux steak and brown slightly. Stir in all of the remaining ingredients except flour. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes, until potatoes and carrots are soft. If necessary, add flour to thicken.

Because this meal is clearly calorie deficient (ha!), I thought I would use up some rhubarb that’s taking up space in my freezer. In a momentary lapse of reason, I planted no fewer than 12 rhubarb plants when we bought our current house. Suffice it to say, I have rhubarb coming out the wazoo and have found millions of ways to use rhubarb. (If the big bomb ever comes, we could hole up in the basement and live off rhubarb jam for at least a year.) Still, I have bags and bags of it in the freezer.

Here is one of my basset hounds, Moose, posing in front of a few of the rhubarb plants.

Anyway, for this ice cream topping, I cooked 2 cups of rhubarb with 3T of agave nectar over medium heat until it was soft, maybe 7 minutes. Then I added 2 cups of strawberries and cooked for another 2 minutes. Delicious!