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Veal with Sour Cream
Veal in 1-inch cubes. Heat fat or butter and throw into it a minced onion. Add meat, season with salt and plenty paprika, cover and let slowly fry, for nearly an hour, turning once. Add 1 tablespoon flour, shaking the pan to mix without stirring. Then pour in plenty of sour cream, shake pan again and continue slow cooking until sauce has thickened.
The ban against milk sauces with meat, which many folks share with Kosher cooks, may be lifted in the case of veal. In fact, the flesh of all young animals is good with the milk which is their diet, just as canvasback ducks that have fed on wild rice or wild celery seed are all the better when stuffed with some of the same.
A camp version of Hungarian veal paprikash, written in the loose style of a cook who expects you to judge quantities by eye. The one thing to get right is the sour cream: it must never boil, or it will break into curds and weeping fat.
- QuantitiesThe original gives none. For four people, figure 2 lb boneless veal shoulder cut in 1-inch cubes, one medium onion, 2 tablespoons fat, and about 1 cup sour cream. The tablespoon of flour is the only measured item and is correct for that amount.
- Paprika"plenty" suggests something on the order of a rounded tablespoon of sweet Hungarian paprika, added off direct heat or with the pan pulled back — paprika scorches fast and turns bitter. Paprika that has sat in the cupboard for a couple of years contributes color and little else; buy fresh.
- The hour of "slow frying"This is a covered braise, not frying. Cubed veal shoulder in its own juices at a bare simmer, turned once, will be tender in 45 to 60 minutes. Loin or leg cubes will be dry well before the hour is out; use shoulder.
- Flour without stirringShaking rather than stirring keeps the cubes whole and the crust intact. Let the flour cook in the fat a minute before the cream goes in or the sauce will taste raw and pasty.
- Sour creamHold the pan below a simmer once the cream is in — around 180F. Modern supermarket sour cream is thinner and more acidic than the farmhouse cream this book assumes; full-fat sour cream or crème fraîche holds together far better than light or fat-free, which will separate almost on contact.
- FatButter alone can brown too hard over an hour's cooking. Lard, bacon fat, or a mix of butter and oil is more forgiving.
- Cooking outdoorsHeat -- If cooking over a fire, a heavy lidded Dutch oven set beside rather than over the coals gives the steady low heat this needs. Indoors, a heavy pan on the smallest burner, or a low oven around 325F, does the same work.
- ServingServes four with buttered egg noodles, spaetzle, or boiled potatoes to take the sauce.