Hungry in Berlin

And no, it’s not the misspelled name of a northern Berlin kiez. Danielle, a recent transplant from Seattle, writes:

I had a question. Can one find panko anywhere in Germany? I looked in the asianmarkt near my house in Charlottenburg but didn’t see it. I have not tried KaDeWe because I am worried about the expense.

A brief primer: Panko is Japanese for breadcrumbs, often used for dishes such as tonkatsu (breaded and fried pork cutlets). Panko is lighter and flakier than the typical “western” breadcrumb and fries up super-crunchy.

I’m bummed to hear that your local Asiamarkt didn’t have panko; most of the outlets I’ve been to have it. Try our favorite Asiamarkt Vinh Loi in Wedding (or try the Charlottenburg outlet at Ansbacher Str. 16, if you’re not feeling like a long day on the U-bahn) or perhaps even the Asiamarkt at Alexanderplatz, across from the Galleria Kaufhof (which also carries it, I’ve been told). It will usually be grouped with other Japanese items (look for the unrefrigerated mayonnaise with the funny picture of a kewpie doll, that’s a sure give-away). When in doubt, try asking for “japansiche Semmelbrösel” (that’s breadcrumbs) and see where it gets you.

And wise choice with KaDeWe — fun, but always pricey.

I’ll just start off by saying: Aimee’s carnitas are good. There’s maybe nothing I miss more than a basic hot fried pork burrito in San Francisco. It’s terrible for you. But so delicious; and these channeled that loveliness surprisingly well.

But you can’t have carnitas without a little spice, and good tortillas. It is possible to buy salsa here in Berlin, but it tends to fall more into the category of what my mother used to call “taco sauce.” Red, vaguely tomato-based sauce, with a little spice, but no real flavor.

Once summer rolls around, making a raw tomato salsa might be more feasible. And if anyone finds tomatillos, well, let me know and I’ll buy you all the beer you can drink. But for now, since most of the tomatoes we get here aren’t spectacular (even mid-summer), I recommend a roasted tomato-chipotle salsa. Brings out the flavor nicely, even if there’s barely any to start with.

Here’s one good recipe, with a tip of the hat to Heidi Swanson and her 101 Cookbooks site.
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Gray winter days call for baked apple crumble, a topping otherwise known as “streusel” here in Deutschland. It’s a simple concept: “streusel” means crumble. Streusel (not to be confused with “strudel,” the super-thin pastry dough) is essentially a lazy pie “dough” that never quite gets its act together, baking crisp yet crumbly over fruit or cake. To make a streusel topping, all you need is flour, butter and sugar, and perhaps a touch of spice. The American and British versions of crumble tend to be a bit more, well, crumbly than the German versions — German recipes seem to call for more sugar (and a bit of egg), which makes the crumble more of a crunchy (and keeps the topping on the cake, rather than the table or your lap). I’m really more of a fan of the messy, brown-sugary and cinnamon (think coffee cake) kind of crumble, which goes especially well with baked fruit. You don’t need to do much: peel, core and chop some apples or other fruit that bakes well. Assemble a streusel: there’s suggestions for recipes here, and here, and here. (I added some granola and chopped hazelnuts to mine, for the crunch factor.) Sprinkle the streusel on top of your fruit and bake until the fruit’s bubbly and the streusel’s browned and slightly crunchy. Not a bad way to pass yet another gray Berlin day, eh?

Short Version: Eier Plätzchen = Vanilla Wafers

Long Version: My wife is a very, very s’phisticated women…a Hamburger, born with pearls rundum her neck…unless it has to do with her tastes in literature, men or food. The other day, before we went to a dinner party with a few compadres up the strasse, I asked my frau: “What should we mit?” Having spent a year in rural Ohio as an exchange student, she (naturally) responded: “Banana pudding.” Hmmm. My initial thought: “Well, schnooks, where the ‘ell am I s’posed to find the one key ingrediant — vanilla wafers?” Well, ladies and gentlemen, believe it or not, as I later discovered, you will find among the cookies in your local grocery store something called “Eier Plätzchen.” These are exactly the same as vanilla wafers.

The only sad thing to report is this: After making what I thought was some arschtretende banana pudding, my wife said: “Well, this isn’t how they do it at Magnolia‘s.” Ugh.

I’m a little late to the Christmas cookie-making party, but for heaven’s sake — it was -8 degrees this morning. What else can one do but bake to warm up the blasted apartment? But before I get ahead of myself here, first, some good news for Yankee bakers: eagle-eye HIB contrib John spied this lovely bag of brown sugar (see photo) at our Asia Markt on Kopenhagner str. It’s the first we’ve found in the hauptstadt. Not to be confused with granulated, or “natural” brown sugar, this is the soft, moist and packable brown sugar used in lots of cookie recipes and sometimes barbecue sauces — and apparently is also key in Thai cooking (news to me, but explains the packaging.) Our bag of light brown sugar is the real deal, if not a bit rustic — we found a few small, dark chunks of sugar amid the fluffy stuff inside. Didn’t seem to bother the cookies a bit.

So to celebrate the new year (and the cold weather), here’s a quick recipe for chocolate “flake” cookies that use one hard-to-find item (brown sugar) and one re-purposed German item (“raspel Schokolade,” or chocolate flakes.) Thin layers of chocolate flakes melt together to create a cookie that appears practically stuffed with chocolate. It rules.

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From the Department of Substitutes: It’s the time of year for gingerbread. I’m a fan of Pfefferkuchen, and don’t even get me started on Swedish Pepparkakor; but a big tray of hot American-style gingerbread is hard to beat. Only trouble is, you need molasses.

I’ve read here and there on line that Goldsaft makes a marvelous substitute. You’ll typically see this in yellow containers in the honey section of the grocery store, produced by a company called Grafshafter; it’s a cooked and concentrated sugar beet syrup, often used straight on bread instead of butter, or in baking as a sweetener. So I gave it a try, using the regular version, rather than the Karamell (a different mixture of fruit sugar, grape sugar, and sucrose).

The stuff itself is very molasses-y in texture, smooth and thick and very sweet. Very, very sweet. But it doesn’t have quite the burnt caramelized taste that I’m used to. Without any guidance, I used a one-for-one substitution ratio for the molasses in this gingerbread recipe here, which wound up being more Goldsaft than I actually had in the container I’d bought; so I filled in with honey.

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