Insalata germanica

As a follow-up to the Oktoberfest post, I would like to highlight a few more german dishes that were featured at the fest (as sides to the staple dishes), but never make it into the major news - that has to end.


Kartoffelsalat Bacon pieces and onions are fried to golden/crispiness. Add some plain vinegar, and, after this does some sizzling action, also beef stock, and maybe some fresh parsley - this whole happiness is poured over boiled and cooled down, sliced potatoes. Mix well and store cool for a couple of hours or over night.
The dressing will soak in to the potatoes and will add to the potato salad the appeal of fried potatoes with bacon - together this is a refreshing, hearty dish that can be a centerpiece to remember.
At the recent Oktoberfest, people were raving about this salad made by the hosts after their either bavarian and saxonian recipes- when I made it in the past, especially americans were really intrigued by it. Some, because it reminded them on what their german grandmother used to make, others simply because. Not surprising to me :-)


Bohnensalat mit Gurke salad from steamed green beans, with cucumber slices and white onions - very lightly acidic with plain vinegar. The beans typically need a little more salt than other salads, in my experience. Actually, I have never had this with cucumbers in it and found it to be a really nice summery take on the very common german green bean salad.


Gurkensalat Cucumbers are sliced thin and mixed with a dressing made from heavy cream, a pinch of salt, maybe a little white pepper, where I grew up also lots of dill, and white, plain vinegar. Be courageous with the vinegar, the acid helps the cucumber taste standing out and makes this not just a side dish, but elevates it to a standalone that is great, cool and fresh on a hot summer night.

This salad, as the above as well, improves immensely from sitting for a couple of hours - the vinegar gets to better extract all the goodies from the other ingredients, the dill distributes its aromas, and the cucumbers have more time to penetrate the cream with their flavor. It's so good..

Actually, with all these salads, acidity is a really important tool - the potato salad, for example, changes attitude entirely when you give it some sour edge, it gets so much more than just cold fried potatoes with some bacon on them..

Strudel & Streusel

What would a real german party be, after all the serious staple foods, piggly, salads and the such, without ending on a sweet note? It would simply not be.

Here is the outline of the dessert list of the recent Oktoberfest that I was lucky to be invited to:

- Kirschstreuselkuchen
- Apfelstrudel
- Bundtkuchen

Lets do a little language lesson:
Streusel [ˈʃtrɔyzl̩] (pronounciation) can be translated as granules or crumbles. You can see the crumbles on the pictured pie, that actually looks very similar to the Kirschstreuselkuchen at the Oktoberfest.


Streusel recipe
Streusel are made like this: use
- 150 g butter
- 150g sugar
- 200 g flour
Mix it all together with the butter being somewhat warm but not molten, until the mix turns crumbly. You can mix it with your hands or longer in the food processor to make thicker Streusel.
Sprinkle them on top of your cake or pie before baking and they will be a great crunchy, yummy topping that is often more enticing than the cake itself... as a kid I was often stealing the Streusel from the simple Streuselkuchen, because they were the best part of the whole thing..

Strudel [ˈʃtru:dl̩] (pronounciation), can be translated as vortex or swirl, or maelstrom. Maybe you can see how the dough & filling swirl inside this beauty?


Strudel is a pretty complicated and labour-intense pie; here you can find a very detailed and pictured description about that process. I tried it myself once, the Topfenstrudel variety (more commonly known is Apfelstrudel), and had in the end a big clump of dough next to a big clump of filling in the oven. It tasted amazing, though..


Bundtkuchen - this cake is named after its shape, and the pan it is made in, the Bundt-pan (see a picture of the cake below). It is often also called Guglhupf, which is not entirely correct - the Guglhupf pan results in a slightly different looking cake, as you can see on the right. It also is typically made with a yeast dough, which, to my knowledge is not true for Bundtcake.


The cake at the Oktoberfest was more in a Bundtcake shape, and was actually a chocolate cake based on a "Ruehrteig" (german for stirred dough).

Ruehrteig recipe
Mix
- 300g flour,
- 300g molten butter,
- 300g sugar,
- 300g eggs (about 5-6 eggs).
together to a smooth dough (molten butter comes last). You will notice that at first it is very fluid, but gets thicker with time. You don't want to stir it too long or it will turn greyish and a little too tough.
Add
- 50-100g cocoa powder
to the dough, maybe add some chocolate chips. Essentially, just get the taste of the dough right to your preference - some like more cocoa (me!), some less.
Pour this dough into whichever shape pan you prefer, and bake it for about 40 minutes at 425 deg F (about 220 deg C).



