Strudel, Noodles and Dumplings: The New Taste of German Cooking

INTRODUCTION

My maternal grandparents – Omi and Opa – would arrive in Wales from Germany in a car fully laden with salami, pâtés, pickles, bread, biscuits, sweets, jams, meat, sauerkraut, butter – you name it and I’m pretty sure they had it packed in. ‘You’ve brought everything but the cellar steps,’ Mum would screech. ‘We do have food in Wales, you know.’ But despite her seemingly cranky reception, I know that she was just as gleeful as I was to receive these visitors with their gifts.

The contents of this car were the deepest expression of love, and to this day I still vividly remember each time they arrived, for these moments moved me and struck a chord. A well-stocked cellar was to Omi the essence of a home; it stood for security – knowing that no matter what or for whatever occasion there was always food in the house.

Everything in the car was carefully wrapped in newspaper so that it stayed cool, or frozen even in some cases, for the long journey across several countries and over the Channel. We made a human chain and passed the bundles to each other along the driveway to the kitchen table, until the car was empty and we could all finally sit down to eat. Opa would carefully unwrap the rye bread and slice it thinly, Omi would spread the sweet unsalted butter, then we would all help ourselves to pâté and mustard, possibly gherkins. That first bite into the dense, nutty bread tasted of home, said Omi, which when all is said and done is all that you wish to feel when you have been on the road for two days and travelled hundreds of miles.

It isn’t what we ate each year on their arrival that I recall, so much as the feeling of affection expressed through the journey this food had travelled. It goes without saying that eating is a human necessity, but cooking, and consequently the act of giving and sharing food, is a wholly gratifying experience both for the cook and the recipient, and it is one of the most natural things we can do to show each other how we feel.

Food and cooking are at the centre of our kitchen table but in actual fact they are only part of the bigger picture, which is the importance of everyone crowding around together and chatting – sharing snippets from events of the day. Of course sometimes reality doesn’t allow the calm eating experience I hope for, but it doesn’t stop me aiming for it each night. The scene in our house is usually far from perfect. There are daily squabbles, and generally it’s messy, but family table time is full of laughter and fun too, and I love it, chaos and all.

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Over the last five years we have moved around and lived in five different places (four different countries) with a growing family of three boys. My priority as a mother has been to make this experience fun and stable despite the turmoil that comes with each move. There is a wonderful German word, gemütlich, which when translated into English loosely means ‘cosy’, although in actual fact it means much more but is hard to put into words – to me it really means feeling at home. So, wherever we are in the world, I try to make it gemütlich – and the best way I know to do this is through cooking.

Most of what I cook are recipes with German roots, some of them old family favourites, others dishes and flavours that we simply enjoy. German food, like the food of every European country, has evolved and taken on flavours from much further afield. During the 1950s and 60s, guest workers arrived in post-war Germany to fill the demand for labour in the newly thriving economy, with Italy, Greece and Turkey being among the first countries to sign up for this programme. I don’t think anyone realised at the time how much this movement of people and shift in demographics would also influence the cuisine and tastes of the nation. Along with their labour and skills, these workers brought with them new flavours and ways of cooking, which have filtered into the national cuisine, leaving an everlasting impression.

Home-cooked German food is gently spiced, smoky and buttery, yet sweet and sour. It is warm and hearty and vinegar-laced. The alluring smell of something baking in the oven is ever-present – cakes (and coffee), of course, playing an important role in every day. Beyond the kitchen and down the stairs, cellar shelves are fully laden with jars of preserved goods. From greengages and marbled cake, to Strudel fillings and potted pâtés, to gherkins and plum compote, the list is endless.

The German kitchen is mouth-watering. This way of cooking is vibrant, honest and deeply intertwined with the seasons and weather. I’ve never known anything quite like the excitement felt when the first few spears of white asparagus start to appear at market stalls in the springtime – it ripples across the whole country and is a feeling which resonates quietly throughout the year with the arrival of each new seasonal ingredient.

Until recent years I think both the UK and Germany have been quite outward-looking in terms of food, seduced by the sun of Italy, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, but there seems to be a growing appreciation of colder-climate cooking and ingredients today, probably partly due to the revival and interest in Scandinavian food. There is also a renaissance in German restaurant cooking, similar to what is going on in the UK culinary scene, where many classic dishes are undergoing rejuvenation.

This book is about Germany’s varied culinary heritage seen through the recipes from our family table. It is simple home cooking, inspired by the seasons and by my children, who have brought new life and ideas to many classic recipes.

