1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (78 page)

Herbs garnish the spuds.

They call them salt potatoes, but really they’re just potatoes boiled in very well salted water. Such a description, however, hardly does justice to their important place in German cuisine. Potatoes in general are pervasive throughout the Germanic food landscape. Prepared in dozens of ways on their own, they also appear in the dough for noodles and for sweet or savory dumplings, as well as in the famously moist and rich
schokoladen kartoffeltorte
(chocolate potato torte). But nowhere is the importance of the common spud made plainer than in the careful method by which boiled potatoes are prepared. Usually peeled only after being boiled (unless they are the tiniest new potatoes, which are eaten skins and all), they are cooked at a rolling rate in abundant water with handfuls of salt—the reasoning being that, just as with pasta, whole boiled potatoes cannot be satisfactorily salted once they are cooked.

When they are tender but not quite falling apart, they are well drained and peeled (or not), then returned to the empty pot and dried over low heat for a minute or two. The pot is gently jostled until all potato surfaces take on a floury
snow-white finish—a step that renders them immune to sogginess, even if they sit for fifteen or twenty minutes. A few of the smallest might break apart, and that’s a good thing: Perfectly boiled potatoes will shatter at the slightest touch of a fork, and the German rule of etiquette forbids cutting them with a knife. To do so is to be labeled a boor and a cultural illiterate, as Italians regard anyone who cuts pasta with a knife. Breaking the potatoes has a functional advantage too, as the uneven edges allow the pieces to better absorb butter—which is, after all, their reason for being.

In addition to melted butter, possible dressings for these paragons of simple perfection might include freshly ground black pepper, crushed bits of bacon, sautéed onions, sprinklings of caraway seeds, minced herbs, such as parsley, chives, or dill, and dried fine bread crumbs.

All this is a fine treatment for a food that got such a slow start in Germany, one of the last countries in Europe to grow and eat the earthy tubers—Germans shied away from them for almost two centuries after potatoes emigrated from South America. Like other Europeans, they feared health results of eating unknown foods, especially those in the botanical nightshade family that also included tomatoes and eggplants. That potatoes eventually made it onto the menu at all was due to the wisdom and power of Frederick the Great, who in the mid-eighteenth century recognized their value as a food crop and handed out potato seed tubers to farmers, even putting a militia in place to ensure they would be planted. (How he made sure they would be eaten remains a mystery.)

Where:
In New York
, Blaue Gans, tel 212-571-8880,
kg-ny.com/blaue-gans
; Café Sabarsky, tel 212-288-0665,
kg-ny.com/cafe-sabarsky
.
Further information and recipes:
The German Cookbook
by Mimi Sheraton (2014).
Tip:
Small California white potatoes or small red bliss are best for boiling. Yukon Gold and russets do not work as well.

So synonymous is sauerkraut with Germany that during World War I its citizens were themselves maligned by American doughboys as “krauts.” It’s a pity the moniker isn’t taken as a compliment, for the eye-opening pickled cabbage hits the palate with a bitter-sour-salty essence that is nothing short of delectable. A showcase for seasonings of piney juniper, caraway, pepper, onion, apple, wine, and bacon, it is adaptable to many more lusty dishes than can be easily counted. Among such are steaming soups, savory strudels, stuffings for roast duck and goose, and even baked apples.

Often acting as the centerpiece for various assortments of fresh and cured meat, sauerkraut defines
choucroute garnie
in French Alsace (see
listing
). In Germany and Austria, it anchors the similar butcher’s plate known as a
schlachtplatter
(see
listing
), featuring, among other meats,
the tender smoked pork chops
Kasseler rippchen.
In many Russian, Polish, and Ashkenazic Jewish homes, cold uncooked sauerkraut is served with pickled cucumbers and green tomatoes as a sort of salad accompanying meats, especially in winter.

Strictly speaking,
kraut
means cabbage, and the souring comes via salt, in a simple fresh pickling method designed to give a cold country the gift of vegetables in wintertime. Classified as “fresh pickled” because the cabbage is uncooked, sauerkraut can spoil, especially if it isn’t completely covered by the liquid in the pickling vat or jar.

In many Eastern European neighborhoods, you will be able to buy this pale blond delicacy from wooden barrels. Barring that sure sign of authenticity, experiment until you find a brand that is not soft or gray. There should be no vinegar and little or no sugar. Jarred kraut is preferable to that sold in plastic sacks, and the mild, newly pickled cabbage of August is a special favorite among kraut experts in Bavaria and neighboring French Alsace, where the cabbage is slivered into much finer threads.

Sauerkraut should always be rinsed twice: first in cold water, then in warm, with an extra wash if it still tastes too sour. As much water as possible should be squeezed out, handful by handful. The kraut is fluffed up with a fork as it is put into a nonreactive pot made of terra-cotta, glass, or enameled cast iron. Some recipes call for braising sauerkraut with chopped onion in fat—butter, bacon, lard, or the rendered schmalz of chicken, duck, or goose—before adding liquid in the form of water, stock, or wine. Others bind it after cooking, using the fat and a flour roux known as an
einbrennen.
Whatever the technique, the desirable texture for cooked sauerkraut is “dry but juicy.” Shun the steam table travesties of overcooked, mushy, gray kraut that give this good dish a bad name (and an equally unpleasant smell).

Although sauerkraut is generally served with meat, the royal chef Theodor Hierneis recounts in his book
The Monarch Dines
that his patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, nicknamed Ludwig der Verrückte (The Mad), liked his with fish. The favored dish was
hechtenkraut
, sauerkraut baked with pike, browned onions, crayfish tails, and plenty of butter under a crisp bread crumb crust—sheer madness to more conventional German palates.

