1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (77 page)

The pungent cheese spread that goes by many names (among them Obatzter and Gervais Angemacht) is an appetizer favorite in Germany and Eastern Europe alike, sometimes also standing in as a savory dessert. Named for a region of what is now Slovakia, Liptauer Käse can be made many ways, starting with a base of a soft, fresh cheese such as cottage, quark, or farmer’s. Additions of grated Gruyère or strong blue cheese add doses of pungency, as does a fork-mashing with sour cream, grated onion, chopped capers, mustard, Worcestershire, caraway seeds, chopped anchovy fillets, and cayenne. Brandy or beer are sometimes drizzled in for a heady good measure. When prepared with Camembert or the similar Gervais cheese as a base, the mixture is usually served for dessert.

Almost all ingredients are optional, and seasoning to taste is highly encouraged. Whatever the mix, the spread will develop more flavor after ripening in the refrigerator for eight to twenty-four hours. Before being served, it should soften at room temperature for an hour or so, for easy spreading on small rye rounds or squares of Westphalian pumpernickel, or even over slices of cucumber or as a filling for celery sticks.

Further information and recipes:
The Cuisines of Germany
by Horst Scharfenberg (1989);
Neue Cuisine: The Elegant Tastes of Vienna
by Kurt Gutenbrunner (2011);
food.com
(search liptauer austria);
youtube.com
(search KCI grunauer).

Marzipan candies frequently masquerade as fruit.

Germany has two centers for the production of the addictively unctuous, sweet almond paste marzipan: Königsberg and Lübeck. Each has its advocates: Lübeck, the medieval Hanseatic port on the Baltic Sea, with its turreted, half-timbered brick guild houses, is favored for its intensely almondy, teasingly bitter rendition. When baked, as is the custom in Königsberg, the firm, smooth almond paste achieves true sophistication, with a burnishing of caramelized sugar modifying what some might consider a cloying sweetness, and with a haunting flavor of roasted bittersweet almonds emerging as one chews. (The excellent marzipan made in Hans Christian Andersen’s Danish hometown of Odense deserves an honorable mention as well.)

A gift from Persia that arrived in Europe in the Middle Ages, marzipan is an instant favorite of almost all young children.

It’s perhaps most familiar in the forms of fruits, vegetables, miniature toys, animals, and holiday ornaments—and quite astonishing in those most convincing life-size, fool-the-eye fruits created and displayed in Catania, Sicily.

Molded marzipan is fairly wet and sticky. But mixed with egg white and then formed into thin ropes, it can be twisted into pretzel shapes or rolled out between sheets of wax paper. The latter versions, cut with cookie cutters and brushed with egg yolk, are baked until the tops turn a toasty golden brown and the treats take on the firm, satisfying texture of crisp cookies.

There is some debate surrounding marzipan’s makeup. To some, a pure, smooth blend of almonds and sugar is the only true marzipan; to others, such a concoction is merely almond paste. The latter group insists on egg white blended into the mix. Choose for yourself, but know that store-bought marzipan rarely includes perishable egg white.

Where:
In Berlin
, Wald Königsberger Marzipan, tel 49/30-323-8254,
wald-koenigsberger-marzipan.de
.
Mail order:
For Lubech marzipan, amazon.com; for niederegger marzipan,
igourmet.com
(search niederegger marzipan).
Further information and recipes:
The Oxford Companion to Food
by Alan Davidson (1999);
Visions of Sugarplums
by Mimi Sheraton (1981);
The Cuisines of Germany
by Horst Scharfenberg (1989).

Wander into any German beer hall or rathskeller in fall—especially during Oktoberfest—and you will see many happy imbibers nibbling from plates full of what may at first glance look like uncooked noodles. Closer examination will prove them to be the graceful spiral curls of peppery white radishes known, in fact, as Munich beer radishes. The icicle-like winter radishes taper from thin roots to about 2 inches in diameter, with a shape suggestive of daikon, and are carved on a special cutter that creates the slim curls. Served with dark, coarse pumpernickel and sweet butter to mollify their stinging bite, they provide a wonderfully peppery crunch as the grainy bread adds its own malty overtones to the beer.

Springtime brings the small, round white Easter Egg radish to the German table, its almost sweet accent contrasting a mild, earthy bitterness. This radish is often grated into
rettichsalat
, a salad dressed with a mix of lemon juice or mild vinegar and sour cream, plus gentle hints of onion or scallions and spring herbs such as chervil, parsley, or tarragon. More impulsively, the crisp little Easter Egg radish is eaten out of hand with a mere dip into coarse sea salt.

The arrival of both varieties is cause for celebration in colorful outdoor markets such as the Viktualienmarkt in Munich, but fortunately radishes are easy to grow in home gardens. Seeds for both radishes are readily available, as are the somewhat expensive spiral cutters that work on many other long, firm vegetables such as zucchini, cucumbers, potatoes, and carrots.

