Hungry in Berlin

A specter is looming over German cuisine: the specter of monosodium glutamate.

Now, it’s not my intention to get into the usual thrash about whether MSG is bad for you or not. You’re you, and only you can answer that question. Me, I’m very reactive to the stuff and always have been. Further, I have high blood pressure (as might you: it has no symptoms, and a huge percentage of the population has it, undiagnosed), and the sodium in MSG sets it off. I managed to live through three weeks in Japan, eating it, most likely, three meals a day, seven days a week (except for the day I found an Indian restaurant near my hotel and decided that sounded like a good idea — although it, too, might have used MSG).

MSG, despite its fearsome-looking name, is a natural side-product of the fermentation of soy to make soy sauce, and a chemical which occurs naturally in seaweeds, most notably kelp, or what the Japanese call kombu, one of the two ingredients (the other is shaved bonito) used in making dashi, the broth at the basis of Japanese cuisine. It has traditional uses, and is at the center of the sensation (or fifth taste) called umami.

That’s not what’s bothering me. What’s bothering me is how it’s taken over German cuisine in the past 20 years. Read the rest of this entry »

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

I like the spice. Interpret that how you will; but in this case, I’m talking about Thai curries. I’m a fan of the green, not the hottest, often rich and balanced so you can taste the ingredients (usually lemongrass, galanga, roasted coriander seeds, and more) as well as the chilis.

At home, I often try to use the varieties you can buy in most Asian markets, here and in the States. They’re similar to each other, coming in big plastic tubs, in red, green or yellow. The Mae Ploy brand I have here (made by the “Thep Padung Porn Coconut Company” – quite obviously serving curry fetishists around the world) is like most: very spicy, good flavor, but a little too sharp to use as is. Obviously I use coconut milk, but it also benefits from a little fish sauce and sometimes a little sugar to balance the taste.

But perhaps no longer. While browsing with friends at a Thai market and back-room cafeteria in Charlottenburg, I stumbled on a little plastic container of obviously fresh green curry. No label, no ingredients, just a green glob of paste in a plastic dish. Just the way it should be.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Scharf,” or spicy, is a relative term here in Berlin (and perhaps in other parts of Germany, too.) Most of the Asian stir-fry dishes I’ve tried that come with a “scharf” warning tend to lack the fire one might expect when eating in San Francisco or London. Which is why I raised a skeptical eyebrow at a Saturday Kollwitzplatz farmers’ market sign, posted next to a pile of these freaky red beauties, that included the warning: “super-scharf.” Super? I queried. Just how super? A tad more than a jalapeño, I was told — which is hot but not fuego, for sure. But good enough for this evening’s corn salsa and cuban black beans. The problem is, I was so Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, yes, Mr. Gernot Katzer, whoever you are, YOU, you spice up my life.

So, the story. The scene: three years ago, Hamburg, the would-be in-laws, my turn to cook, “oh, but he’s zuch a goot kook,” 14 people, new years, me cooking, tagine. Out of my element, out of my country, out of my kitchen, out of my mind. I ask the future mother-in-law if she has tumeric. No dictionary, no computer. She hands me what she/we (blame is not the issue) thought was what I needed. Well, it wasn’t. It was ground saffron. It was a waste of money. It didn’t ruin the meal, but it was a bit “off.”

Moral of the story: get yourself a spice chart. Read the rest of this entry »

If some exquisite little goddess of gluttony were to exist, her name would surely be Vanilla, and she would be a delicate, slim, dark creature in a dress sparkling with tiny perfumed crystals.

- M. Toussaint-Samat, History of Food(1987)

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Ah, yes, vanilla in Germany. You can run around town all day looking for liquid vanilla extract, but it’s not going to do you any good. You just aren’t going to find it. Instead, you’ll find convenient little packages of Vanillinzucker, most widely available in the Dr. Oetker brand pictured on the right. (Dr. Oetker has been compared to the U.S.’s Betty Crocker, but he really existed.)

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So, what is vanilla suger? Pretty much what it sounds like (well….keep reading). If you were to make it at home, you’d take one or two vanilla pods, chop them up, and stir them into a jar full of granulated or confectioner’s sugar. Seal the jar, wait a week for the vanilla to infuse itself in the sugar, and – voilà – you have a supply of vanilla sugar that should keep fresh in a dry, cool space for a few years.

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USE & CONVERSION: Obvious next question: how am I supposed to use this? Well, opinions vary widely on this. In a perhaps overly extensive Internet search, I was able to determine that people have recommended one packet of Vanillazucker as a substitiute for ½ to 2 tsp. of vanilla extract. Even Dr. Oetker’s Web site states that one packet is a substitute for 1 to 2 tsp. That doesn’t really help me a lot. I haven’t spent a lot of time baking, but I have screwed up enough things to believe, as Marco Pierre White professes, that baking is a “culinary science” in which “[a] precise measurement of that ingredient mixed with a certain amount of that ingredient produces this result.” Some might bicker that vanilla is just for flavor and not necessary for the baking process, but I need security when I don my baking apron.

