July 5th--One Pot Paprikash

Dave: We are pretty tired tonight after a weekend celebrating (and exercising) our freedoms with some of our friends. We were lucky to host some friends from Oxford, MS and we had the chance to meet up with some of my fellow Huskies at the fireworks downtown. As much fun as we had, the last thing we want to do tonight is mess around with a complicated recipe...or dishes.

Lauren: Only problem with that idea - we're also hungry. REALLY hungry. As in make-and-eat-buckets-of-food hungry.

Dave: This weekend involved a lot of eating out (notably the Taste of Chicago, Wow Bao! and the fabulous Panang Thai in the loop), so price range is also a consideration. For this recipe, I focused on keeping everything down to one pot, ingredients that cost less than $20 total (with a guarantee of leftovers for lunch tomorrow) and super-hearty comfort food. Looking to my heritage, I thought that some nice spicy Paprikash would do the trick.

Lauren: When you're hungry, why not cook Hungarian? (cue groans)

Dave: The only challenge is transforming notoriously meat-based Hungarian cuisine into a veg dish. The first issue was how to get the proper consistency in my sour cream sauce without any rendered fat in the dish. I decided to try using Cultural Revolution yogurt because it is so thick and creamy. It helped, but we may go all the way to Greek yogurt next time we try this out.

The other big issue is what to put in the Paprikash. I've done everything from all-mushrooms (cooked in bacon fat so I didn't have to worry about sauce thickening) to all-beef and the sauce has always stood up for itself, so I wasn't worried about balance as much as I was worried about health (we also didn't eat that healthily this weekend). I decided to go with button mushrooms, Yukon gold potatoes (skin on) and red cabbage. I also used a shallot because they were on sale for a good price at Whole Foods and we like how potatoes taste when they are cooked with shallots.

Lauren: Given the temperature outside and the stick-to-your-ribs quality of the dish, we served it up by itself. In the colder months, it would be nice to serve it over some egg noodles or hearty wild rice.

Ingredients:

12 oz Cultural Revolution Plain Yogurt

2 Yukon Gold Potatoes cleaned and cut into batons

16 oz Button Mushrooms cleaned and sliced

1 Head Red Cabbage

1 Shallot

1/2 Cup Earth Balance Margarine in two 1/4 cup portions

3 Tbsp Hot Hungarian Paprika

2 Tbsp Hungarian Paprika

1 Tbsp Ground Black Pepper

1 Tsp Salt

Procedure:

Melt 1/4 cup Earth Balance in sautee pan with lid. Cook potatoes until the start to brown. Add shallot and salt and pepper. Continue cooking until the potatoes are uniformly brown and the shallots are cooked through.

Add mushrooms and cover the pot entirely with cabbage. Place other 1/4 cup of Earth Balance on top of the cabbage and cover the pan. Cook on medium low until cabbage has wilted significantly.

In a separate container (I used the yogurt container to cut down on dishes) mix yogurt and paprika. Add more black pepper and salt if you think that would taste good.

Mix together the ingredients in the pan and let cool for 10 minutes. Add the yogurt sauce and heat slowly to avoid curdling. Serve hot in bowls.