The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Oktoberfeast - Part 5 - The Scary Stuff

I realize I kind of got away from the Oktoberfeast posts.  The first four posts -

Oktoberfeast - Part 1 - The Sauerkraut

Oktoberfeast - Part 2 - The Onion Cake

Oktoberfeast - Part 3 - The Sauerbraten

Oktoberfeast - Part 4 - The Spaetzle

were done, appropriately, in October, and then I got sidetracked by other meals and birthdays and work and kids and all that stuff.

This last post will be relatively brief.  As I'd said in my first Oktoberfeast post, we ordered meats from Bavaria Sausage, Inc. out in Wisconsin.  A variety of brats and wursts for the grill, and head cheese and beef tongue for the gross-out factor. 

Actually, the head cheese tasted an awful lot like corned beef.  It was very tasty and made for good sandwiches in the days after our dinner.  The tongue...well, here's the tongue as it looked when it arrived:

 

Frozen and wrapped in plastic and surrounded by ice packs and styrofoam packing material. 

Here it is later - thawed and set out with some other appetizers.  Left to right - the smoked tongue, the head cheese, sliced, and smoked bluefish that bill caught and smoked a few weeks prior.  Behind everything are crackers and a bowl of sour cream.

After people had arrived, Bill assembled everyone in the kitchen for the Slicing Of The Beef Tongue.  It was everything he'd hoped it would be - some people were outwardly repulsed, others were kind of curious, and others patiently awaited the slicing so they could get on with the business of eating.

And yeah, it's rather disturbing to watch.

But you know what?  It was tender and had a nice smokey flavor and a texture also like corned beef.  The main part of the tongue was nice and lean as you can see above.  The back part was marbled with streaks of fat, and not quite as good on its own.  I ended up making hash with it for breakfast one day, and it was perfect for that.

And there you go.  Not much else to report, really.  We'll probably throw this dinner party again next year.  It was fun!

OktoberFeast - Part 4 - the Spaetzle

In my slowly continuing recap of a meal we put together for Oct 13th, here is the 4th recipe I'm posting.

You can see the others here:

OktoberFeast - Part 1 - the Sauerkraut

OktoberFeast - Part 2 - the Onion Cake

OktoberFeast - Part 3 - the Sauerbraten

Today it's all about the Spaetzle.  Pronunciation of the word varies - some say "Spay-tsl" while Bill's mother said "speh-tchle" or something like that.  Whatever way you say it, spaetzle = comfort food.  Little freshly made noodles or dumplings (depending on how you make them - thin and noodly or thicker and dumplingy) tossed with gravy or even some butter - they are light, pillowy, starchy bites of goodness.

Anyway.  I have a feeling Bill's mom put the ingredients together from memory, though he says he saw a recipe.  I couldn't find it, but this is a good, workable ratio of ingredients:

2 eggs

2 tablespoons of freshly rendered lard (actually i think we used bacon fat, you can use oil if you want, or melted and cooled butter)

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup milk

2  1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoons salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Beat the first 4 ingredients (all the wet ingredients)together in a bowl.  In another bowl, stir together the last 3 ingredients (the dry ones).  Then blend the dry mixture into the wet mixture and set aside.  How easy is that?

Get a big pot of water boiling and add in some salt - about 2 teaspoons. 

Put the bowl of the spaetzle dough (actually, it's rather loose and more like a batter, to me, than a dough) near the stove.  You'll also want a slotted spoon handy, and a bowl to put the cooked spaetzle in.

Now here's the tricky part.  You can use a spaetzle press if you have one (we don't) or a ricer.  We tried the ricer:

but the batter was too thin and it all just smushed back together before it hit the water.  We tried a collander as well, with the same unsatisfactory result.  I suggested we add a little more flour to thicken it, but my idea was dismissed.  I still think it would have worked.  But what do I know.

So - it was back to basics time.