This base dough is very versatile, you can put anything in it. For example, replace a third of the flour with roasted ground hazelnuts, and add a little bit of rum in the end.
Or mix in pieces of 1-2 cubed apples and a cup of raisins, and a teaspoon of cinnamon in the final dough, and batter the pan with sliced almonds.
Or mix half of the dough with cocoa powder, pour the white dough into your baking pan, pour the chocolate dough on top, and swirl the two doughs into another using a fork - there's your classical marble cake.

The possibilities are endless.

Brezeln

Depending on which kind of meat is available, you can find Kloesse on your Oktoberfest menu, or Knoedel, dumplings made either from potatoes or bread. A real staple food of Oktoberfest, unthinkable of not being present, and also commonly served in beer gardens all over Germany, however, are Brezeln, or, in bavaria, "Brezen", specifically Laugenbrezeln.

These on the picture were actually made by me and found lots of old and new friends at the Oktoberfest. They are based on a recipe from a book ( "Das Kochbuch aus dem Saarland") I keep referring to a lot - here is how they are made:

make a yeast dough from 500 g flour, 40 g yeast (or 1 pack of dry yeast), 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1/8 l milk, 2 eggs, a pinch of salt, 125 g butter (unsalted, please).
Let the dough rise and be happy, and then take little pieces, roll them into long finger-thick snakes and tie them into the Brezel-shape.
Let them sit again to rise a little and prepare the 'Lauge' that gives the Laugen-Brezel its name & special flavor: boil 1l water with 100g baking soda. When the water is clear, let it be simmering or just lightly boiling. Carefully slide the brezeln individually into the water (they sometimes like to unwind if you're not careful enough..), let them float in the water for about 30 seconds.
Take them out, put them on a baking sheet, let them cool down a little, brush with egg yolk (I mix it with a little water to make it easier to brush on), sprinkle coarse sea salt on, and bake at 220 deg C (425 deg F) about 10-20 minutes. Check back early to see how brown they look - when they look great, they taste great - eat them as fresh as possible, still warm they are really addictive.

Sauerkraut

THE one major veggie item on the Oktoberfest menu has to be Sauerkraut!
Do I need to comment on this? Maybe a little - there are big differences in how much Sauerkraut one eats, and how it is prepared, across Germany. Actually, germans do not eat it a whole lot to begin with. A few times in the winter, and that's it. I've never seen Sauerkraut being eaten in spring or summer until I came to the US, and never ever on a sausage.

Making it involves frying bacon, and adding the Kraut, adding spices (cloves, juniper berries, bay leaves, pepper, salt), and, according to one's preference, mellowing agents to reduce the acidity of the Sauerkraut. This almost always is butter, and can be, in addition, pieces of apple. Some people throw uncountable numbers of butter sticks into the pot (after it is cooked well and almost ready, the butter should not be heated up too high), others just add a little spoonful, almost as a spice. This choice also instantly changes the way this dish behaves as either a side or center of the meal.

If you are into do-it yourself the whole way, here's a link to make Sauerkraut yourself. It is very healthy - I'm not sure if I would trust it for dealing with birdflu though as that site claims...

Rostwurst failure

I failed. Miserably. There was Bratwurst, and I did not even try it!
Yes, shame on me. But, honestly, I wasn't in the mood. The Nashville-Oktoberfest Bratwurst got many good reviews, though, and looked alright, and can be bought at Publix, so I heard. Go, try it.

Anyhow, in the context of german food, I need a different thing than what you can get at Publix - here's my Bratwurst concept:

You go to a little takeaway. A very heavy elderly lady with bleached curly hair that appears a little on the greasy side after a day of hanging out in that little fryer-world, in a white work-dress, almost like a labcoat, grabs a couple of those long, slender sausages, clear casing, filled with white, finely ground meat, with very small speckles from parsley. She throws them on the grill, rolls a few previously started ones around to get nicely brown outside. She takes a white wheat bun, soft inside, with a lightly crunchy crust, that makes a crackling sound as she cuts it half open with that huge knife, picks one of those beautifully browned, partly broken up sausages for me, and shoves it into the bun, so sausage looks out on both ends. She hands it to me, I use the mustard-push-device to cover the sausage along its whole length - there it is. Not even just Bratwurst. It is Rostwurst.

So, yes, I haven't had Bratwurst at the Oktoberfest. Don't blame me, I'm spoiled. :)

Kraut-Pork-Brezen-Beer

Let's continue with the Oktoberfest menu before Oktober is over...
What should such a menu feature? Sauerkraut, pork, Brezeln, Beer should be the basics, and that's what we'll deal with here:

The Oktoberfest staples


****

THE one major veggie item on the Oktoberfest menu has to be Sauerkraut!
Do I need to comment on this? Maybe a little - there are big differences in how much Sauerkraut one eats, and how it is prepared, across Germany. Actually, germans do not eat it a whole lot to begin with. A few times in the winter, and that's it. I've never seen Sauerkraut being eaten in spring or summer until I came to the US, and never ever on a sausage.

