By the Same Author THE SEDUCER’S COOKBOOK CITY PORTRAITS HORS D’OEUVRES AND APPETIZERS VISIONS OF SUGARPLUMS Contents ______________________________ Introduction Holiday Festivals and Foods (Festtage und -gerichte) The German Kitchen (Die Deutsche Küche) IA L S (Vorspeisen und Zwischengerichte) PPETIZERS AND IGHT NACKS IIS (Suppen) OUPS IIIS G D (Einlagen, Klösschen, Klösse, Knödel, Klopse) OUP ARNISHES AND UMPLINGS IVC D M O P (Eintopfgerichte) ASSEROLE INNERS OR EALS MADE IN NE OT VE D C D (Eierspeisen und Käsespeisen) GG ISHES AND HEESE ISHES VIF (Fisch) ISH VIIM (Fleisch) EAT VIIIP (Geflügel) OULTRY IXG G B (Wild und Wildgeflügel) AME AND AME IRDS XS (Würste) AUSAGES XIV S (Gemüse und Salate) EGETABLES AND ALADS XIIP , N R D (Kartoffel-, Nudelund Reisgerichte) OTATO OODLE AND ICE ISHES XIIIS (Sossen) AUCES XIVD (Süsspeisen, oder Nachspeisen) ESSERTS XVB (Backwerk) AKING XVIP ! ROSIT Introduction Good Eating, Good Drinking (Gut Essen, Gut Trinken) Few countries in Europe can boast of landscapes more beautiful or more varied than those of Germany. By our standards it is not a large country, all in all some one hundred and forty thousand square miles within the reunified borders that include a wide variety of dialects, culinary influences, architecture, crafts, and folk and religious customs. But in this area, just a little smaller than Montana, there is every kind of terrain one finds in the temperate zone. The north German province of Schleswig-Holstein is a dramatically flat land of dune beaches, farms and windmills, picturesque fishing villages and the heather-blanketed Lüneburg Moors. Here you find the handsome old cities of the Hanseatic League—Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck, the briny ports of the Baltic, the North Sea and the Elbe, with damp, chill climates and plenty of warm, snug inns and taverns with off-yellow walls that always seem to look sunlit. Travel from Hamburg to Cologne and the Rhine country and you are struck by the difference in the air, by the warm, soft climate of this wine-growing region, a place of green tapestry landscapes and vineyard- covered slopes. The castles looming over the river will take you back to the legends of the Lorelei and the Nibelungen, and the romantic Heidelberg will recall the whole Gemütlichkeit era of The Student Prince, set in the Schloss that rises above the town. The “iron Rhine” is another matter altogether, with its industrial cities along the Ruhr tributary— Düsseldorf and Essen, to name just two. In southern Swabia, the Black Forest, with its pine groves and crystal- clear air, its fruit orchards and vineyards, its cuckoo-clock chalets and Badekur spas, its casinos and its game forests, is a region of Walpurgis legends and fairy tales. Here are luxurious hotels at which the crowned heads of the world took the “cures” in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and to which a less celebrated but no less devoted clientele still flocks all through the summer. Bavaria, the largest state in West Germany, has always been the archetype, the travel-poster image that stands for all of Germany in the minds of those who have not been there. It is divided into Upper Bavaria in the south, Lower Bavaria in the north, the southern region being upper by virtue of its loftier mountain ranges. Lower Bavaria consists mainly of the mountainous Franconia and its Romantic Road—die Romantische Strasse—that runs from the baroque wine-producing city of Würzburg to the old Fugger stronghold, Augsburg. Between these two cities there is a chain of medieval towns, preserved but not restored. Of them all, the walled town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber is the most perfect set-piece, with its ramparts, towers and fortresses, castles, wrought-iron signs and fountains, and where the main hotel, the Eisenhut, is a series of antique burghers’ mansions. In this area one sees a unique pattern in half-timbering, called Wild Man—wilder Mann—in which the crisscrossed arrangement of wood in the masonry looks like a wild man with arms and legs flung akimbo. Upper Bavaria is perhaps the best-known area of Germany, with its Tyrolean overtones, its Alpine ski slopes and resorts such as Garmisch- Partenkirchen and Berchtesgaden, and the passion-play, wood-carving town of Oberammergau. Visit Hohenschwangau in the gentian-covered, snow-capped Allgäu Alps, and the view from your hotel room will undoubtedly include the towering castle of Neuschwanstein, only one of the three wild palaces of Bavaria’s gourmet king, the mad Ludwig II. Munich, the capital of Bavaria, and its surroundings are dotted with black onion-dome churches whose interiors are masterpieces of the heavy German baroque style at its peak, and the area is jeweled with clear blue lakes, emerald mountainsides and lush woodlands. This is the home of Lederhosen and dirndls, gray Loden cloaks bound in green braid, and some of the world’s best art museums. There is even more variety to the German landscapes: the wild forests of the eastern portion of the