About a week ago someone on Twitter posted an old photo of Ivana Trump, ex-daughter-in-law of successful real-estate developer Fred Trump. She was wearing a black dress with what appeared to be a golden belt with an actual diamond attached to it. Surrounded by golden plates and crystal candlesticks, she loomed over a huge golden basket of meat. A gilt framed painting hung in the background above a clock that looked like it belonged on a royal mantlepiece in tsarist Russia. She was grinning richly, fork in hand, looking directly into the camera as if saying “Welcome to Mar-a-Lago, make yourself at home on our million dollar sofas and be sure to get your earplugs in before my husband joins us.”
To those of you who are already dismissing the vitriol and snark in this post as evidence of “jealousy” I say: Well, obviously! I am so jealous I could lie down in the grass and blend in without issue. Some of you may be better liars people than me and would turn the other cheek but I cannot. Vitriol and snark are all I’ve got to navigate my jealousy at not having lace napkins and silver side plates like Ivana’s.
Actually, I’m being insincere. By 1992, Ivana was divorced due to “cruel and inhuman treatment by Mr. Trump” so the photo wasn’t actually taken in Mar-a-Lago, but rather in the dining room of her own Connecticut mansion. By that time, Ivana was developing her own business ventures mainly based around fashion. Efforts to build successful property developments largely failed, but it didn’t stop her from embarking on other ideas – she had stints on TV and, speaking on The First Wives Club, coined the striking phrase: “Don’t get mad – get everything.” She may have been speaking from experience; reports of the divorce settlement are vague – she had to sign a non-disclosure agreement as part of the agreement – but it seems that Ivana received an amount somewhere around the $25million mark when she and Donald split up.
The picture that had piqued my curiosity was from a one-off cookbook by Robin Leach called The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Cookbook, which documented what the great, good and just plain wealthy of the 90’s fed to their dinner guests. As well as individual interviews, exclusive menus were published too, such as from the Cannes film festival (Foie Gras, Fish, Beef, Celeriac and Artichoke, Chocolate Cake), and a New Orleans gala menu welcoming their Royal Bigots Prince and Princess Michael of Kent to Mardi Gras celebrations (Quail, Pasta, “Chocolate Breathless”, Pralines, Sugar Paste Harlequin Masks.)
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
Somewhat aptly, by the time the book was published, Robin Leach was himself something of a celebrity, having hosted the TV show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous since 1984. At times, the cookbook runs the risk of reading as a list of slightly luvvie anecdotes about the time its author met so-and-so actor, or dined with royalty. But I can’t be too harsh here; I’d absolutely do the same and, given how well connected Leach was, it’s actually quite restrained.
In creating ‘The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Cookbook’ we discovered that the rich and famous are no different from the rest of us when it comes to cooking and entertaining… As the social “season” approaches, hard working hostesses are never found on a tennis court or yacht’s bow.
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Cookbook, Robin Leach.
Was it being ironic? I couldn’t work out if it was me or the celebs who were being mocked here; certainly I’ve never set foot on a yacht’s bow but it’s not because I’m too busy… (I did once find myself on a tennis court but it was purely accidental and I left as soon as I realised I was expected to actually run after the ball.)
Anyway, back to “Ivana’s” goulash.
Ivana began her chapter by describing how her chef created wonderful meals for special occasions, specifically winter get-togethers for her girlfriends. Sixty of them. They flew in from “London, Chicago, Paris” for a “special menu that was very low in calories but also festive – the perfect combination for a ladies’ luncheon…” A low calorie meal to celebrate Christmas with sixty of my nearest and dearest: exactly what I’d want after a 12 hour plane journey…
In another depressingly telling comment about the pressures to be a rich and famous woman, Czech-born Ivana mentioned that she found Czech food “fattening” and “terrible for the waistline”, despite clearly wishing she could eat more of it; she lists her favourite foods with increasing gusto, describing the dishes as “fantastic” and saying she was “in love with the cuisine.”
It all sounded delicious and, as a non-celeb who’s only ever been papped when driving too fast, I was looking forward to seeing how her fattening, indulgent goulash would turn out. Though the book called it “her” goulash, in reality it was actually Ivana’s unnamed chef’s goulash – she just got to have her photo taken with it.
Traditional goulash recipes are more of broths, rather than stews like Ivana’s version below. They can range from the incredibly simple to the more complex, and the rich flavours are generally achieved by cooking the ingredients on low, slow heat to release the full range of flavours over a long period of time. Many of them contain chunks of starchy veg as well, to add texture and bulk.
Beef Goulash for two, not sixty.
Since I wasn’t cooking for sixty of my closest girlfriends but only my family, I halved the recipe. After doing an obligatory admire of photos of Ivana posing by enormous mirrors, silk and damask curtains, and gold leaf covered servants, I began.
