#27 Germany

Ich habe Hunger. Ich esse eine Wurst

These are the only two sentences I can remember from year 8 German, but to be honest, what more do you need?

There are 1,500 types of Wurst (sausage) in Germany. To contextualise this, there are only 400 types of British sausage and I would very much consider us to be a sausage-eating nation!

There’s: Bratwurst, the staple sausage, can be veal, pork or beef.; Thüringer Rostbratwurst – perhaps Germany’s oldest sausage; Blutwurst – German black pudding; then we have Bregenwurst, Knackwurst, Teewurst, Frankfurter Würstchen – nein danke; Gelbwurst, Leberkase, Weisswurst – the anaemic breakfast Wurst.

“Weisswursts dürfen das mittagsglockenspiel der kirchenglocken nicht hören.”

Using my year 8 German, my translation of this German proverb is: “If a Weisswurst hears the noon chime of church bells…it turns into a pumpkin.”

So many Wursts but the Wurst has to be the Currywurst. This iconic dish is what Berliners do for street food. At the half-time stop of a 4-hour walking tour of Berlin (which, was the best walking tour I’ve ever been on, BTW) on a crisp, cold winter’s day, a Currywurst and a beer seemed like the perfect refreshment. The dish consisted of a highly-processed boiled bratwurst cut into bitesize pieces, served with French fries and topped with ketchup that had been mixed with curry powder. Verdict: what a terrible waste of perfectly decent ketchup. Germans, however, love Currywurst so much that, until it closed in 2018, there was a museum dedicated solely to them. I can authenticate this fact because I have visited the Deutsches Currywurst Museum myself.

German sausages are best enjoyed wrapped safely in a bread roll that can be held in one hand if you’re standing and need to hold your beer at the same time. Note: with careful arrangement, pretzels can be accommodated in this scenario also. If you have the luxury of a table on which to rest your German beer, you could pick up and a knife and fork and accompany your sausage with sauerkraut, potato, dumplings or anything else you want!

Sauerkraut: you love it or hate it. I love it! It’s finely-sliced cabbage preserved by lacto fermentation, whereby bacteria convert sugars in the cabbage into lactic acid, which gives it its sourness. Variations of it are eaten in many parts of Europe but the Germans really gave it a big name.

Food other than sausages

There is of course more to German cuisine than sausage and sauerkraut, and if we ever think otherwise, all we need to remember is that Germany has 308 starred restaurants in the 2020 Michelin Guide whereas Great Britain and Ireland combined have 187.

As well as an overabundance of sausage varieties, there’s also a plethora of types of bread in Germany. There are wheat breads, rye breads, seedy breads and many other breads.

What better to take with your German bread than some local cheese! Germany produces over one third of Europe’s cheese! The only nation producing more is USA. Germany’s käse (cheese) industry is diverse, covering all bases in hard käse, semi-hard käse, semi-soft käse, soft käse und fresh käse. I could quite easily get lost forever in researching, writing about and drooling all over my keyboard about cheese so I shall limit myself (you’re welcome) to a mere hat trick of deutscher Käses:

1. Allgäuer Emmentaler (just like Swiss Emmental). This semi-hard cheese is Germany’s most popular cheese. The young, mass-produced soulless Emmentaler is smooth and buttery, but leave it to age and its pleasures develop into a nutty, full-flavoured cheese.

2. Cambozola – I had no idea this was German! It’s a cross between Camembert and Gorgonzola and it’s AMAZING!

3. Butterkäse is semi-soft and creamy, and tastes a little bit like butter. Due to its high fat content, is an excellent melting cheese but also comes in slices for sandwiches. It is quintessentially German but is also produced in Wisconsin, USA.

Meals follow the familiar format of breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we also have Kaffee und Kuchen, which translates directly as “coffee and cake”, basically afternoon tea.

Germans certainly have the right idea when it comes to cakes, pastries and desserts. Seasonal fresh fruits often feature, and they don’t skimp on sugar. Desserts, such as apple strudel, are often served with vanillesauce – custard, which gets the Cook The World seal of approval! At Kaffee und Kuchen o’clock, you might have Bavarian doughnuts with vanilla or Berlin doughnuts with jam, or enjoy a slice of Bee Sting Cake covered in honey, a simple apple cake or the famous Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, Black Forest cake.

I actually found a recipe for sauerkraut chocolate cake…

LockdownFest 2021

“German beer doesn’t give you a hangover”…unless you drink it.

Munich for Oktoberfest in a rowdy beer tent with all your pals? Or Splott for Lockdownfest with your one and only bubble buddy?

Same, same really. We were dressed appropriately, we drank German beer (from Waitrose) from steins and we had oom-pah music on repeat.

Das Menü

Roter Salat - We dined on a warm salad of beetroot, goats cheese and walnuts, made by my buddy’s own fair hands, which, by the way, makes him the first guest contributor to Cook The World. It was a most satisfactory starter.

Sausage und Sauerkraut – Authenticity went out of the window here as I used British Aberdeen Angus beef sausages for our main. Why? I’m not entirely sure, I just really fancied them. There were no recipes in sight for this course as I felt enlightened enough with German culinary ways to wing it. To accompany the sausages, I braised some onion and a whole lot of sauerkraut in a little Apfelsaft, made some fairly rustic mash, and served the lot with a dollop of sour cream for lubrication. This was a wholly enjoyable, hearty affair and completely believable as something one might eat in a German beer hall.

Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte – AKA Black Forest cake. Now I did follow a recipe for this and I can highly recommend it! The sponge was light, moist and yet rich and those chocolate shards…yes please! The only thing I changed was using black cherries in syrup rather than kirsch…because chocolate and alcohol are two loves I like to keep separate. I guess I should probably re-name this as a Schwarzwälder neinKirschtorte then.