Wednesday foods

In every paper, Wednesday is food section day. The Post Dispatch featured German food this morning and the story did nothing to change my feeling about that kind of food. I can't bear it.

The featured chef sharing German recipes was Kevin Willmann from Farmhaus restaurant and he made me more afraid then ever to sit down to a meal like this.

First was the appetizer: "Rich beer-braised onions finished with whiskey-topped with homemade leberwurst (liver sausage) served on a specially concocted multigrained bread." Concocted is the word alright.

Then Rabbit Stew, hasenpfeffer, which Willmann elevated with juniper flavor and plated with roasted root vegetables and a bay leaf. He also served it in a venison jus as a nod to the lore that German immigrants in rural America used a readily catchable meat — squirrel — when they couldn’t get rabbit.

Are you with me so far?

Then schweinebraten which Willmann based on the more elaborate style of Italian porchetta, rolled and slow-roasted in a moisture-controlled oven called a CVap, with the traditional dumpling accompaniment, spaetzle, accented with rye flour and caraway seed for a complex flavor.

The final course: schweinshaxe — smoked “hock,” or knuckle — Peter Brady-ized with roasted apples and served with a mild house-cured sauerkraut.  Oh my gosh!

The evening concluded with plum strudel served with a generous portion of sweetened quark meant to represent a fresh cheese that might have been made in an immigrant’s home kitchen.

Have no idea what quark is, but I just wouldn't be able to try it, much less see all that meat with all the other ingredients and you know why I am never enthused about a trip to Germany.

Comments

[Pam]

You have no idea what you are missing. The food in Germany is 'Wonderbar'!

[KUKIMBIA]

You're treading on dangerous ground here, Ms Respublica. I once cooked hasenpfeffer as a special treat for the kids. Steph loved it until I told her what it was; then she spit it out on the floor. Brad still calls her Feffer to this day.

[Ron]

I would say you are a hambuger and fries person.

[Sharon Philp]

The German food is not quite like what one finds at the German restaurants in America, at least not as I experienced it on choir tour years ago. I chuckled at this article yesterday (or rolled my eyes, I can't remember). The article in the paper yesterday was German based on the foods the settlers would have eaten. That would be like the difference between Berlin and Bethlehem, PA, with the Pennsylvania Dutch (who were really German).
As for the food, it was "re-imagined,"which I believe is a cooking term meaning "we can sell it at a higher price at our restaurant." Rye spatzel? Really?
The quark mentioned is a kind of soft cheese, which is not necessarily eaten specifically in Germany. It was used to replicate the smearkase the settlers would have known. I believe I saw it used on some cooking contest show recently as a "here, use these four completely unrelated ingredients to make something palatable" ingredient, which is why I don't care for reality TV; but that is another story.
In short, I would not use this article to make me avoid visiting Germany. They have plenty of food choices that are not sauerbraten. You just might want to skip the restaurant in Mascoutah.

[Diane Meyer]

Sharon I have had to eat in American German restaurants twice in my life and vowed never to do it again. Groaning platters of unfamiliar huge cuts of meat.