Separate Tables at the Fennel Blossom Cafe

 

While checking over the fennel today I noticed two little customers perched close to each other, a honeybee and a ladybug.

I know what the bee is up to--snagging some nectar for the honey making chores. But what about the ladybug? Do insects ever hang out just for the beauty of a particular place and for the sheer enjoyment of being there? Was the ladybug indulging in a little aromatherapy? We once noticed our cat Prima snoozing face down in the rosemary, so I suppose it's possible.

Since I planted the fennel it's grown quite large, well over six feet high. But I haven't harvested much of the actual bulb yet. Strange, since I love fennel. It makes the best summer salad, thinly shaved into a bowl with equally thinly sliced red onion and tossed in a light vinaigrette. Chopped and stirred into a pot of pasta sauce, fresh fennel bulb makes it decidedly richer.

No, I've been too busy enjoying the rest of the plant, snipping the fronds to go into salads and for garnish. And harvesting the seed, which tastes so very fine. I was amazed the first time I brought in some of the seed and used it to cook. We all know that spices in the grocery have been sitting around for who-knows-how-long?, and that they usually aren't the best for the job. But the intensity of those fennel seeds was a wonder. I toasted some in a dry pan, ground them and tossed them into some vegetable beef soup, along with some of the fresh fennel. I could have charged myself for dinner that night! It was fine!

In just a few weeks those dainty little flowers will give way to a new batch of seed...

...which will doll up dishes both sweet and savory. These same seeds that give cookies personality will add richness to sausage. And appeal to tastes as different as those I envision of the honeybee and the ladybug.

Week #11 German

Okay, so German food isn't going to win any awards as the world's sexiest cuisine. There's meat, potatoes, meat, cabbage, meat, fish, meat, bread. And more meat. And more bread. And strudels and noodles and bier, oh my! Yeah, I know Germany makes some fine wines, but they're just not the first thing you think of when someone says, "Hey, let's go get some German food."

This assessment is not fair. But it's easy--stereotypes always are (hah! Look at that. I just stereotyped stereotypes--and it was easy!). Germany is made up of 16 states that cover an area that's somewhere between the size of California and Nevada, so a truly representative sampling involves a lot more than one trip to one restaurant in Los Angeles. That's all I have to work with right now, so it's a point of departure, not the whole shebanginenerinenen.

Himself had other plans that night, so I hooked up with our friends Brian and Kevin and went to The Red Lion in Silver Lake. Brian spent his junior year of college in Germany, and this place takes him back to those salad days (although I'm betting salad didn't figure into them very much!). I've also found that a lot of the area's German residents love The Red Lion for the food as well as for the brews and the atmosphere, so I figured we'd get a decent representation of German chow there.

I tend not to like beer I can read through, so I ordered their schwarzbier, which quite literally means "black beer." It's dark like my favorite, Guinness, but slightly sweet. I prefer the Irish stout, but this black lager was still a good accompaniment to the meat, er, the meal. (It's helpful when writing about German food that meal and meat are only one letter off!)

sausage platter: three kinds of sausages with German mustard, pickles & peppers

We started with a trio of sausages, sweet-and-sour pickles, surprisingly hot peppers and a good sturdy mustard. The German sausage most people seem familiar with is the bratwurst, on the right, which is a standard of tailgate parties and backyard events. It's larger and not as dense as its companions, the rich and smoky bockwurst in front, and the knockwurst, the smaller, spicier one to the left. I'm thinking that someday a sausage tour of Germany is in order. Each region has at least a few sausages that are distinct from all the rest, and I wouldn't mind trying them all.

 

detail: This basic white bread was really satisfying. I could have eaten at least two platters of those sausages with a basket of  bread and maybe an additional schwarzbier.

I love highly seasoned food, bordering on herb-and-spice chaos, so the sausages were my favorite item of the evening. I've certainly had more aggressively seasoned food than German sausages, but compared to the entrées, the sausages were spice-happy. As satisfied as we would have been to just order a few more platters of sausage, we knew we had to wade further into the menu.

Beef Rouladen

Kevin's beef rouladen involved two rolls of boiled beef stuffed with onions, pickles and bacon. The generous blanket of gravy helped moisten the boiled meat, which dries out when you cook it in water because all the fat stays behind in the water. The rouladen was dense but flavorful. It was served with potatoes and red sauerkraut, rounding out a hearty meal to eat before you put in a day's physical labor.