Making it involves frying bacon, and adding the Kraut, adding spices (cloves, juniper berries, bay leaves, pepper, salt), and, according to one's preference, mellowing agents to reduce the acidity of the Sauerkraut. This almost always is butter, and can be in addition pieces of apple. Some people throw uncountable numbers of butter sticks into the pot (after it is cooked well and almost ready, the butter should not be heated up too high), others just add a little spoonful, almost as a spice. This choice also instantly changes the way this dish behaves as either a side or center of the meal.

If you are into do-it yourself the whole way, here's a link to make Sauerkraut yourself. It is very healthy - I'm not sure if I would trust it for dealing with birdflu though as that site claims...


***

Depending on which kind of meat is available, you can find Kloesse on your Oktoberfest menu, or Knoedel, dumplings made either from potatoes or bread. A real staple food of Oktoberfest, unthinkable of not being present, and also commonly served in beer gardens all over Germany, however, are Brezeln, or, in bavaria, "Brezen", specifically Laugenbrezeln.

These on the picture were actually made by me and found lots of old and new friends at the Oktoberfest. They are based on a recipe from a book ( "Das Kochbuch aus dem Saarland") I keep referring to a lot - here is how they are made:

make a yeast dough from 500 g flour, 40 g yeast (or 1 pack of dry yeast), 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1/8 l milk, 2 eggs, a pinch of salt, 125 g butter (unsalted, please).
Let the dough rise and be happy, and then take little pieces, roll them into long finger-thick snakes and tie them into the Brezel-shape.
Let them sit again to rise a little and prepare the 'Lauge' that gives the Laugen-Brezel its name & special flavor: boil 1l water with 100g baking soda. When the water is clear, let it be simmering or just lightly boiling. Carefully slide the brezeln individually into the water (they sometimes like to unwind if you're not careful enough..), let them float in the water for about 30 seconds.
Take them out, put them on a baking sheet, let them cool down a little, brush with egg yolk (I mix it with a little water to make it easier to brush on), sprinkle coarse sea salt on, and bake at 220 deg C (425 deg F) about 10-20 minutes. Check back early to see how brown they look - when they look great, they taste great - eat them as fresh as possible, still warm they are really addictive.


***

I failed. Miserably. There was Bratwurst, and I did not even try it!
Yes, shame on me. But, honestly, I wasn't in the mood. The Nashville-Oktoberfest Bratwurst got many good reviews, though, and looked alright, and can be bought at Publix, so I heard. Go, try it.

Anyhow, in the context of german food, I need a different thing than what you can get at Publix - here's my Bratwurst concept:

You go to a little takeaway. A very heavy elderly lady with bleached curly hair that appears a little on the greasy side after a day of hanging out in that little fryer-world, in a white work-dress, almost like a labcoat, grabs a couple of those long, slender sausages, clear casing, filled with white, finely ground meat, with very small speckles from parsley. She throws them on the grill, rolls a few previously started ones around to get nicely brown outside. She takes a white wheat bun, soft inside, with a lightly crunchy crust, that makes a crackling sound as she cuts it half open with that huge knife, picks one of those beautifully browned, partly broken up sausages for me, and shoves it into the bun, so sausage looks out on both ends. She hands it to me, I use the mustard-push-device to cover the sausage along its whole length - there it is. Not even just Bratwurst. It is Rostwurst.

So, yes, I haven't had Bratwurst at the Oktoberfest. Don't blame me, I'm spoiled. :)


***

Beer - beer? Yes, well.. I'm not big on bavarian Weissbier. Sorry. The Oktoberfest in Nashville actually did not feature that either - there was some good stuff from the local Blackstone brewery, something a little on the malty side, I forgot which one.. Nashville is actually a really nice city for beer drinkers - there are several small breweries, each with distinct specialties that one can get seriously used to. If you get the chance, get a sampling set and an appetizing cheese plate & roasted nuts at hidden special treat Yazoo, then go to Big River on Broadway, have a heavy southern dinner, like Magnolia ribs with your magnolia brown ale, watch cowboy hats in horse carts passing by and listen to the distant noise of the downtown music scene, then move up-town to Boscos on 21st for another sample set & apple crisp for dessert...
and if you don't have enough yet, join me at 12th South Taproom to find more beers to select from then you can count at that point..

