Claire Culleton

Links

• One of my favorite things: The Visual Thesaurus, a reference for people who think visually.
• Some of my books: http://www.palgrave-usa.com/Search/QuickSearchResults.aspx?searchby=a&searchfor=Culleton, or search my name on Amazon.com or at Google.

An admittedly corny picture of me on Bloomsday 2006, in Hungary pretending to be absorbed in a Hungarian translation of Joyce’s Dubliners (Dublini), which I found minutes earlier in a used book store…except of course I don’t read Hungarian.  But it was fun to stand next to a statue of Joyce and ignore him.

A Recipe

In the summer of 2006 I went to Budapest, Hungary, for an international James Joyce conference and aside from seeing old friends, hearing the latest scholarship on Joyce, and having the knots beat out of me at the Gellért Thermal Baths by a lusty masseuse, my friend Barbara Laman taught me how to make authentic Hungarian Goulash.  I’ve been making it regularly ever since.  Here’s the recipe. It can’t be simpler.

HUNGARIAN GOULASH

Ingredients:

3 T. or so of olive oil

1 or 2 pats of butter

a small pinch of caraway seeds

2-3 large onions, chopped (or 1-2 huge Vidalia onions, chopped)

2-3 carrots

2-3 ribs of celery

1/4 c. or so of hot paprika (get the good stuff, the stuff in a can from the Szeged region of Hungary. And paprika goes bad, so don't use an old can: invest in a fresh.)

2 ½-3 lbs. of chuck roast that you’ve cubed and lightly trimmed yourself.  Cut the meat into cubes about half the size of ABC blocks but don’t trim off too much of the fat.  It will melt off, don’t worry, but you need the fat on the meat to make the goulash melt in your mouth.  The pre-packaged “for stew” meat the stores sell already cubed and trimmed is too tough.  Season the cubed meat with salt and freshly ground black pepper. 

Cooking directions:

Sauté onions in olive oil and butter for some 7-10 mins., until translucent.  Add a pinch of caraway seeds and stir.  Add the paprika, stir, and let the paprika cook into the onions for about a minute or so.  Stir.  Just to add flavor, add a carrot that’s been rough-cut into three or four sections, and two celery sprigs or ribs with their leaves still on.  Stir, and cook for about two minutes. 

Next, add the cubed meat, stir well—and here’s the easy part—lower the flame to a SIMMER, put the lid on your pot, and walk away.  Juice from the onions, from the celery, from the fat in the meat, and from the condensation in the pot will provide all the liquid you need to cook the meat.  Keep your eye on it, though, and stir generously every 10-15 minutes or so.  If you feel compelled to add about ¼ c. of water before you walk away from the pot, go ahead.  I was skeptical, too, in the beginning.  (That’s cute.  That’s what makes you so endearing.)

Let this simmer on the stove over a very low flame for about two hours.  Taste it occasionally and add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.  After two hours, if you’d like, you can add 1-2 potatoes cut into chunks, two sliced carrots, a sliced rib of celery, and a handful of frozen sweet peas.  In about 20 minutes, your Hungarian Goulash will be ready to serve over noodles, over spaetzel, or by its own bad self.  Some people like a dollop of sour cream served with each bowl.  My friend Barbara told me that if you make this “right,” you won’t see any onions in the goulash when it’s done (they’ll melt, vaporize, whatever).  That’s only happened for me twice.  Oh well. 

Some Publications

• Rethinking Joyce’s “Dubliners.” Eds. Claire A. Culleton and Ellen Scheible. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, Feb. 2017.
• “Competing Concepts of Culture: Irish Art at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games.” Estudios Irlandeses: Journal of Irish Studies, 9 (2014): 24-34.
• “Strick’s Ulysses and War: Why We Read Joyce in the 21st Century.” Joyce Studies in Italy, Vol. 13 (Fall 2012): 37-48.
• "From History to Humanity: Introduction." Democratic Narrative, History, and Memory. Ed. Carole Barbato and Laura Davis.  Kent: Kent State University Press, 2012: 3-7. 
• “Introduction.”  With Maria McGarrity.  Irish Modernism and the Global Primitive.  Eds. Maria McGarrity and Claire Culleton.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009: 1-16.
• “The Gaelic Athletic Association, Joyce, and the Primitive Body.”  Irish Modernism and the Global Primitive.  Eds. Maria McGarrity and Claire Culleton.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009: 215-34.
• “Introduction: Silence, Acquiescence, and Dread.”  With Karen Leick.  Modernism on File: Modern Writers, Artists, and the FBI, 1920-1950.  Eds. Claire Culleton and Karen Leick.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008: 1-19.
• “Extorting Henry Holt & Co.: J. Edgar Hoover and the Publishing Industry.”  Modernism on File: Modern Writers, Artists, and the FBI, 1920-1950. Eds. Claire Culleton and Karen Leick.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008: 237-52.
• Working-Class Culture, Women, and Britain, 1914-1921. New York: St. Martin's Press, Jan. 2000; London: Macmillan Press, Ltd., 2000.
• Names and Naming in Joyce. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, Oct. 1994.