country, most especially in Thuringia, the gracious old university town of Hanover, the bustling business-minded Frankfurt that looks like a transplanted American town, and dozens of beautiful and historic places that I could go on listing, if space allowed me to. Each of these areas has its own customs, differing styles of architecture, distinctive dialects and special holidays. The German cuisine is almost as varied as the terrain. Just as Bavaria passes as the archetype for the entire country, so the food of that section —the dumplings, sausages, beer, pork and cabbage dishes—represents German cooking to the outside world. Delicious though the Bavarian dishes may be, they hardly begin to give even a clue to the whole spectrum of German cooking—cooking which, by the way, is very poorly represented in the German restaurants in our own country. Unfortunately, these restaurants always seem to limit themselves to what might be considered the clichés of German cooking, and even those are rarely as well prepared as they should be. Like the architecture, art, dialects and customs, German food varies from one section to another, and tends to match the cooking of the foreign border closest to it. Eastern Germany, bordered by Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, flavors its dishes much as those countries do, with caraway, paprika, sour cream and dried mushrooms, and here one finds the largest dumplings, the most frequent use of sauerkraut and pork. In Alsace- bordered Swabia, on the other hand, juniper flavors the sauerkraut, as it does in the French province, game specialties abound, and potatoes and dumplings are eclipsed by the wide variety of noodle dishes, most especially the celebrated flecks of noodle dough called Spätzle. Snails are favorite appetizers, and the rich creamy cheese, bacon or onion tarts are as popular here as in neighboring Alsace and Switzerland. Wine and fruit brandies distilled from the products of local orchards are served as frequently as beer. The Rhineland, being wine-land, features a cuisine that is lighter, less spiked with vinegar, and which puts a German accent on many dishes that were French in origin. Schleswig-Holstein, long a part of Denmark, has specialties close to those of that northern country. You see this in the lavish use of butter, eggs and cream, in their seafood and herring specialties, in the use of crab-flavored cream sauces on fish and in the way they combine meat and herring in many dishes. Whipped cream flavored with horseradish is favored here for carp and poultry sauces, as in Denmark, and here too bakery windows are full of the butter-rich yeast puff pastries which we call Danish pastry and which the Danes and Germans know as Vienna bread (Wienerbrot). Not even the names are the same, or intelligible, from one section to the other. Ask for a “Halbes Hähnchen” in Berlin and you’ll get exactly what you asked for—half a chicken; ask for it in Cologne and you will get a cheese sandwich on a small round roll that looks like a chicken breast, hence the name. A potato is a Kartoffel in the north, but an “earth apple”—Erdapfel—in the south, a direct translation of “pomme de terre.” Munich’s steamed pate, Leberkäse, can almost never be found in Bremen or Lübeck, and Hamburg’s briny oysters served with a slice of Cheshire cheese and a glass of red wine would shock the Berliner almost as much as it would you. The Holsteiners, by and large, think carp served with the south German sauce of beer and gingersnaps is a travesty on a fish they like with whipped cream. And the thick sauce of the Rhineland sauerbraten, made golden brown and velvety with caramelized sugar and flavored with raisins, is as different from the thin, red-wine vinegar version made in Munich as it is from an Italian pot roast seasoned with bay leaves and Chianti. In spite of the fact that it is so badly represented in this country, German cooking has more appeal to the average American palate than the cuisine of any other foreign country. True, those of us who live in large cities, especially along the coasts, have developed a taste for Mediterranean food, but this is certainly not favored by the majority of people in the Midwest and the South. Traveling through Germany, one constantly meets American tourists from these areas who agree that the food in that country is, for them, the best in Europe. It is a preference that is easy to understand, for the German seasonings, fats and food combinations are more closely related to typical American cooking than are the wine, tomato, garlic and herb seasonings of France or Italy. Basically, Germans eat a meat-and-potatoes diet, as do most Americans. The fats used are mainly butter, lard and bacon, and the German taste for dishes that are sweet-and-sour, or for sweet condiments with meat courses, is not too strange when you consider the American predilection for pineapple and sugar on ham, cranberries and sweet potatoes and marshmallows with turkey, and all of the sweet relishes and pickles served here with hamburgers and