Wintry Weather - time for gulaschsuppe
While places further north are getting significant snowfalls, all I’m getting here in the Limousin region of France is fine drizzle that isn’t quite cold enough to become sleet. I was just beginning to think that it was getting past the time for eating toast and Serrano ham or smoked salmon, backed up with lamb’s lettuce, as my lunch. Right on cue, my favourite cooking blog site has just published a gulaschsuppe recipe.
One of our dogs is allergic to the wheat that forms a large part of most dry dog food, so he gets cheapest cut stewing steak (actually, the day’s leftovers packaged as dog meat by our supermarket butcher). All I need to do is trim it a bit and I have the meat I need to try the recipe.
No point in eating winter fare without winter wine, so I’d better tip a bottle of red into a saucepan and hunt out the cloves and cinammon sticks to make some glühwein…
Mmm, Glühwein…
When I was studying over in Germany, one of the biggest pleasures of a German winter was going to the Christmas markets and getting a Glühwein or two (or more) to keep out the chill.
They used to sell (in Aldi, I think - long before Aldi broke into the UK market) teabag-like sachets of Glühwein spices which you could heat up in red wine. I took some back to the UK with me, but it was never quite the same somehow. Probably something to do with the winter weather in Shropshire being wet, windy and miserable rather than crisp and cold.
And somehow I don’t think it’s gonna work in Thailand. Not unless we crank up the air-conditioning to the max, anyway.
Sred! Fantastic recipe! I will cook this some time this week!
Glühfix. Yes, it’s OK as a last resort, but it’s all ground to a fine powder. Using whole cloves and cinnamopn sticks gives a much more aromatic brew. In either case, you add the sugar - so you can get that part balanced to suit your own taste.