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January 30, 2011
Hungarian Stew
While waiting for the multigrain bread to proof this afternoon, we watched the movie Julie and Julia. We are totally inspired by the parallel stories of these two women. And our own story that makes theirs so compelling.
So we have decided tonight to make Hungarian Stew from The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook. It uses 1/2 cup of sweet paprika, so I went to my favorite store in town, "By the Pound." There, I found five different kinds of paprika and selected sweet Hungarian paprika, as specified in the recipe. It cost $12.99 a pound, but for a half cup, it cost me less than $2. Gosh, I love that store!!
We got started on the stew at 7:30 pm, which was a mistake. We should've read the whole recipe more closely before we began. It takes about four hours from start to finish.
Although the prep was pretty simple, by 10:00, only half way through the broasting time, we decided that couldn't wait until 11:30 to eat. So I took the pot out of the oven and we ate it. Unfortunately, deprived of the last 90 minutes in the oven, the meat was tough, but still edible.
It would have been so good if we had waited, but I couldn't keep my eyes open and I didn't want it to burn like Julie's boef bourguignon had in the movie. So we will be making this recipe again and starting it at about 1pm so we can actually eat at dinnertime.
I also added a note in the margins of the book to cook some egg noodles--this is mentioned in the introduction to the recipe, but neglected in the actual recipe. So we forgot the noodles and just ate it like soup.
Ah well, live and learn!!!
Posted by jdooley at January 30, 2011 11:35 PM