HOW I COOK

The kitchen is the place where we come to find comfort. Wrapped in the blanket of security that presents itself in familiar smells from the oven or stovetop, we feel safe. Of all the rooms in a house, the kitchen is the one I like the best. A kitchen sees the bad hair most of us wear in the morning; the licked fingers that we dip back into the pot to test the sauce; the sink full of dirty dishes that highlights exactly what we have cooked and eaten that day; and then there is kitchen talk, so comfortable here that it flows freely, touching on all that matters in life from the profound to the mundane. The kitchen sees and hears it all.

Omi’s Bavarian kitchen, which plays a huge role in the writing of this book, is one I look back on with fondness. It wasn’t big, it wasn’t glitzy; in fact it was nothing special at all. It was functional – utilitarian by design – actually very German. She lived, cooked and ate with gusto and a great deal of common sense. There was an air of no nonsense about her, mind, and rarely did she ever seem harried or flustered. She tasted everything religiously as she cooked – from behind it looked like she was conducting an orchestra, with her arms reaching right for salt, left for this and that, then up and down as she added to the pot or lifted the spoon to her lips. She always kept her ear close to the stovetop, too, listening out for the right sound, which indicated that the dish was ready. ‘But how do you know it sounds right?’ I once asked. ‘I know because I’ve heard it hundreds of times.’ I was in awe and still am when I see anyone conduct or dance at the stovetop like Omi did, allowing their senses to guide the way they cook.

She was thrifty and frugal but somehow still brilliantly inventive, managing to cook fragrant dishes from seemingly ‘nothing’. It was through her I learned that waste was shameful and that leftovers and kitchen scraps are invaluable blocks from which to start building tomorrow’s meal. Omi cooked with wisdom, yet she would not have thought of it like that, for it was just what she did – second nature.

It may seem strange to look to the past as a way of looking forward, but incorporating what has gone before into our present-day family cooking enriches our table, sparking stories and thoughts beyond just the plates and bowls in front of us. Recipes that have stood the test of time have survived for a reason, and more often than not it is these recipes that are the basics I turn to the most, adapting and tweaking them to suit our current tastes better. On the whole this means less sugar, and often I use brown; olive oil and butter instead of dripping (although I am still partial to dripping spread on a slice of fresh bread); less cooking time on vegetables – we prefer them crunchy; and generally speaking less meat.

Most days I wake to a whisper of ‘Mama, get up, I’m hungry’ – it’s little wonder, then, that each day in our household is shaped by food and cooking. From making porridge, soaking pulses and grinding coffee beans in the early morning to putting the bread to rest in its proving basket overnight, snuggling the yogurt down in its warm nest to set, or eating a sliced apple just before bed, what we choose to eat dictates the rhythm of every day here.

Cooking family food at home is never done to impress (believe me, it is hard to impress three boys of seven and under as it is), but to nourish and enhance our daily lives. The boys choose meals in quite an arbitrary fashion – like most children there is no reason beyond taste and enjoyment when it comes down to what they want to eat. Mostly they request things based on a personal whim, and then the hot topic of ‘What’s for dinner?’ is debated and fallen out over until somehow at the end of each day we come to an agreement. When the choice of what to eat falls to me, it is subject to three things: time, which quite often I have little of; what is in season; and lastly, the contents of our shelves.

Our food budget is tight, but I don’t feel it restricts us; on the contrary, it encourages me to be more considered about what we eat and also generally means most things are cooked from scratch. This doesn’t necessarily equate to a meal being more time-consuming to prepare, it just means it might take a little more thought and forward planning. I don’t think food should be a rushed affair, either in the preparation or in the eating of it. It saddens me to think that we sometimes rush through so much of the enjoyment involved with food. When time is the deciding factor of what’s for dinner it means I cook something like an omelette, throw together a salad or make something on toast; there is no need to rush the making of a meal like this because by its very nature it is a quick one. We should relish the time spent preparing meals for what they are.

If eating is an act of pleasure and cooking a celebration of ingredients and flavours, then surely the reward of cooking one meal a day from scratch is far greater than the effort involved in making it in the first place. Having children around me in the kitchen makes it unquestionably clear that we all have a better relationship with our food if in some way we are connected to what ends up on the plate in front of us – just being present in the kitchen watching, smelling and taking in the process of dinner being cooked is enough, but there is so much enjoyment to be had by actually getting stuck in.