hot dogs. Those last two are reminders of all the German dishes that have been adopted outright by Americans —not only hamburgers and frankfurters, with or without the ever- present sauerkraut, but the jelly doughnut that was first the Berliner Pfannkuchen; Boston cream pie, which in Germany is “Moor’s Head;” the love of ham or bacon with fried eggs; the range of Christmas cookies and even pretzels; and the old stand-by of ladies’ luncheons, creamed chicken in a patty shell, that appears in every German Konditorei as Königinpastetchen. Both German and American cuisines go better with beer than with wine; both favor gravies rather than sauces; neither uses much garlic or olive oil. Germans have always been great traders and travelers, and thus have developed a strong taste for the foods and seasonings of other countries —always adjusted, however, to their own palates. The last time I was in Hamburg I went to see a performance of Franz Lehár’s Land of Smiles, a typical Viennese operetta where the sentiment is as thick as Schlagobers. It tells the story of a Viennese general and nobleman whose daughter falls in love with an Oriental (Laotian, I believe) prince and ambassador. She tells her father that she plans to marry him and live in a far-off Eastern land. The father asks sadly why she has chosen a man whose home is so far away. Holding a small jade Buddha, she replies in a warbling contralto voice, “Papa, ich liebe das Exotische …” It struck me that this love of the exotic is certainly reflected in the German taste for food. All restaurant menus list specialties that are prepared according to the styles of Italy, Spain, India, France, Hungary, and so on. Many dishes are flavored with curry, and the aromatic spices of the East had a place in German cupboards even before the ships of the Hansa League brought them home. Any German city of moderate size has several good foreign restaurants, much frequented by local people, and food shops carry as many strange and outré items as do ours. Interest in food is enormous in Germany and it is fascinating to watch people order in restaurants. There is much more careful choosing there than in our own country and diners are rarely bound by menu categories. One might start with a plate of pale pink smoked salmon and then have only an entree of creamed wild mushrooms, regardless of whether these were listed as appetizer and vegetable; a fish course may be ordered as an appetizer; and an appetizer such as cold Lobster Mayonnaise might be the entire meal. This same practice of combining appetizers for a complete meal is now popular here and is in keeping with the trend toward smaller portions of a greater variety of foods, and our currently fashionable “grazing” method of eating. Similarly, the German use of fruits with nonsweet seafood and meat dishes anticipated France’s nouvelle cuisine chefs, who act as though the idea they once shunned was theirs in the first place. Although this book’s main purpose is to tell you how to cook authentic German meals at home, its secondary purpose is to serve as a somewhat informal guide to anyone who would like to eat his way around Germany. Therefore it would seem convenient for you to have some idea of the daily eating schedules in that country. Hotels serve you any kind of breakfast (Frühstück) you want, but in rural homes it generally is a piece of bread, with or without butter, and a cup of coffee with milk. The only common addition is a single soft-boiled egg, and schoolchildren will probably have a hot cereal such as oatmeal or rice cooked with milk and flavored with sugar and perhaps raisins. The larger morning meal —”bread time” (Brotzeit) comes at about ten-thirty or eleven. This snack varies with the locale. In Munich it consists of Weisswurst, bread and beer, while in Cologne it would be the cheese sandwich, Halbes Hähnchen, described above. In Swabia the morning snack is the Vesper, which consists of raw bacon on sour rye bread and a glass of kirsch, a combination that is known as Strammer Max in Berlin, where it is served with Schnaps made of barley. In other parts of the country a local cured ham, bacon or wurst is served, and anywhere it might be a cream pastry or coffee cake in a Konditorei. Lunch is served at twelve. Traditionally this was the big meal of the day, with the complete meat-and-potatoes routine, and it still is in rural areas or where workers can get home for lunch. Otherwise, office workers in large cities bring lunch from home or eat in restaurants much as we do, and have their large meal at night. At about four-thirty or five the wurst stands and Konditoreien are jammed again, depending on whether one wants a hot dog and beer or cake and coffee, and seven o’clock brings us to dinner. Those who had their big meal for lunch now have a cold cheese-and-meat platter with perhaps a rather rich dessert, or a thick soup and a dessert made with eggs or fruit. Those who had a light lunch now have their large meal. Anyone awake at eleven or twelve eats again—wurst and cheese, open sandwiches,