♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - My mother-in-law was born in Salzburg, Austria, so we go back every year to visit relatives.

And I've found, over time, that Austrian cooking is really unique and not very well known here in the States.

It's not German cooking.

It's actually much lighter and more interesting.

And most of those recipes never really travel abroad.

So we're going to do three great Austrian dishes today on Milk Street.

The first is a goulash, which is buttery and rich.

Then we're going to make Kartoffelsalat, which is a delicious Austrian potato salad.

I think it's the best potato salad in the world.

And finally, we're going to do a plum cake, a one-layer plum cake, which is a great summer dessert.

So stay with us right here at Milk Street as we explore the Austrian table.

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♪ ♪ - There's goulash and there's goulash.

If you go to Budapest in Hungary, you'd have more of a soup, I guess, sort of a beef soup.

But if you're in Austria, the sauce is quite thick.

It's kind of buttery.

It's just creamy, it's just wonderful.

So it's a very distinctive style of stew, and that's what we're going to make today.

- Absolutely-- the creamy, buttery sauce is key to this recipe, and it really starts with making sure you have a lot of strong flavor to back it up.

Here we have two cups of beef broth that I'm going to fortify with a quarter-cup of tomato paste, and we're just going to whisk that together.

This will really build flavor right from the ground up.

And you just want to mix it in until that tomato's fully dissolved.

That's all we really have to worry about when it comes to the liquids that go into the sauce.

Now, here we actually have a five-pound chuck roast of beef.

And as you can see, it's marbled with a fantastic amount of fat.

While fat is flavor, and it will lend quite a bit to the final dish, we don't necessarily need all of it.

So we need to break this chuck roast down into smaller pieces to remove a lot of that fat.

You have to get in there with your hands and just separate the meat at the seams.

And it's very, very easy to handle once you notice where all those fat lines are.

And as you're breaking this down, be sure to pick out any pockets of fat, using your fingers, as well.

- You know, I once did a roast like this a couple of years ago.

Wasn't for this recipe, but a similar recipe.

And when I was done, my pile of trimmings equaled my pile of meat, because there was so much fat in the roast.

It was just amazing.

- It's very well possible, and you know what?

If there's a lot of fat in the meat, that's a good sign that that meat is going to be packed full of flavor.

So it's best to work in batches just to get most of that meat out.

And don't be shy.

You're probably going to trim off about a pound to a pound and a half of fat and other trimmings.

So you're going to end up with about four pounds' worth of meat at the end of this.

Now, the other thing to keep an eye out for is something like silver skin.

Now, that silver skin that you see there, it has this slightly iridescent quality to it.

It is super-tough and just really gnarly to bite into, so you want to trim off as much as you can.

The best way you could do that is slide your blade right underneath the silver skin, cut in one direction-- so now you have this loose flap to work with-- grab onto that flap and cut in the opposite direction.

All right, Chris, it looks like we have quite a bit of the fat trimmed off of this.

All we have to do now is break this down into pieces that are no smaller than an inch and a half.

What I'll do is, I'll slice this right down the middle lengthwise.

And then from there, just go ahead and start cutting down from the tip here.

And that's that.

So, Chris, I've broken down the rest of that beef into these pieces.

We want to get them flavored now, so that way they can start to take on some of the flavors that we want in this dish.

That involves seasoning them with one tablespoon of sweet Hungarian paprika, two teaspoons of salt, and one teaspoon of pepper.

And I'm just going to give this a little toss just to make sure that every piece gets a little bit of that spice mixture.

So I'm just going to give my hands a quick little rinse.

If you wouldn't mind getting our Dutch oven up to medium-high heat, that would be fantastic.

We'll go ahead and prime our Dutch oven here with half a stick of butter, so that's about four tablespoons' worth.

And what we're going to do is, we are going to cook in our onions until they're lightly browned.

- Now, I said at the beginning we wanted a buttery sauce, and you took that very seriously.

Because you actually put butter...

Which is true, they actually use butter in the sauce.

- There you go, I mean, butter is a good thing, Chris.

I don't know where you've been.

Get that butter melting, and as soon as it is completely melted, we'll toss in one large onion here that's fairly finely diced.

So these onions are going to cook along with one teaspoon of salt, just for a little bit of seasoning.

