Goulash!

Stew season is upon us. Here's a recipe for one of my favourites, and a few memories of cooking it at 2 Greek Street.

When we opened Noble Rot Soho in the midst of the pandemic in 2020, we moved into an old Soho townhouse that had previously housed a famous restaurant. The Gay Hussar, a Hungarian restaurant, was open for nigh on 60 years, and in its heyday was an infamous hangout for politicians, political satirists, writers, artists, journalists, and various associates. This was the restaurant in which the fall of Thatcher was plotted and Tony Blair was first encourage to run for parliament; where the tables were rumoured to be bugged for intelligence, and where the cherry soup, venison goulash and bull’s blood wine flowed freely. Moving into a building like this came with a sense of history that you could feel in the creaking floorboards, worn staircases, wood panelling and classic Soho dingy basement kitchen.

Restaurateur Victor Sassie in the kitchen of the Gay Hussar

At the end of the kitchen were two alcoves used previously as walk-in fridges, complete with meat hooks down the middle, which our merry band of chefs affectionally renamed “the dungeons”. And into our dungeon we went every day, at the very bottom of the townhouse, in a slim rectangular box of a room lined with stainless steel and a rust red tiled floor. All hard surfaces, reflecting the sounds of the kitchen: the banging of pots and pans, clanging of a container dropped on the floor, bashing of things on boards, a whizzing and whirring of machinery, the sizzle of searing meat, the stereo blasting out music, a strained shouting of orders over the din, all under the unending great low drone of the extract system.

Within this cauldron of heat and noise, implausibly perhaps, existed a group of cooks (mostly) happy in their work, beavering away, making all manner of lovely things: veal tartare with raw ceps and sheep’s cheese, cabbage rolls stuffed with mixed chopped game and chestnuts, roast chicken with vin jaune and morels, Anjou pigeon with muscat grapes and liver toast, Babas soaked in Rarissime Extra Vielle 1896 Armagnac, choux buns stuffed with duck liver and tojaki jelly, and enormous bubbling vats of delicious beef goulash.

For the goulash we cooked at least 10 kilos of beef shin a day, and a massive pot of simmering stew was always on the hob behind the cook on main courses, getting in the way of everything else during the madness of the morning prep. I would often make it myself, albeit usually with the help of someone a bit faster and more nimble, and I would take great pleasure in swooping in with a spoon to taste it at various intervals, lifting the lid to receive a face full of fragrant fatty steam, observing how the flavour grew ever deeper over the course of its time on the stove. The spicy fat on top of the bubbling liquid would slip too fast down the back of my throat and make me cough, but more often than not I would smack my lips and exclaim its deliciousness to all that would listen.

We weren’t about to open another Hungarian restaurant but the chance to tip our hat to a restaurant as storied as the Gay Hussar was too much to pass up. So the opening menu was interwoven with a slight Central European feel, and we worked in a few dishes that might have felt at home on the menu at the Gay Hussar: the stuffed cabbage, choux buns with liver paste, eggs casino (a devilled egg dish from the restaurant at the Hungarian National Casino), ricotta stuffed pancakes with sour cherry sauce, that sort of thing. I wanted the food to taste comforting and satisfying in the spirit of the Gay Hussar, and the customers, by and large, were pleased, even regulars of the restaurant’s old incarnation who had come to check that we hadn’t besmirched its memory. I think for many, the chance to eat a goulash in the Gay Hussar again was part of the appeal, and I hope we did it justice.

Now, I am from Birmingham not Budapest, so I’m no real expert on Hungarian cookery, but from what I have read and understand on the subject, what we were cooking was not really a true gulyás (a soup) but closer to the stew pörkölt, and with a couple of features similar to a paprikás, which is traditionally made with chicken. Really, though, what I propose here doesn’t exactly exist in Hungary. Gulyás and pörkölt are both made with onions, bacon, garlic, lard, paprika, caraway, tomatoes, peppers and boneless beef, but never a roux made with flour, and never (horror of horrors!) sour cream, so here we have a sort of beef pörkölt/paprikás hybrid. More simply, or to give it its international name, this is goulash.

If you’ll forgive the slight lack of authenticity, goulash like this is extremely good, and simply one of my favourite stews. Rich, deep and spicy with garlic and paprika, with a slick of paprika-red spicy dripping floating at the top, this is a stew for a cold night when you need warming up from inside. The stew starts with a base of bacon and onions fried in lard or goose fat, the fat flavoured with bay leaves and whole caraway seeds, one of my very favourite spices, and scented with lots of chopped garlic. Make sure you use enough fat, enough so that the seeds and leaves frazzle slightly around the edges, and the paprika stains the whole lot bright red. The flavours of a stew base are held in the fat you use to cook it in, which will spread through the whole stew as it blips away slowly, so don’t hold back: goulash is hearty food.

Beef shin is the way to go, I reckon, requiring a good slow cook but resulting in a melting cube of beef that is full of flavour. If you can’t get beef shin then chuck is more than acceptable alternative. There are also a couple of traditional peppers that are worth tracking down. Firstly, dried peppers, in the form of paprika. When I was at the restaurant we had a brilliant supplier (shout out Best of Hungary) for proper Hungarian Szeged paprika, which was an absolute joy to work with. This type of paprika behaves differently to the Spanish stuff that I was used to. The fruity flavour is fantastic and the colour incredibly vibrant, a fiery bright red. I usually use a blend of sweet, smoky and hot, but it slightly depends on what paprika I have to hand; what you want is mostly sweet with a little smoke and a decent spicy kick, but feel free to vary according to personal preference. I managed to find a handy Hungarian deli not far from my house, also full of delicious Mangalitza sausages and bacon, but if you don’t have one near you, order some paprika online, it’ll be worth it!

Secondly, you need some choice fresh peppers. The best type for goulash in my opinion is a pale green wax pepper, which has a lovely snap and only the mildest of spiciness, but I’m not too precious - when I made it for the photos here I had red and orange peppers. The important bit is not to overcook the peppers, or to cut them so small that they collapse entirely into the sauce. We don’t want a squeak or a crunch, of course, but it’s nice to have a lovely big piece of pepper as a contrast to a cube of beef.

Where the above dishes might traditionally be served with a pinched noodle like a spätzle, goulash is very nice with some boiled or crushed potatoes, or just some plain rice. I like to boil small potatoes in their skins and smash them to a rough mash, moistened with butter and a dash of cream, flavoured with parsley or chives. Plop a dollop of potatoes on your plate and spoon over the rich dark red stew, with a dribble or blob of sour cream or crème fraîche to complete the picture. Jó étvágyat!

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Beef Shin Goulash

Serves 4