Bill's mom always used a spaetzlebrot or spaetzle board.  We have hers, and this is what it looks like:

Now, Bill's the one who has actually made the spaetzle, and so has his nephew, Joe.  Joe was here for the dinner that night, and since Bill had other things to attend to, he put Joe in charge of the spaetzle-making.  I believe you get the surface of the board a little wet, then put some of the dough/batter on about mid-way.  Then, with a knife, you smear some of the batter toward the front (the straight edge) and then slice it and shove it off the end into the boiling water.

See all the little knife lines on there? 

You work with a portion of the dough/batter at a time.  The spaetzle will sink to the bottom of the water initially, and when they float to the top, they are done.  Using your slotted spoon, scoop them out and place in a bowl while you make the next batch.

Unfortunately, I don't have any more pictures of that process.  I think I was probably putting the rest of the food on the table or taking knives out of Julia's hands or making faces behind Bill's back for ignoring my additional flour idea.  Something like that.  But I'll post this picture again of the table of food. 

Those two bowls on the right contain the spaetzle, mixed with some gravy from the sauerbraten.  My brother-in-law, Jacques, is helping himself to some of the spaetzle. 

We will make this again, and when we do, I'll take better pictures, or, actually, MORE pictures, so you can really see the process better. 

Next up - the scary foods.  I think. 

OktoberFeast - Part 3 - the Sauerbraten

I've been posting about a dinner that my husband and I put together this past Saturday - a big selection of German menu items accompanied by a selection of German beers. 

You can see the menu and read Part 1 - the Sauerkraut - here, and Part 2 - the Onion Cake - here.

Today, I'm writing about the Sauerbraten.

Sauerbraten is basically pot roast that has been pickled for several days before it gets cooked.  Why is it pickled?  Sauerbraten is one of those marvelous dishes that transforms a cheap cut of meat into falling-apart, mouth-watering, fighting-over-the-last-shredded-bit bliss.  The perfect accompaniment is a generous serving of Spaetzle , which are bumpy little German noodles or dumplings.  We made them, too, and I'll post that recipe tomorrow or the next day.

But back to the beef portion of our story.

My husband made the Sauerbraten - he's made it once or twice before - and I'll be printing the recipe he uses.  However, I have to tell you, I wasn't sure I wanted to reference this specific recipe because of the baggage it brings to the table.

So I was going to type up another Sauerbraten recipe, from a different cookbook.  But that didn't sit well with me either.  So I deleted that original post (which was part of the Sauerkraut post,) and put it on the back burner for a while.

And then I decided, okay, I'm going to post the real recipe because it's the one we used, and I can't vouch for the other recipe, though I'm sure it's perfectly  good.  But still.  It's not the one we used. 

Why all the dancing around the point?  The cook who wrote the cookbook used to have a rather popular cooking show on public television...he was bearded and exuberant...and later on all sorts of ugliness and accusations bubbled up to the surface, and that was basically the end of his popularity and career.  This book was published a little before all of that, in 1990.   Its author died several years ago.

I don't want to post his name or the name of the cookbook, because I don't feel like dealing with any traffic that might reach me because of those particular words and that particular story.  So I'm not going to.  My blog.  My decision.

The recipe, however, is excellent, and should not be relegated to the recycle bin because of the author.

So now, without further confusion, we have

Sauerbraten (German Pickled Beef Roast)

You will need the following:

One 4-5 lb beef pot roast, with bone.  (Bill got two smaller nearly 3 lb pieces, and I don't think they had the bone, but it certainly didn't seem to ruin the meal at all.)

For the Marinade:

1  1/2 cups red wine vinegar

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup dry red wine

1 medium onion, peeled and chopped

1 medium carrot, chopped

1 stalk celery with leaves, chopped

8 black peppercorns

4 whole allspice (which I didn't realize we had, but I just checked, and Bill said we did)

4 whole cloves

2 bay leaves.

