Seventeen cauldrons are hanging from tripods over a line of roaring fires, with the cooks sweating through the heat and smoke. They began simmering their meat and lard at 9am and now, an hour-and-a-half later, it's time to add the potatoes. One man's iron pot is so big — about half the size of a bathtub — that he has to stir his stew with a piece of raw timber as long as a broomstick. He offers me a taste, dipping a metal spoon into the broth and holding it to my lips: it's a raw, earthy taste of tomatoes, paprika, and pepper. I've eaten this dish many time before, but never with smoky tang that comes from having been cooked on an open fire.
Today is the day of the Goulash Competition — the one day of the year when the Hungarians of Melbourne come together to celebrate their heritage and raise some money for the community. I've been invited here by my new friend, Maria, whom I only met yesterday, a seventy-eight-year old Gypsy who was born in a one-room mud-brick house with a dirt floor and thatched roof. In 1987, she and her family fled Budapest as refugees and settled in Australia two years later.
I was expecting the be some modest hall at the edge of a suburban park, dotted with public bar-b-ques. Instead, earlier this morning, Maria steered her car off Boronia Road, Wantirna, up a wide driveway, and into a car park so big it would rival that of a supermarket, and with grasslands, trees, and gardens that stretch into the horizon.
Source: Mandy Sayer
To my right is a large blond brick building, and next to that is the Korona Hungarian Restaurant and further on is an ecumenical church with a pretty, narrow spire.
An ornate glass vat dispenses a liqueur that the elderly sip along with a beer or coke chaser, even though it's only 10.30am. Children run and dance barefoot around the fires. Dogs lope across the lawn, unleashed and excited. Maria and I find a shaded table with plastic chairs and claim it for her close friends and extended family. Already, I am loving this place, which is entirely owned by the community and privately funded.
Four musicians are playing what I recognise as traditional Gypsy music. They sit on wooden stools, entertaining a circle of cross-legged kids. The clarinet bursts with melodic lines of moody Kleizmer music that spiral up into the trees. Everywhere I go, strangers smile and address me in Hungarian, mistaking me for a native.
It's so hot I kick off my boots and socks and roll up my pants legs. A middle-aged man approaches me and mumbles something. The music is loud I can't hear him properly. “Sorry,” I shout. “I don't speak Hungarian!” He mumbles something again — and again I tell him I don't speak the language. He keeps talking and I shake my head. “Sorry, I don't understand!” Suddenly, the music stops and I can hear the man is now yelling at me — in English. “I just want to know where they sell the coffee!”
Maria appears and bustles me over to a line of people in front of a trestle table. “Buy tickets early,” she admonishes. “Before too crowd.” We stand in the queue with about twenty people ahead of us, and yet I'm not even sure what we're about to purchase. A man ahead of me introduces himself and explains that all the goulash being cooked on the property has to be eaten today — not tomorrow, not next week. “You can't freeze potatoes,” he adds. “It ruins the stew.”
“And don't just try one goulash,” he advises. “Try a little bit of everything.”
Once Maria and I finally reach the trestle table a man holding a book of tickets explains the procedure for buying food, but there are so many options I grow confused. Meal deals that include various combinations of breakfast pancakes, sticky rice dessert; a single serve of goulash; three tasting plates of goulash; goulash with bread; goulash with dessert — and those are just the ones that I can understand. “I just want a bowl of goulash,” I declare, and hand over fifteen bucks. The man rips off a single white ticket from his book and hands it to me.
By now the Gypsy band has taken to the stage, under a canopy of trees, and is playing an uptempo tune. The older Hungarians continue to drink and smoke while children cavort around a red setter dog. About half an hour later — midday — I see people appearing with spoons and empty bowls, pausing beside particular cauldrons, and handing over tickets to the cooks. The goulash is ladled out carefully. Suddenly, Maria appears, herding two friends into the line in front of the cook whose stew I'd sampled earlier. She's speaking in Hungarian but I can tell she's assuring her friends that this particular goulash is the best of the lot. They hand over their tickets, accept their food, and vanish back into the crowd.
Source: Mandy Sayer
Now, the area is swarming with people eager for some home-style outdoor cooking. I myself am starving—having earlier declined the breakfast pancakes on offer — and scan the food preparation area for utensils. But as I glance into the queues I notice that every piece of crockery each person is holding appears to be individual: one with a floral design; another with a willow pattern; another with polka dots. No disposable bowls or paper plates or plastic spoons and forks. It's only now that I realise that everyone here is expected to bring their own bowl. Perhaps when Maria has finished lunch she'll let me borrow her one.
I finally find her at a shaded table with others, well away from camp fires. Before I can mention the fact that I haven't brought my own bowl, she reaches into a bag and hands me one, along with a large spoon. I bow and thank her and race back to the cook she signalled earlier, the one whom she thought was the best. He spoons the thick stew into my bowl and I sit beneath a tree and begin to eat. An hour and a half earlier, the broth had tasted of tomato and paprika, but when I sample it now the chunks of beef dissolve in my mouth as quickly as sugar cubes. I can't get enough of this savoury burst in my mouth — and I'm usually a vegetarian. A man walks past, handing out fresh bread rolls. “Yes, please!” I call and, from about three metres away, he throws me one and I catch it as if it's an errant ball in a cricket game.
