Hello! Welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook! I’m so glad you’re here!
This week, I’m going to be doing my salute to German food! I’ve got a good dose of German in my gene pool and when October rolls around, and the weather starts getting chilly, I start thinking about snoodling up with hearty German comfort food. And while Oktober Fest is mostly done, it’s still a great time enjoy some delicious German food.
But first, a story 🙂
My grandmother, Memaw, was German. In the mid 1920’s, Memaw immigrated from Germany to escape an arranged marriage when she was about 19. She spoke very little English, but was determined to make her way in the United States rather than return to Germany and have to marry someone she described as fat, half-witted and smelly. Ha! She landed in New York City and took a job as a nanny and learned English, then lied her way into a job at Bonwit Teller as a seamstress. Oh sure, she knew how to sew, but had never used an electric sewing machine in her life! Somehow, she figured it out and worked there until she had saved enough money to enter nursing school at Lenox Hill Hospital. She graduated second in her class by taking all of her notes in English, and then translating them into German at night when she got home to study. At Lenox Hill, she met my grandfather, who was a resident in a new area of medicine called “Rontgenology,” today known as radiology. And the rest is history.
Memaw always liked to say that she was an American, but still a little bit German. She was very proud of being an American, but she always maintained a lot of her culture, particularly in traditions around holidays and food.
So…I got a lotta German in me and I do love me some German food, having grown up eating it, particularly when we visited my Memaw. Traditional German food tends to be pretty rich–to warm you up in those cold German winters! But I think more modern interpretations of German food tend to be lighter. In any case, this week, I’ll be exploring some of the more traditional dishes of Germany with you and next week, we’ll be exploring more of the lighter side of German cooking…I hope..!
Traditional German food also tends to be richly spiced, but with what I would call “comfort” spices, like caraway, nutmeg, thyme, juniper berries, cloves and ginger. German food also frequently will feature sweet and sour components, like in this recipe for red cabbage:
German food also frequently leans into rich sauces, such as cream sauce, as in this recipe for creamed spinach:
I love German food and I think this is going to be a very fun week! Tune in tomorrow when I’ll start sharing main dishes. Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