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Place the beef in a deep glass, earthenware, or stainless steel bowl. (We used the same crock we'd used for the Sauerkraut...I should probably take a picture of it, important member of the family that it is...)  Combine the marinade ingredients in a medium saucepan and heat to boiling over high heat.  Cool.  Pour the cool marinade over the meat, turning to coat all sides.  Cover and refrigerate 2 to 3 days, turning the meat several times each day.

To Cook the Meat:

3 T peanut oil

1 medium onion, peeled and finely chopped

1 stalk celery, finely chopped

1 medium carrot, finely chopped

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup red wine

1/2 cup crushed gingersnap cookie. (About 5 medium sized cookies)

Three to four hours before serving, drain the meat,

reserving the marinade,

and pat the meat dry with paper towels.

  Heat a large saucepan.  Add the oil.  Add the meat and brown on all sides, turning frequently, about 30 minutes.  (When you are browning meat, be patient.  Don't mess with it.  Just place the meat on a side, and leave it alone.  If you try pulling it off the pan and it doesn't want to go - leave it alone!  It's not browned enough yet.  You want a nice dark color on each side.  Just in case you were wondering....)

Remove the meat from the pan and reserve.  Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the fat.  Saute the onion, celery, and carrot in the fat until tender, about 10 minutes. 

Return the meat to the pan.  Strain into the pan the marinade plus 1/2 cup water, discarding the marinade vegetables.  Reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, until the meat is tender, 2  1/2 to 3 hours.

Remove the meat and keep warm.  Remove the marrow from the bone (if you had the bone in the meat to begin with.  If you didn't, then perhaps your wonderful spouse will get some beef marrow bones at the grocery store the morning you're going to cook all this, and she will roast the bones in the oven and scoop out the marrow for you to use later when you cook your Sauerbraten.)  and stir into the sauce.  Puree the liquid in the blender or food processor and strain into pan, adding the red wine.  Bring to a simmer and stir in the crumbs.  Simmer, stirring frequently, until the sauce is thickened, a few minutes.

Slice and arrange the meat on a heated serving platter.  Serve hot with thickened sauce.  Garnish with chopped parsley.  (Okay, we didn't do the garnish.  And as far as slicing and arranging the meat?  Ha!  It's hard to slice something that just falls apart when you try to lift it from the pan.  Oh yes.  FALLS APART.)

This is just great with German Dumplings.  The gravy is perfect for the dumplings. 

And that's about it.  The German Dumplings are, of course, the Spaetzle, which, as I said earlier, will be the next recipe I post from this feast.

Below is the only picture I took of the whole spread of food out on a table.  It was snapped quickly and it didn't come out all that great, but whatever.  The sauerbraten is falling apart there on that red, rectangular platter in the front.  The gravy is in the white bowl to the right, and the spaetzle is in two bowls at the right front corner of the table.  My brother-in-law is helping himself to some in this picture.  Now, behind the platter of sauerbraten is a smaller glass bowl of sauerkraut, and behind that is the onion cake.  (All our time and energy went into preparing the food - then we just kind of threw it all on the table, stacked up some plates, and let everyone help themselves.  Very relaxed, everyone spread out through the house to eat.  Nothing fancy.  But no one left hungry.) 

We've decided we need to make sauerbraten a bit more often than once every several years.  It's way too good to go without for so long.  Same with the spaetzle, topped with some of the gravy from the sauerbraten...sigh.

Anyway, hope that made you want to pickle some beef and then cook it for a long time some time soon.  You won't regret it. 

Coming next, the Spaetzle....

OktoberFeast - Part 1 - the Sauerkraut

At some point in early September we decided that we would, for sure, have an Oktoberfest gathering of a few friends and family.  Bill brewed a Dunkel Weizen (a dark wheat beer) and we had assorted bottles of other German beers on hand.  We also had a couple bottles of wine - a Reisling that Bill made a year ago and a Gewurtztraminer that he picked up along with some of the beer.  No one drank either of the white wines.  Instead, the wine drinkers had some Italian reds.  There was sparkling cider for the older kids, and juice for the younger.

And now...the food.