Encouraging our children to enter the kitchen and feel their way around a recipe is so important, not just for them to develop their own tastes and interests but for society as a whole. Cooking should be an adventure, an exploration of ingredients and layering of flavours, a creative and intuitive act through which we express so much of ourselves – while I can at times be serious in the kitchen, the boys often serve to remind me that cooking is about fun. A kitchen should be a place where magic happens, and OK, sometimes the odd disaster too, but it shouldn’t be a place to fear, and good food shouldn’t be regarded as something for a special occasion or the weekend. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and all that comes in between are part of our every day – they all deserve to be gratifying.

REDISCOVERING GERMAN COOKING

I strongly disagree with the bad reputation that German food has overseas and outside its borders. I can’t help but feel that our ideas about the German diet are incredibly out-dated. Go back a few decades, especially to the 1950s, and it’s easy to see where today’s erroneous notions come from – back then life was very different.

A Fresswelle (wave of gluttony) swept through Germany in the 1950s – a backlash of over-eating brought about through the dietary constraints of wartime rationing and the very real feeling of hunger that still lingered in the minds of many. A booming economy, which not only raised the quality of life within the country but also stirred hopeful feelings among a nation who felt they had little to be proud of in the early post-war days, was reflected in the growing waistlines and body weight of the people. Indulgent eating symbolised a newfound freedom and happiness, which everyone was hungry for.

Germans adopted a bon vivant alter ego – that of the cocktail-swilling, chain-smoking gourmet. Exotic flavours and exciting new food items flooded the market. My mum remembers her parents bringing home a tin of Hershey’s syrup for the first time, acquired from the American army base; this was seen as the height of luxury and was enjoyed drizzled over everything. Many foodstuffs unattainable to most households due to their prohibitive prices in previous years became affordable to the masses, and thus things like butter came back into fashion and pushed out, thank goodness, cheaper alternatives like margarine.

This newfound passion for life didn’t just stop at the kitchen door. An Urlaubswelle (holiday wave) took hold of the nation too and carried many flocks of Germans in their socks and sandals abroad on holiday. No sunlounger was safe – I am laughing as I write this but it’s true: the competitive side of a German is fierce, and when out in large numbers they are a force to be reckoned with.

While this wave of travel gained the Germans their rather unfortunate sunlounger-hogging reputation, they also gained something wonderful: the taste for new flavours, and ideas from cuisines and lands other than their own. Newfound ingredients, probably recipes too, were brought back to many German kitchens and an experimental, lighter way of cooking and eating at home began to emerge.

During the 1960s and 70s this new wave of cooking was kept buoyant by the many people who came to settle in West Germany. The gastronomic influence was broad, with people arriving from northern Africa, Portugal, former Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy and Spain. Probably, though, the most prominent taste influence was Turkey – doner kebab shops started popping up on many street corners and soon became the snack of choice. Now, fifty years on, ask any German of my generation and they will tell you that the doner has been adopted by the Germans and become a ‘national snack’, a portable street food equally as popular as the Bratwurst.

The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 saw the reunification of Germany. While West German cuisine had flourished and evolved through outside influence over the past twenty-eight years, East Germany had been living under a communist regime where everything foreign was viewed with suspicion. In the East people had to make do with what they had, which meant that food was inextricably bound to the land and seasons. Armed with little more than what could be home-grown, a small selection of state-approved products and brands and an unlimited supply of vinegar, the cooking of East Germany was unfussy, recipes were pared back and methods uncomplicated. There was an unspoken awareness among the people that food was and should be seen as something more than just a meal. It was essential, yes, but it was also a hundred other things: bitter, symbolic, joyous, rich, poor, lucky, hateful, welcoming, precious, hopeful and everything in between.

When Germany reunited as a nation, food from all sides was brought together. Germany was one of the great melting pots of Europe, a place where so much existed side by side. The broad culinary and social diversity owing to a migrant population was evident through the rise and popularity of Italian, Greek and Turkish restaurants. Every taste was catered for, and perhaps because so many new ideas and flavours were filtering into each kitchen, the hunger for regional dishes, many that had been forgotten for a time, was also stronger than ever. Food that was directly connected to the surrounding landscape and to those families who had lived in it for many years was an important thing for people to cling on to as society changed. This is the food I grew up with – lost food, regional food, frugal food, seasonal food, exciting, new and brilliant German food.

COOK’S NOTES

SUGAR

I use unrefined golden granulated sugar and golden caster sugar – they are more expensive than regular white granulated and caster but worth the extra pennies for the assurance that they have been less messed around with. I tend to err on the lighter side of sugar quantities in cakes and just generally, but feel free to add more to any of the recipes should it feel right to you.