And we're going to cook them for about ten minutes.

At that point, we should see them very lightly browned.

That little bit of sweetness is definitely going to carry through this entire dish.

♪ ♪ Chris, our onions have been cooking for about ten minutes, and they've taken on this lightly caramel color, which I really enjoy here.

We're going to create a roux by adding in a third a cup of our all-purpose flour, along with two tablespoons' worth of caraway.

And those are whole caraway seeds that have been very lightly crushed.

Just move this around to ensure that all of that flour does get coated in that oil.

What we're going to do is, we'll cook this down for about two to four minutes until that flour begins to brown.

- Well, I have to say, when we were developing this recipe, it wasn't coming out right.

It didn't have the right texture or creaminess.

And I finally asked my mother-in-law, who grew up in Salzburg.

She said, "Well, use a roux."

(laughing): That's, like...

It was a very traditional answer and it's the obvious answer.

And it works.

- Yeah.

- You know, a butter-flour roux sometimes is the, exactly the right thing to do.

- In my book, it's always the right thing to do.

I like a lot of sauces and soups that have that little bit of body and a little bit of that nuttiness.

So, Chris, all the flour has started to take on quite a bit of color.

What's great about this little technique is, not only have we created the roux, but we've also toasted the caraway to bring out some of that flavor.

- And the caraway is a critical flavor in goulash.

- Absolutely.

- It's used a lot in Austria.

- The other thing that we're going to add in for flavor is going to be the remaining five tablespoons of sweet Hungarian paprika, as well as one tablespoon of hot paprika, also from Hungary.

Now, I keep saying Hungarian paprika because, honestly, it's the best for this dish.

It offers this earthiness that you simply can't get with other paprikas.

So we're sticking close to tradition here.

We're going to cook this paprika just like we did with our caraway.

We're actually toasting off this paprika, but because it's finely ground, it doesn't take nearly as long for that aroma and flavor to come out.

This roux is very beautifully aromatic, so it's at this point that we could add in our broth.

Now, give it a good stir before you incorporate it into the pan.

And you want to work fairly quickly when you're doing this.

Add it in in a slow stream, but start whisking, so that way, it could already start mixing together and becoming a homogenous blend.

So as soon as that broth hit the pan, it started to sizzle, and that roux activated.

It's at this point that we could add in our beef.

And we want to gently lower this in so we don't send any of this roux-thickened sauce flying.

But once the beef is in there, you want to make sure it's coated in a little bit of that sauce, and then we'll add in two other flavoring elements.

- We should just point out-- although you know this, of course-- we did not sauté the meat at the beginning.

- Nope.

- Which is standard operating procedure here at Milk Street.

For stews, we do not brown the meat first.

- Exactly, but we do have a trick to get that same kind of caramelization, that same browning.

So now that all the beef is coated, we can go ahead and also add in three bay leaves, as well as two teaspoons of marjoram.

And that's going to lend this fantastic herbaceousness to this dish.

So I'm just going to nestle those bay leaves and that marjoram into the sauce to ensure that that flavor really permeates the goulash.

But from there, that's all the work that we have to do on the stovetop.

So let's turn this heat off, and what we're going to do with this entire thing now is pop it in the oven.

The oven's been going at 325 degrees.

So we'll cook this with the cover on for two hours, and that's the good enough time to really help everything break down.

After that, I'll pop the lid off and allow that to cook in the oven again for an hour and a half.

By having the lid off, that exposes all of that meat to that hot air, and that's what's going to brown this down and really give it a deep flavor.

Let me pop this lid on, and I will be right back.

♪ ♪ Chris, our goulash has been cooking for three-and-a-half hours.

So, we pulled it out of the oven and we let this sit for about 15 minutes after giving it a stir, just to really help all those flavors marry in to one fantastic bite.

But before we eat it, we do want to give it a little bit of freshness.

Being that it's been cooking for so long, introducing a little bit of acid as well as some herbs will really lighten and brighten this dish.

We'll add in one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar.

And we'll give this a stir, and we'll also throw in a quarter-cup of finely chopped dill.

So why don't you throw that in there?

And the aroma of the dill just erupts out of the pan as soon as it hits that heat.

Oof, caraway... - As soon as you drive across the border into Austria, you smell dill.