The first thing to do was melt a tablespoon of butter with a tablespoon of olive oil in a casserole dish. Once this was done, I added diced beef shin, dusted in flour and paprika, to the fat and sautéed.
The next step was to add one medium diced onion and a clove of crushed garlic and cook until they became translucent. Ivana’s recipe said this would take two minutes. Two minutes. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the first in a series of misleading statements made throughout the recipe. Clearly, Trumpian vagueries began well before 2016.
After the onions had gone see-through – about 15 minutes – I added a cup of water, followed by a sprinkle of marjoram, salt and pepper, and then placed it in the oven to cook for about an hour. I found this surprising; other recipes for beef goulash seemed to require upwards of two and a half hours to cook. Some Hungarian recipes also included ingredients like wine or rich beef stock, whereas Ivana’s was staunch in its dedication to water and…nothing. True, original goulashes used only water, but for a recipe described as “fattening” in a cookbook called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, I began to wonder whether Ivana’s definition of what was and wasn’t “fattening” was the same as mine.
After an hour’s cooking I added a skinned, chopped tomato and half a diced green pepper. Then, with the goulash coming to an end of its cooking time (I added an extra half an hour in the end) I boiled some egg noodles and drizzled them with a tablespoon of melted butter before serving on the fanciest plate I could find, à la Trump.
My husband was so excited when he saw me setting the table. Champagne? At lunchtime? Who did I think I was – Melania Trump?
The goulash looked and smelled good, but when I tasted it, I was a bit underwhelmed. There was nothing unpleasant about it at all, but it wasn’t as indulgent as I’d been expecting, given who its author was.
The beef was slightly chewy. Not inedible, not unpleasant, but hardly the melt in your mouth texture I’d expect – and it certainly didn’t scream “luxury” at me. There was a pleasant sweet heat from the paprika, but it was a background flavour; Ivana had specified no more than 3 teaspoons of the stuff.
The noodles were buttery but that was about all you could say for them. They swam, slightly, in the goulash liquid which was a fairly insipid mixture of water and fat. The diced pepper was still a little crunchy and together with the tomato lent a negligibly bland veggie element.
All in all, it was fine – and if a professional chef had prepared this it would probably have been great. The trouble was that the book wasn’t about professional chefs; it was about ordinary people copying professional chefs, with instructions that maybe weren’t as accurate as they could have been – with disappointing results.
As mentioned, some more traditional goulashes use only water and their main flavour comes from the abundance of paprika, slowly released beef fat and gently sweated onion. Ivana’s recipe wasn’t totally inauthentic to only use water – but it fell down because it tried to do everything too quickly – translucent onions in 2 minutes, tender beef shin in 1 hour?! I wondered why she considered this relatively plain version such a “fantastic” treat when there were far better ones out there.
Perhaps it was because for Ivana, this was fantastic? How many times did she mention her weight or calories in the first few paragraphs of her introduction? I counted no fewer than three separate references. She must have been hungry most of the time. Buttered noodles and beef must have seemed desperately indulgent to someone who was constantly watching what they ate. And if a chef always prepared it for her (as she admits), she may not have realised how much time and effort it genuinely took to make a good goulash before she sold her version to Robin Leach.
Perhaps, in the end, I just made it incorrectly, or maybe her instruction to “season the stew with salt” was actually rich-person code for “add a whopping great quantity of cream and sauvignon”.
Whatever her reason for classing this as a fattening “favourite” – it was a perfectly adequate Monday lunch. Sure, we were both a bit “meh” by the end of it, but it did the trick and we couldn’t complain about not being full. In fact, I was even left with enough stamina to begin planning my next experiment – a banquet to feed 100 people on no more than 10 calories per person.
E x
Beef Goulash
450g diced beef shin
1 tablespoon plain flour
1-3 teaspoons of paprika (sweet Hungarian if you can get it)
2 tablespoons of butter
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
1 medium onion
1 small garlic clove
Pinch of marjoram
Salt
1/2 green pepper, diced
1 diced tomato, peeled and de-seeded
400g egg noodles
- Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C.
- Dust the beef with the flour and paprika.
- In a pan, melt half of the butter with the oil in an oven proof casserole dish.
- Add the beef and sauteé until browned.
- Reduce the heat and add the diced onion and garlic and cook until translucent.
- Add enough water to cover the beef and add a pinch of marjoram and salt.
- Cook for 1 hour, replacing water if needed.
- After an hour, add the tomato and pepper and cook for a further 30 minutes.
- Cook the egg noodles in salted water according to the instructions on the packet.
- Drain the noodles and melt the remaining butter over them.
- Pour the goulash over the noodles and serve.