Savoy/Savoir vivre

Some things are too good not to be shared..

I love Wirsing, which would be "Savoy Cabbage" in the US. Great texture, great flavour, that is not as intensely cabbagey as some other veggies out there and more nut-tasting.
It can easily stand out with fried bacon & onion, be entirely happy in a stew with grapes and pears to accompany a piece of pork loin, and be a wonderful casing for mushroom-dumplings..

Another great way to deal with this cabbage is to blanch the leaves, fill them with ground hazelnuts and Gruyère pieces, roll the leaves individually up and lay them out next to each other in a baking pan, make a nice, fresh, savory tomatosauce, pour it over the cabbage rolls & bake this whole thing for about 20 minutes at estimated 425 deg F. This gives a really nice, late summer, early fall appetizer, that brings out the best in savoy cabbage.

I just recreated this dish, much simpler, and almost as amazing: fry half a chopped red onion in a little bit olive oil, and add early on ground hazelnuts; let them roast and fry a little, then add a third chopped savoy cabbage, and two tomatoes in big pieces. Add salt and pepper, a little water, and put a lid on for about 10 minutes. Lower the heat a little to let the vegetable steam lightly. Check back early to make sure that the cabbage retains some crispiness and keeps the nice color.
I just ate three plates of this (the last is on the photo), after grating a special cheese over the steaming hazelnut-veggie: Kaltbach, from Switzerland, lets Gruyère mature in a sandstone cave close to Lucerne for an extended period to a creamy flavorful nuttiness.
The cheese makes the savoy cabbage promote its own nut-aspects, and so do the roasted hazelnuts. The onion supports the savoriness of the whole dish, and the tomatoes bring in the acidity of the late summer.

That is Savoy cabbage style savoir vivre.

Best Oktoberfest in town

Last saturday was Oktoberfest. In Nashville. No, not in Germantown, I had that pleasure once and found it, speaking from a culturally insulted point-of-view, rather dreadful.. well, maybe not that bad, but I was far from impressed and far from entertained, let's leave it at that.
But this one!!
That was real.

Oktoberfest as it is known in the USA, is not celebrated all over Germany, but is very specifically a bavarian festival, based on bavarian beer, food, culture and traditions. So, to have the real deal, it helps a whole lot to have real Bavarians there to bring in all these elements.

This Oktoberfest's hosts are a wonderful couple, she originally from Leipzig, he from Munich - she wearing a real Dirndl and looking pretty like the Okotober-Queen in it, and him in real Lederhosen, with a traditional Bierseidel (a ceramic beer mug with a tin lid), with visiting family, parents and kids and cousin, from Germany, all wearing traditional bavarian clothing.

Everything was right (albeit in a funny-silly party setting): the people, the looks, the tradition, the music (until someone started the Bluegrass), the atmosphere of the woody, tin mug decorated, house (if you ignore persian rugs and other art pieces from all over the world), a woodcarved Til Eulenspiegel overlooking the dining room and holding his mirror up to everyone at the table, with a porch overlooking a hill and foresty valley, in the most serene, almost alpine setting you can possibly find in Nashville.

And, importantly, the food, home made by people who grew up with that sort of thing, know how it is supposed to taste, and have cooked these dishes themselves since decades.

So much for the prelude praise - the menu is coming up in separate posts .. :)

Little pigglies

My recent trip to Saarland was primarily for my dad's birthday; given a party with lots of hungry & thirsty people, there needs to be some good substantial food at hand. Spanferkel, a whole roasted suckling, likely filled with onions, majoram and good things like that, is a great center piece, makes lots of happy kids petting the piggy snout and coming back for little meat pieces that my dad slices of for them, and lots of happy adults eating this young and tasty, locally bred and totally beautiful "little" animal.

In this case, it was served with various sides that go traditionally with pork, like Krautsalat (salad from white cabbage, typically with a vinaigrette with caraway, bacon crumbles, onions, and beef stock), Bohnensalat (green beans salad, with onions), and some sort of potato dish, such as Kartoffelgratin (potato gratin, for example baked with a milk-egg mix with nutmeg and gruyère, one of my most favorite cheeses).

More modern and creative dishes such as Fenchel-Orangen-Salat (salad of fennel and oranges, with a vinaigrette based on orange juice) actually work really great with the roasted pig as well. The fruit especially helps with its acidity lightening up the heavy side of pork and potato; anis-tasting fresh fennel is adding contrast to the nuttiness of the pork, while the orange-sweetness puts the porks own sweetness on a little pedestal - very interesting how contrasts and similarity both can increase the saliency of a flavor. All that makes it easier to enjoy more, eat more and feel phantastic about it ... :)