The Goulash

Gerda kept me out of the kitchen for most of our life together, that's an exaggeration but not much of one, she considered cooking as hers and I respected that and was honestly glad of it. In October 2020, so half a year before she died, though we didn't know that then, she called me into the kitchen one evening and said: come, I'll show you the goulash. I thought it was a whim, she had those sometimes, and I stood beside her and watched. She explained what she was doing, frying the onions very slowly, adding the paprika only when the fat was hot enough, how long the meat needs and why you shouldn't stir it in between, and I nodded but wasn't really paying attention because the whole thing seemed strange to me.

The recipe is now in her handwriting on a piece of paper tucked into the back of the old cookbook, she must have written it at some point, perhaps that evening, perhaps earlier. I've made the goulash twice since then, once it turned out quite well and once it didn't, and I have no idea why the difference, since I used the same piece of paper both times. She would have known. She would have seen at a glance what was wrong. There are things you can't write down, and I only understand that now.

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