- Oh, yeah?

- I mean, dill is everywhere.

- (laughs) Now that we have that all mixed in, we're just about ready to eat.

So, why don't you pile on some egg noodles for me?

Now, when you're serving this, be sure to take out the bay leaves, as well.

Just so that way, you don't bite into something really fibrous.

There we go, great.

And I'm going to top mine off with a little bit more dill.

I just can't get enough of that flavor.

- I'll just, you know, leave it plain.

- (laughs): It's plenty good on its own.

- Oh!

This tastes just like the real deal.

And it actually is the real deal.

I mean, caraway and dill are really, are the two signature flavors.

- But that mouthwateringly tender bite.

I just can't get enough of that.

- It is authentically excellent.

So for an Austrian beef stew with paprika and caraway, otherwise known as goulash-- that's a simpler way of saying it-- we started in Salzburg.

We've had this dish many times.

The signature parts of the dish are dill, caraway, and a really buttery, rich sauce, which is very different than the Hungarian version, which is more like a soup.

A couple of tricks we used is to not sauté the meat, put it in the oven for two hours, take the top off to finish, and that browns the meat very nicely.

And then finish off at the end with a little bit of vinegar and fresh dill, which really gives this a fresh taste.

So, Austrian beef stew with caraway and paprika.

Excellent, and I have to say, it is very authentic.

♪ ♪ One of my all-time favorite Austrian recipes is potato salad, Kartoffelsalat.

It's often served as part of a gemischter Salat, which is a mixed salad.

It's vinegary, right?

And the potatoes break down, so they sort of make their own sauce.

It's very different than the American potato salad.

So I think this is the best potato salad in the world.

- We're going to start with a pound of Yukon gold potatoes.

We like their flavor and texture for this.

So these have actually been peeled and sliced into quarter-inch-thick slices.

So let's go ahead and add these to our pot.

- That's a lot of potatoes for a little tiny pot.

- Yeah, it is.

And then to this, I'm going to add two cups of low-sodium chicken broth.

And I have two teaspoons of salt.

And we're going to just top that up with water, just enough to cover it.

- So the reason we're using a small pot and not much liquid is because you want all that starch from the potatoes to go into the liquid to help make the dressing.

- That's exactly right... - Don't you like when I tell you what you're doing?

- So we're going to boil these on medium-high.

We're going to cook it for eight minutes.

I've drained the potatoes, and we can see that they're done just right.

The edges are just starting to crumble, but the center is still firm.

So while they're still hot, we're going to season them with a tablespoon of cornichon brine, one tablespoon of red wine vinegar, and a half-teaspoon of black pepper.

When the potatoes are hot, they really absorb the flavor well, so we're going to give them a quick stir and let them sit and absorb.

Okay, so this is a half-cup of that starchy cooking liquid that we reserved.

I'm going to bring this up to a simmer.

And to flavor this, we're going to add a half-teaspoon of caraway seeds along with a half-cup of diced red onion.

Right, so this is simmering, and that means it's done.

Let's pour this over our potatoes.

So now that the hot liquid has been poured onto the potatoes, it sits for ten minutes.

It's going to get absorbed into the potatoes, which adds flavor, and it's going to start creating the base of the dressing, which is drawing the starch out of the potatoes.

And now we can make our dressing while this sits.

We're going to start with a quarter-cup of a neutral oil-- we use grape-seed.

In Austria, they don't use olive oil as much as we tend to do in the United States.

And then one tablespoon each of Dijon mustard... - It is kind of liberating to know there are people who don't use olive oil in their dressings.

It just makes me feel... Just relaxed, you know?

- (laughs) A tablespoon of red wine vinegar.

And then we're going to add a three-quarter-teaspoon of salt.

And a half-teaspoon of black pepper.

So it's a pretty simple, straightforward vinaigrette.

So we still have a few minutes for the potatoes to sit, about seven or eight minutes, and then we'll come back, add our dressing and the remaining ingredients, and finish up our salad.

- And I'll just pick at it while we're waiting-- mm.

- So, our potatoes have cooled and absorbed all that dressing.

Wonderful.

Let's finish this up.

We're going to add the vinaigrette that we made.

And we're going to finish this with quarter-cup of chopped cornichons, a half-cup of diced celery, and another Austrian star ingredient, a quarter-cup of dill.

