>.. a "Pretend" hungarian goulash my mom made when we were kids. It was mostly just thrown together ingredients (hamburger, noodles, bay leaves, onion, tomatoes, corn, celery, and then sauce: soy sauce or worcestershire sauce or garlic and paprika with thick bread and butter).

Speaking of Hungarian dishes, 15 years ago a regular Hungarian restaurant would have a Gordon Blue on the menu. Which is probably how Cordon Bleu was misspelled in the cooks' textbooks.

However, apart from goulashes and paprikashes (the latter being cooked together with potatoes), there's one that isn't that easy to come by, the pörkölt (literally: the simmered). It takes a few hours to make. It's mostly beef knuckles, but the recipe calls for a few other kinds of meat, which simmer in their own water for a couple of hours, with lots of onion, red (hot or not) peppers etc, and then potatoes or pasta being thrown in (or cooked separately) during the last half an hour.

And then there's a version of it cooked with pike instead of beef.