We ordered some items from Bavaria Sausage, Inc.  in Madison, Wisconsin.  Anthony Bourdain lists Bavaria Sausage in his book Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, and we've been ordering from them for the past few Christmases.  We've ordered some of their complete meals to send to various relatives as Christmas gifts, but this is the first time we've ordered anything for ourselves.

We ordered a selection of brats and wursts...head cheese, and two smoked beef tongues.  Yes, beef tongues.  For the sole purpose of freaking people out.  (This is how my husband plans a dinner party:  beer and gross-out food.  We served a chicken foot soup at our very first dinner party many years ago.  Of course, I'm no better - I go right along with it.)

In addition to these tidbits, the rest of the planned menu included the following:

Smoked bluefish and some cheeses and grapes (to round out the appetizer selection)

Homemade sauerkraut

Bill's grandmother's Onion Cake

Sauerbraten

Spaetzle

Bill's grandmother's Onion Cake

Grilled brats and wursts

A beer-can chicken (for those who don't eat mammals)

Roasted root vegetables.

Rolls and assorted mustards for the brats and wursts.

And my "cousin-in-law" brought an apple-cranberry pie and some chocolate and peanutbutter chip bars for dessert.   

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The Sauerkraut

Bill started the sauerkraut about a month ago or so.  We found a few sauerkraut recipes online and he probably ended up using elements of all of them. 

We started with two heads of cabbage from our garden.  Now - just a little aside - when Bill bought the cabbage he planned to use it to fill in some gaps in the front garden.  It was sold as ornamental cabbage, and the leaves were very pretty shades of pink and orange, green and blue.  Really!  See?

Aren't they beautiful?  But they didn't stay that way.  They grew and lost the fanciful shades of color until only the green remained...and much to our surprise, little head of actual cabbage began to form.  Maybe we're just stupid, but for some reason we just thought this "ornamental cabbage" would stay leafy and colorful.  It didn't. 

It continued to grow until Bill "harvested" two heads in September.  Here's one of them:

Okay, back to the sauerkraut.  You slice up the cabbage into "slaw" and layer it with a generous amount of salt in a crock.  Cabbage, salt, cabbage, salt...and you push down on it with a potato masher or something as you go - you want to make it as compact as possible.  Once all the cabbage is in there, you place a clean cloth on top and then a plate with some sort of weight on top (Bill used a big beach rock left over from one of our clambakes.).  That's it, as far as the prep work goes. 

The salt will help the cabbage release liquid, and the whole mixture will ferment.  You will need to check it daily to skim any "scum" from the top, and you'll want to keep the crock in a cool spot - around 50-60 degrees so it won't go bad.  Yes, it will smell.  Oh yes.  And no, it's not something you want to say "oh, I got used to it" because, well...it smells.  It's fermenting cabbage, after all.  But still, it was pretty cool - we were making sauerkraut!

Now, we didn't really have anywhere cold to store this.  Well, we had the chest freezer in the basement that Bill uses when he's brewing beer.  He's got a regulator hooked up to the thermostat of the freezer and can set it at just about any temperature he wants.  But he didn't want any chance of the sauerkraut contaminating his beer, so forget that idea.  He ended up placing the crock in a large bowl and placing a couple of those ice pack things you use to keep lunches cold around the crock.  And that worked.  The bowl and crock sat out on the counter all that time...stinking up the place and taking up valuable counter space near the sink...but it was all for the cause. 

After a few weeks, he bottled it and stored it in the fridge.  (He also made a batch of kim chee with the other two heads of cabbage, but that will be another post.)

And the result?  It tasted like sauerkraut!  But with a "funk" to it, as our friend John described it.  A homemade vs. store-bought sauerkraut kind of funk.  A "nothing fake" kind of funk, I guess.  It couldn't have been objectionable - all the sauerkraut was gone at the end of the night.  It was perfect with a brat and some grainy mustard on a torpedo roll.

Next up?  Bill's Grandmother's Onion Cake....