- Which they put in absolutely everything.

- Everything.

(laughs) So one last stir to get that all nicely mixed up.

- You know, if you keep stirring that and not serving, we're going to... - (laughing) - We're going to be in trouble, I mean, you know.

- I want to make sure you get maximum flavor, Chris.

- Yeah, well, I can't get maximum flavor unless I eat it.

That's sort of important.

- (laughing) - It does look absolutely spectacular, by the way.

- You can really see the individual ingredients in this, and it's not all mashed together.

Enjoy.

- Mm.

This actually does taste like I'm in Salzburg.

It's exactly the right flavor.

- Wow!

- Mm.

Got the vinegar, the cornichon, it's got the dill, it's crunchy with the celery and the onion.

And the potatoes, they're not overcooked.

I mean, they're still, have some firmness to them.

- Mm-hmm.

- So if you like potato salad, you're going to love this Austrian potato salad or Kartoffelsalat.

The secret is not using too much water, so the potatoes leach some of that starch, and that water's used as part of the dressing.

And bright light flavors of dill, and, of course, the cornichon and the celery.

Pretty easy recipe.

- Mm-hmm.

- So, Austrian potato salad is our favorite potato salad here at Milk Street.

♪ ♪ If you go to Salzburg, many people stay at the Hotel Sacher, which is right on the river.

It's the classic kind of tourist place.

Very nice, but half a block away is my favorite spot, called the Café Bazar-- it's kind of hard to find.

And it's a classic Viennese- style sort of coffeehouse.

They have these fruit tortes, which are one-layers, and they have a Zwetschgen, or it's Pflaume, is the other way of saying "plum" in German, which we're going to make now.

And it's really a wonderful dessert, and it's something that's very traditional to Austria.

- Yeah, that's true, and oftentimes you'll find them with sort of a heavier version.

A yeasted, you know, more bread-like cake.

Sometimes it has rye flour.

We opted for a much more summery version, because that's when plums are in season here.

So we're going to start with a cup of all-purpose flour and half a cup of sugar, three-quarters of a teaspoon of baking powder, and a half-teaspoon of kosher salt.

And we're going to combine these together.

Just for a few seconds.

(mixer whirring) Now, we're using a reverse creaming method for this cake batter.

It gives us a little bit tighter crumb, a little bit denser cake, which is better to support all the fruit we're going to put on it.

So next, we're going to add eight tablespoons of salted butter.

This is at room temperature.

Again, on low speed.

♪ ♪ I'm adding them one at a time.

And we want to continue mixing until all the butter is incorporated.

It's going to look crumbly, and that takes about two to three minutes.

So this looks good, it looks like... You can see, all the flour has been coated by the butter.

There's no dry flour remaining.

So we're going to go ahead and add a few other ingredients we have.

We just have one egg plus one yolk and a teaspoon and a half of vanilla extract.

(mixer whirring) And then we're going to increase the speed to medium-high, and beat it for one minute.

(mixer speeds up) (mixer stops) Okay, this looks great, Chris.

It's nice and light and fluffy.

- Now, watch Erika, she's going to get every... - Every.

- ...little piece of batter off.

(laughing): Because you're, like... - This is how I was trained working in bakeries.

You don't waste anything.

Okay, so the batter's all set.

This is going to go into a springform, a nine-inch springform pan that has been greased with cooking spray and dusted really well with flour.

- Now, that doesn't look like a lot of batter.

- It's not a lot of batter, I mean, this cake really is probably 50% fruit, 50% batter.

And it's a very thick batter, as you can see, because it's going to have a lot of moisture added from our plums.

So, it does take a little work to get it into an even layer in the bottom of the pan.

I like to use a little offset spatula.

Again, you just want to get it all the way into the edges.

Doesn't have to be completely smooth.

It just, you want it fairly even.

- If I were making this at home right now... - Yes.

- I'd be going, like, "Is something wrong with the recipe?

They had the wrong amount of ingredients."

- (laughs): There's not enough cake!

- There's not enough cake, right.

- But it is a torte, and tortes are more, you know... - Right.

- Traditionally thinner, yeah.

I always think of them like a cross between a tart and a cake.