I go to try a second goulash, which has been cooked in a copper pot rather than iron. The cook explains to me that only rich Hungarians cook in copper, because of the superlative results, and the fact that copper is so much more expensive. He spoons a sample into my bowl, and I notice his goulash contains no potatoes. “Would you like some noodles with that?” He holds up a colander of strained corkscrew pasta. I shake my head. I'm growing full and still have one more goulash to try.
I return to the shade and taste the second sample. In spite of the cook's boasting about the superiority of a copper pot, I am not impressed. It lacks the spicy zest of the earlier one. Perhaps it would have been better with the addition of noodles, as the cook suggested.
All morning I've been observing a young plump woman sweating over an iron cauldron, watching which ingredients she adds, and when. Her potatoes went in at the same time as the others; but at various intervals she's added particular herbs and spices, and her goulash is now so thick and chunky you could eat it with a fork. I hand my ticket over and ask for just a taste, and she spoons up a serving as big as my fist. Her twist on Hungarian goulash is to add freshly chopped parsley and langos, a side dish that's made from potatoes and fried bread and which looks like a pale rissole that has yet to be crumbed. The fresh parsley is a piquant addition, and the langos melts on my tongue, but Maria has been right all along. Of the three goulashes sampled, the one she selected originally as the best, turns out, for me, to be the best, too.
TRY YOUR HAND AT THIS HUNGARIAN POTATO BAKE
Layered potato casserole (rakott krumpli)
Just as everything else here today is based on community involvement, so of course is the judging. No overweight experts sitting on a podium, sniffing and poking at food. No humiliations or eliminations. Instead, everyone is encouraged to write on a piece of paper the name of the family whom they think cooked best goulash and slide it into a box set up near the car park. By now, fires are dwindling--the dregs of each stew thrown onto the ground--and cauldrons sit upended on the grass like a line of burnt beehives.
In the meantime, an opera singer direct from Budapest takes to the stage, backed up by pre-recorded music that blasts through the speakers. She's wearing white riding boots, a short skirt that fans around her thighs like a tutu, and a tightly laced bodice. To cap it all off, a silver tiara rises out of her thick black hair and she looks a like a raunchy Snow White who's finally escaped those pesky dwarves. She's obviously singing an old Hungarian classic, because the crowd joins in, swaying nostalgically from side-to-side.
Soon it's time to announce the winners of the competition. Maria's daughter, Jutka, takes to the stage and announces the winner of the third prize. A man in a long apron appears, waving his arms in celebration, and accepts a bottle of wine. The second prize winner turns out to be my and Maria's personal favourite, and he takes to the stage, waving his ladle like sword, and is also awarded a bottle of wine. Jutka then announces the first prize winner, and three generations of a single family whoop and holler beside the stage. Another bottle of wine is presented. It's obvious the competition is not about winning or losing, but an occasion for the community to celebrate their culture and to raise some money for the centre.
I realise I'm still holding Maria's bowl and spoon and that I'll need to wash them before returning them to her. I head for the large brick building when I notice one of the cooks scrubbing her empty cauldron beneath a tap about half a metre from the ground. I stand behind her and wait my turn. Another woman, also holding a dirty bowl, joins the queue behind me. The cook scrubs and scrubs away, without a sponge and using only her fingertips, but the stubborn residue of the goulash refuses to budge. The woman behind me sighs and it's clear that she's growing impatient with the wait.
She declares something loudly in Hungarian, takes a few steps away from the tap, and digs her fingers into the dirt. At first I think she's so frustrated that she's going to throw a handful of mud at the cook who's taking so long to clean her pot—but no, she drops the dirt into the cauldron and begins using it as a scourer. As she scrubs it into the iron, the caked-on detritus magically dissolves, and the cook stands back, wide-eyed and astonished.
Now it's my turn to use the tap, and I've learned my lesson well. I dig my hand into a patch of dirt, wet it, and rub it around the insides of the bowl. It's like watching an ad for dishwashing liquid, when the crockery suddenly sparkles due to a new and superior product simply added to the water.
I eventually find Maria sitting in the cool air of an auditorium so big it could seat 2000 people. The elders have repaired here to chat and escape the heat. I hand over my bowl and tell her I'm about to leave. “Thanks for bringing me,” I add. “I've had such a great time!”
Maria jumps to her feet and hugs me. She lifts her head back and looks up at me with her beautiful black eyes, grinning. “I love you!” she announces and hugs me again. At first I'm startled, then quietly humbled — after all I only met her yesterday. I hold her in my arms, her cheek against my chest. Music from the Gypsy band outside begins to filter through the open door. “I love you, too,” I confess, glancing at the others. “And when I grow up, I want to be a Hungarian!”
CRAVING GOULASH?
Pork and potato goulash
