Dad Food : When Dad Was in the Kitchen : Recipe From Al’s Cafe

My father began working as a professional chef in 1929. He owned diners, mostly, so the menu items, spelled out in a hit-or-miss fashion on the menu board, could include anything anybody might ask for in New York: Hungarian goulash, fish cakes and spaghetti, Virginia ham with raisin sauce, New York clam chowder, kishkes (stuffed intestines), Jewish beef brisket, corned beef and cabbage, roast beef and gravy and the kind of corn muffins and apple turnovers found only in New York.

The New York corn muffins were crumbly, with huge golden caps that would be lopped off, smeared with soft, sweet butter and dipped in coffee. The turnovers had a crust whose color and high-gloss sheen reminded me of maple furniture.

My problem is that I never saw my father cook. He never cooked at home, not ever, nor would he even attempt a visit to my mother’s kitchen once he settled at the oak dining table with his well-worn pipe, beloved New York Daily News, and Gabriel Heatter blaring the evening news on the radio. The kitchen was my mother’s exclusive domain, never to be trespassed even by her own daughters, who knew nothing about cooking or cleaning until they themselves married.

My father started his day at dawn, cooking huge quantities of food in caldrons that required the brute force of his powerful arms and robust frame. The only time my sister and I visited the restaurant was occasionally after school to “eat the profits,” as many of my father’s customers teased.

It was true. We ate the profits with my father’s blessing, as did most of his customers, whose plates were piled higher with superb food than good business sense allowed. My father believed in maximizing satisfaction, not profits, so that the quality of his food and the freshness of his ingredients were of the sort usually reserved for swanky restaurants, not modest cafes. He didn’t care. The money didn’t mean that much to him.

I do remember seeing my father prepare the dough for apple turnovers--once. He was a study in white--white hair; white face; white uniform; white cap; white floury hands patting a downy mass of white dough while a cylinder of white ash dangled precariously from the cigarette stuck in the corner of his lips. Ashes falling upon the dough were intercepted in mid-air by a floury hand.

I loved my father’s cooking, even the spaghetti, which my mother secretly thought was too watery. I loved the fresh ham, sliced expertly in rapid-fire strokes with a long, flat blade and served in a towering sandwich with mustard. I loved the red clam chowder fragrant with the heady aroma of thyme.

Perhaps most of all I loved his Hungarian goulash, which was cooked to that burnt umber hue found in Rembrandt paintings and tinged with Hungarian paprika and onions, which provide the velvety texture and proper taste. “Onions make the goulash,” my father once said. It was a dish he must have learned during his early days as a cook at a Jewish deli somewhere on the Lower East Side and then perfected through the years, until finally, at Al’s Cafe on Perry Street in Greenwich Village, he served the perfect goulash.

AL’S HUNGARIAN GOULASH

2 1/2 pounds boneless chuck beef, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces

1 bay leaf, crumbled

5 onions, sliced

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tablespoons Hungarian-style sweet paprika

1 teaspoon salt

4 tomatoes, coarsely chopped

Broth or water

Hot cooked egg noodles, optional

Combine beef, bay leaf, onions, garlic, paprika and salt in large saucepan. Add tomatoes. Cover and simmer over very low heat 2 to 2 1/2 hours or until meat falls apart when tested with fork, adding only enough water as needed to develop velvety texture of sauce. Serve over noodles. Makes 6 servings.