Where:
In Berlin
, Kurpfalz-Weinstuben, tel 49/30-883-6664,
kurpfalz-weinstuben.de
;
in New York
, Blaue Gans, tel 212-571-8880,
kg-ny.com/blaue-gans
;
in Kansas City, MO
, Grünauer, tel 816-283-3234,
grunauerkc.com
.
Retail and mail order:
In New York
, Schaller and Weber, tel 212-879-3047,
schallerweber.com
;
in Chicago and Des Plaines, IL
, Kuhn’s Delicatessen, tel 800-522-9019,
kuhnsdeli.com
;
in North Waldoboro, ME
, Morse’s Sauerkraut, tel 866-832-5569,
morsessauerkraut.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Neue Cuisine: The Elegant Tastes of Vienna
by Kurt Gutenbrunner (2011);
The Lutèce Cookbook
by André Soltner and Seymour Britchky (1995);
cookstr.com
(search home cured sauerkraut);
germanfoodguide.com
(search sauerkraut).

The man (and curls) behind the pastry.

The Marbach-born Jewish poet Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), whose poems were banned by the Nazi regime, was previously honored by way of two food specialties, both called
Schillerlocken
, after the long, twisted curls that adorned
his head. One was a strip of smoked dried herring and the other an extraordinarily sumptuous pastry. Flaky and fragile, its crunchy coiled horn uses a very special dough known as
hefeblätterteig
, a puff pastry made with yeast that Americans recognize as Danish.

Formed and baked on individual metal tubes, the horns must cool completely before being generously—very generously—filled with the thickest, richest imaginable whipped cream, often enhanced with a whisper of vanilla or combined with a light custard, and then dusted with a snowfall of confectioners’ sugar. In the best
konditorei
, a Schillerlocken pastry will be filled just before it is served, so the crust remains crisp—much the way cannoli are handled in the best Italian
pasticcerias
(see
listing
).

Like cannoli, the Schillerlocken has come in for some needlessly complicating enhancements. Chocolate, nuts, or candied fruits have been folded in with the whipped cream, or even added to the dough—all gilded-lily travesties upon the elegantly simple original. But for all-around vulgarity, none rivals the dinner plate–size version of Schillerlocken known as the lobster claw. Better to opt for the normal size, just a bit larger than cannoli.

Where:
In Munich and Dresden
, Kreutzkamm, tel 49/89-993-5570,
kreutzkamm.de
.
Mail order:
For cone forms, amazon.com (search fox run cream horn molds; norpro 6 piece cream horn case set).
Further information and recipes:
The German Cookbook
by Mimi Sheraton (2014);
carolynnsrecipebox.blogspot.com
(search cream horns).

How many different ways are there to preserve ham? Let us not count them, for the variables include the type of pig, what the pig was fed, whether the meat was cured or smoked, how it was seasoned, whether it was boned, and whether it was pressed flat or left in the round. Each has a special color, flavor, and texture all its own.

Germany may take the prize for greatest number of subtly different hams produced within a single country—and a visit to any one of its good
feinkost
, or gourmet shops, or to a high-class
schlächter
(butcher) should result in a tantalizing embarrassment of choices. You will find a great many cooked ham dishes, but just as the Italians have their prosciutto and the Spanish their jamón Ibérico, it is the raw cured hams that are considered delicacies by serious
feinschmeckers
(gourmets). Like their Eastern European counterparts, German hams tend to be lustier and stronger flavored than the air-dried hams of France, Spain, and Italy; most are
smoked, adding a woodsy burnish and darker, dryer finish to the meat.

If you happen by a German or Austrian restaurant or
bierstube
(beer hall) offering a
schlachtplatter
, or butcher’s platter, of hams, try it. Usually thin-sliced and splayed on wooden plates or boards, the array of meats will be accompanied by rye bread, hot or sweet mustard, pickled pearl onions, and gherkins. In some places, varieties of sausage are added to the lusty mix for good measure. Liquid accompaniments might be shot glasses filled with a clear, fiery, fruit-based schnapps such as
kirschwasser
, steins of beer, or the rounded, footed green goblets known as
schoppen
, holding fruity local white wines.

Westfälische schinken
(Westphalian ham) is Germany’s finest and most highly prized raw smoked ham. Taken from pigs fed on acorns in the oak forests of Westphalia, the meat is a delicate rose color, fine-grained and supple in texture, and gently flavored with the woodsy overtones of the beech and juniper it is smoked over. Dark, moist, thinly sliced Westphalian pumpernickel is the complementary bread of choice.

Schwarzwälder schinken
(Black Forest ham) is a name bandied about outside Germany as a supposedly high-quality filler in sandwiches. The true Black Forest ham, freshly sliced from a bone-in leg, is far more rustic than these mass-produced versions. Slow-smoked over pine, it has a flavor hinting at autumnal fires of burning leaves.

Nuss schinken
(nut ham) has a nutty flavor, as its name implies, but the moniker actually refers to the cut of meat—a small, boneless, rather lean oval from the larger leg.

Lachsschinken
(salmon ham) is a delicately pink and silky ham, only mildly smoked and lean, which looks much like sliced smoked salmon.

The
Schwarzwälder rauchfleisch
or
schinken-speck
(Black Forest smoked meat or ham-bacon) traditional in Bavaria as a
gabel frühstück
—a mid-morning “fork breakfast”—is lightly smoked and close to raw, with silky streaks of ivory fat running through bright and rosy meat. The moist, dense sourdough bread that is
bauernbrot
—farmer’s bread—is the right foil for the delectably fatty meat, as is the icy cold cherry schnapps
kirschwasser
, or the sharper, raspberry-based
himbeergeist.