Where:
In Munich
, Zum Franziskaner, tel 49/89-231-8120,
zum-franziskaner.de
.
Mail order:
For seeds,
reimerseeds.com
(search german beer radishes; giant white round radishes); for spiral slicer, amazon.com (search benriner cook help vegetable slicer).
Further information and recipes:
The Cuisines of Germany
by Horst Scharfenberg (1989);
todaysgardenideas.com
(search how to grow radishes).

A succulent saddle of venison with spätzle noodles and berries.

If Germany is home to some of the world’s best game preparations, then within the country’s boundaries, Bavarian cooks are generally acknowledged to be the maestros. With hunting in the piney Black Forest still a most popular sport,
the handling of the catch is no small matter. Boar, hare, and venison, wild or farmed, are among the best-loved meats, while game birds are equally popular. But if a single specialty stands out, it is this succulent, exotic, and tender saddle of venison.

Baden-Baden is the Bavarian spa town that attracted European nobility in its Edwardian heyday. In the context of this dish, it refers to the classic garnish of halved pears poached in white wine and filled with garnet-red currant jelly, and to the local garnish of spätzle (see
listing
). Alternatively, these garnishes may be known as
Schwarzwalder ärt
(in the style of the Black Forest) or
Bayerisches ärt
(in the style of Bavaria).

The full, long, narrow saddle (double rack) of venison—the
rehrücken
—is the real point, of course. The meat is rendered mellow by a marinade based on a robust red wine, preferably a Burgundy, along with onions, juniper berries, sliced carrots, peppercorns, a bay leaf, and often a stick of cinnamon, which is popular for use with boar as well. Larded with matchstick strips of pork fat, which add a dewy softness, the saddle is then oven-braised with bacon and the strained marinade’s onions and carrots. (Skimmed of grease and mixed with sour cream, that marinade is eventually bolstered with roasted meat juices to become an opulent gravy.)

The Germans like their saddle of venison so much, they have devised a reminder of it in the dessert they call
falscher
(mock)
rehrücken
: a moist, dark-chocolate Quonset hut–shaped iced cake with rows of almonds stuck in the top, standing in for the larding.

Where:
In New York
, Wallsé, tel 212-352-2300,
kg-ny.com/wallse
.
Mail order:
For venison, D’Artagnan, tel 800-327-8246,
dartagnan.com
; for lingonberry preserves,
igourmet.com
(search lingonberry).
Further information and recipes:
The Cuisines of Germany
by Horst Scharfenberg (1989);
The Cooking of Germany
by Nika Standen Hazelton (1969);
alleasyrecipes.com
(search roast saddle of venison with red wine);
nytimes.com
(search roast saddle of venison with red wine);
uktv.co.uk/food
(search saddle of venison with poached pear).

An operatic dish worthy of Wagner’s Rhine-centered Ring Cycle, sauerbraten is rarely prepared as it should be. Usually, impatience or economy allows insufficient time for the marinating process; the big cut of beef (preferably a five-pound
rump, but bottom round will do) really requires three to five days in which to tenderize and be infused with overtones of peppercorns, onion, and a rainbow of pickling spices such as coriander, bay leaves, chiles, cloves, and mustard seeds. Sometimes the roast sits for too long after being cooked, so that the meat becomes stringy and the sauce turns thin and greasy.

Regional differences abound, but the Rhineland’s sauerbrauten is the echt, characterized by the sweet-and-sour contrast of vinegar, lemon juice, sugar, raisins, and
lebkuchen
, the piquant gingersnaps crushed and added to flavor and bind the sauce.

That dark mahogany sauce … therein lies a secret one can ferret out only along the Rhine—say, in the kitchen of a very traditional restaurant in Cologne. The trick is to begin the roux, or
einbrennen
, with sugar, and to stir that into the hot fat—bacon, beef drippings, butter—before the flour, thereby allowing the sugar to begin to caramelize and brown and add that authentic, golden-black patina that spreads through the finished sauce. Plump, absorbent dumplings of potato, semolina, or bread—
kartoffelklösse, griessknödel
, or
semmelknödel
—do justice to this wondrous sauce, but tiny droplets of spätzle are popular alternatives.

Around Munich, a version of sauerbraten is prepared with beer, much like the Belgian carbonnade. In the western part of Bavaria, in the Black Forest bordering French Alsace, sauerbraten is marinated in red wine and spices absent even an intimation of sweetness. And at the bygone, elegant Lüchow’s in New York, sauerbraten in summer was served cold, encased in a silken Madeira aspic.

Where:
In Cologne
, Früh am Dom, tel 49/022-1261-3211,
frueh.de
;
in Milwaukee
, Mader’s, tel 414-271-3377,
madersrestaurant.com
; Karl Ratzsch’s, tel 414-276-2720,
karlratzsch.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The German Cookbook
by Mimi Sheraton (2014);
Lüchow’s German Cookbook
by Jan Mitchell (1996);
foodnetwork.com
(search rhineland-style sauerbraten);
saveur.com
(search sauerbraten sheraton).