Okay, and so now we're ready to prepare the best part, the main ingredient-- our plums.

We fit as many plums on here as we could, and we found that a pound and a quarter of plums was... - That's a lot of plums.

- It is a lot of plums.

So, to prep them, you just want to cut them right along the seam around the pit.

And then you can just twist them.

- Now, what do you do if you can't get the pit out?

In some plums, it's very hard to get the pit out.

- You... - Do you cut around the pit?

- You can cut around it.

- Okay.

- But usually you can twist it like that.

I'm going to cut these into eighths, into, each half into four slices.

And they're about three-quarters of an inch thick.

- You do that very well.

- Yeah, thanks, lots of practice.

Okay.

And now we're going to arrange these on our batter.

We like to do two concentric circles, and because it's a lot of fruit, you may have to overlap them just a little bit.

- Now, if I was going to design a test for someone to work in my bakery, this... - Yeah, this would be it?

- You'd have to do the concentric circles without getting upset, losing your mind, throwing them.

- (laughing): I find it meditative.

- See, that's why you worked in a bakery.

- (laughing) - You would pass the test.

♪ ♪ - It's the best part.

Okay.

Let's see, I've got a few extras.

But I really like how this looks, so I think I might just leave them in the bowl.

And a lot of these recipes will actually put, like, a crumb topping on top.

We didn't really like that because we felt it just sort of masked the flavor of the fruit.

- Yeah, I don't like crumb toppings on things.

- Yeah, it wasn't really necessary here, but we did just put two tablespoons of sugar we sprinkled on top.

And this helps keep it moist while it's in the oven.

We, we're going to bake this at a 325-degree oven on the middle rack.

It bakes for between an hour and an hour and 15 minutes.

And the reason it takes so long is because you really want to give the batter time to bake all the way through.

So we're going to go ahead and bake up.

- Okay.

♪ ♪ - Okay, so this looks great, and this has been cooling for 30 minutes, and then I just removed the sides of the springform pan.

- That looks fabulous.

- (laughing) So, before we serve it, I'm just going to put a little bit of confectioner's sugar on top.

That's all this really needs.

I'm just going to dust this on top.

And you can really see how that cake indeed rose up over those plums, and the plum cooked down really nicely.

- You could work at Café Bazar.

- (exhales) - Not... - I'm working in the wrong place!

(laughing) - You're, once again... (both laughing) - I'm gonna give you a nice big piece this time.

- Yeah, I think that would be appropriate.

(utensil clatters) That is beautiful, I have to say.

- It is, it's beautiful.

The color of the plums really comes out, it's just...

It's a great way to showcase the fruit.

- Mm.

Boy, is that good.

- Mm.

- Say, this is better than the one I had there.

- Really?

- This is so fresh.

And it's more tender.

- Mm-hmm.

- Theirs is a little heartier.

You know?

- Mm-hmm.

Yeah, we definitely weren't shy on the butter.

- But this is basically a dump-and-stir kind of cake.

- Yeah, it really is.

- And you throw it in a springform pan and, yeah.

- Yeah, it's really easy.

- So straight from Salzburg, Zwetschgenkuche, which simply means plum cake.

Very simple to make in a springform pan.

Basically a dump-and-stir, reverse creaming, cut up some plums, put it on top, and throw it into an oven for well over an hour.

Because the plums have a lot of juice and it takes time, for that batter to set up.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

♪ ♪ All episodes and recipes from this season of Milk Street Television are available for free at our website, MilkStreetTV.com.

Please access our content, including our step-by-step recipe videos, from your smartphone, your tablet, or your computer.

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The Milk Street cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street cookbook for $23.95, 40% less than the cover price, and receive a Milk Street tote with your order at no additional charge.

Call 855-MILK-177, or order online.

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For more information on our extensive collection of kitchen products, we're on the web at fergusonshowrooms.com.

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Our U.S.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you.

To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv.

- Since 1899, my family has shared our passion for everything that goes into our Mutti 100% Italian tomatoes.

Only tomatoes.

Only Mutti.

- Designed by cooks for cooks for over 100 years.

Cookware collection by Regal Ware.

Handcrafted in Wisconsin.

- The AccuSharp knife and tool sharpener, designed to safely sharpen knives in seconds.

AccuSharp: Keep your edge.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