 

Schweinebrauten

"Brauten" essentially means to braise, that is, to cook a piece of meat slowly on a low temperature. It's the best way to make a tough piece of meat tender. To my mind, tough meat that's been treated well is more agreeable in flavor and texture than some tender cut you don't have to work with (I'm sure there are parallels to be drawn here with human beings!). Brian and I delved into two different types. My schweinebrauten was two generous slabs of roast pork loin that were blanketed in what seemed to be the same gravy as that on Kevin's beef roulade. Mine too was served with mashed potatoes and a kraut that was only mildly tangy. I always steel my tonsils for sauerkraut, so they and I were surprised--and a little disappointed--not to get that acidy jolt we anticipated.

 

 Sauerbrauten with Spätzle

Typically, sauerbrauten is parked in a strong, vinegary marinade for three to four days before cooking. That didn't seem to be the case here, as Brian's had almost no detectable acidic flavor to it. Maybe they were making concessions to the non-German patrons? I don't know, but the meat was really, really mild. The spätzle, though, was wonderful. Brian said that those delicate little noodles were his own personal German comfort food. I can see why--they're soft and warm and inviting.

Spätzle was devised in southern Germany, which is the closest part to Italy, from whence all those lovely noodles come. So this is the German take on the noodle (some Germans attribute this particular food to ancient Roman occupation). Spätzle, though, is very eggy and made from a batter, not from a dough, which makes for a softer, more luscious noodle. This is making me want to go mix up some spätzle batter for dinner tonight. Or for right now. It's great tossed with browned butter and garnished with fried fresh sage leaves.   

 Schwarzwalder Kirchetorte: Black Forest Cherry Cake

For dessert we shared a piece of schwarzwalder kirchetorte. It's one of the first desserts I learned to make in culinary school. In fact, I can make it more easily than I can pronounce it. This one was not heavily imbibed with kirchwasser or any other liquor that we could detect, probably because in the United States people tend to frown on their children getting twirly on dessert. Still, chocolate, cherries and whipped cream.....mmmmm..... What's not to love about that combo?

When you think about it, if you grew up on the East Coast, in the Midwest, in the South--actually, most anywhere in the United States--chances are your standard meal included meat, potato, a veg or two and some bread. That's very German, very English. Growing up in the rural South, I ate a lot deep-fried this and that. "Spaghetti" was ground beef and tomato sauce poured over noodles that had been broken up before cooking, for ease of eating. No seasonings beyond salt and pepper. And I didn't have pizza until I was in college. So while the fare we had on this outing was good, it wasn't some new and exciting combination of flavors. While I'm not of German stock, this food had a familiarity to it.

There's one thing to be said for these less glamorous foods--they're more likely to be your comfort food than something pretty and fussy and exotic. While the version of spaghetti I grew up with was in no way authentic--and really quite bland--I can envision times when it would be quite pleasurable to shovel in a bowlful during a time of stress or loss. The same can be said for a plate of spätzle or a slice of schweinebrauten and a mound of mashed potatoes. Sometimes this is really all we need.

Home Grown

As I prepare to head home to rural Tennessee for Christmas, my thoughts turn to our family farm and the food traditions with which I grew up. Because as a farm girl I was well acquainted with the cycle of birth, life and death so early and so intimately, I’d say it has made me less squeamish than most when it comes to such matters, and it has taught me that it’s possible to develop respect and regard for an animal I know will end up on my plate.

This is the time of year when we’d select one fattened hog and one fattened steer to be butchered, packaged and labeled, then divvied up among the deep freezers of my grandparents, my uncle’s family and my family. This represented the bulk of the meat upon which we’d feed until the next winter.

After all the tidier pieces of meat had been put away, on a cold, cold night, we’d all convene in the smokehouse to make sausage. My mother would sew casings out of old flour sack dishrags (recycling on top of recycling!) and bring them out to the smokehouse, where my father and brother were grinding the hog trimmings with fat and seasonings. Then I, with my tiny hands, would take the squishy ground mixture, redolent of fresh pork, pepper and fennel, and stuff it into the newly-stitched casings. And my uncle would bind the ends with twine and hang the brand-new sausage with the hams to while away the months until it was needed.

I was an adult before I ever bought prepackaged meat in a grocery, or for that matter, cans of tomatoes, green beans, black-eyed peas or relish. Those things had always come out of the deep freezer and the stash in the hall cabinet. And when I finally did start bringing these items home from the grocery, they were never as satisfying as those I’d had a hand in putting up as a child.

This represents a vanishing way of life that organizations like SlowFood are working hard to reacquaint people with. Perhaps it isn’t practical for everyone to raise all their own food, but to the extent that we can, we should try. Even if it’s just a couple of pots of herbs on the kitchen windowsill, every little bit we grow for ourselves reconnects us with our initial bond with the earth from which we came.