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Sadly, though, that security is not to be found. My suggestion, then, is to go one-for-one (Vanillezucker packet 1:1 tsp. vanilla extract), not get frustrated if it doesn’t turn out right the first time, keep notes, and adjust to taste. A pain, I know, but there you go…

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REAL VANILLA or…WOOD PULP? Oh, but the plot thickens. So, if you live in Germany, you’ll see that there are two types of Dr. Oetker’s vanilla packs. One is called “Vanillezucker” and the other is “Bourbon Vanillezucker.” I wrote to the folks at Dr. Oetker Deutschland to ask them what was in the different packages and how their uses should differ. Amazingly enough (kudos to their PR department!), they wrote me back in two days’ time:

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Reading this, I was a bit confused. And that’s when I went to my trusted pall, The New Food Lover’s Tiptionary, and looked up “vanilla.” The pertinent part:

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“Natural vanillin is a substance intrinsic to the vanilla bean, whereas artificial vanillin is made from wood-pulp by-products…The words ‘vanilla flavouring’ means that a bled of pure and imitation vanillas was used, whereas ‘artificially flavored’ tells you it’s entirely imitation.”

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If you take this (and you can combine the concepts of natural and flavouring from above), what you learn is that, in Germany, this is what you get if you shop at the Extra supermarket around the block from me (in 9g/0.32oz packettes):

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Vanillezucker = wood-pulp by-product = €0.59 for 5

Bourbon Vanillezucker = 50% vanilla/50% wood-pulp by-product = €0.99 for 3

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Stop. Don’t grab your calculator. I already did the math. The real stuff is three times as expensive. But. These are peanuts. Try the (half) real stuff and see if you like it better. And for full real stuff, keep reading.

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Dr. Oetker in America -

Believe it or not, you can find Dr. Oetker vanilla packets in America. And, who knows, you might choose to use them if you have a German recipe or you can’t have alcohol from the vanilla extract or who knows what other reason. You can actually find them in specialty stores and you can order them online. But they have different names. In Canada and the USA (as I learned from another email exchange), this is the conversion:

Vanillezucker = Vanilla Sugar (ingr.: Sugar, artificial flavor)

Bourbon Vanillezucker = Natural Vanilla Sugar (Ingr.: Sugar, natural flavor)

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Free-basing your vanilla bio-style – If you ever want to forget about alcohol-ly extract or sweet vanilla sugar, you can always walk up to your local bio or specialty store and get either real test-tube vanilla beans or vanilla powder (“gemahlen” or “Pulver”). At least in Berlin, these products are much more available than in the places in America I’ve looked. They are a bit pricier than their fully- or half- fake cousins and a bit harder to find, but as close to the source as possible. -

Here’s a couple useful conversions from here:

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1 vanilla bean = ca. 1 tbsp. pure vanilla extract

1 (2-inch) length = ca. 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1 tsp. vanilla powder = ca. 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

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For ordering vanilla products in Germany, DeliciousDays recommends Gewürzhandel Bernhard Ulrich.

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“Essentially Vanilla” - Oh, and by the way, you might also see another Dr. Oetker product in North America that has two small vials of “Vanilla Essence.” Having only artificial flavor, this is not to be confused with “pure vanilla essence,” which is free-based (distilled and concentrated) vanilla. In Germany, as far as I can tell, the artificial product in vials is called Butter-Vanille Vanille Aroma. Sounds icky to me.

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Hope this has been helpful. Happy baking!

For some reason, Germans seem to think that mayonnaise is candy. It’s not: it’s an emulsion made of eggs, oil, mustard, and lemon juice. No sugar. But one of the first things newcomers here discover is the wide variety of things labelled “Salat,” which would seem to be “salad.” Instead, it seems to mean “sweet mayonnaise-y glop,” be it Eiersalat, Fleischsalat, Wurstsalat, Nudelsalat, or whatever.

Germans just like their mayonnaise sweet, which explains the success of “Miracel Whip,” pronounced mir-a-CELL vip.” (Spelling it like English would get it pronounced “mir-OCK-luh.”) And while this can be okay in prepared potato salad, it just doesn’t cut it for most of the uses Anglo-American folks find for it, most notably on sandwiches or as a base for 1000 Island dressing.

In France, I discovered Maille Mayonnaise de Dijon. It’s not, as you might think, that weird substance marketed as “Dijonnaise” (although Maille does sell one of those), but, rather, the best mayonnaise I’ve found over here, with just a tiny tang of their famous Dijon mustard at the end. And, having schlepped it all the way back here in my luggage two years ago, I found it, not only at Galleries Lafayette (where you’d expect it), but at a couple of the normal grocery chains in Berlin.

To celebrate, I made myself a PLT one afternoon: Pfefferbauch, lettuce, and tomato. Pfefferbauch is a hard-to-find coldcut that’s not a million miles away from bacon, but more like salami in texture. It was a perfect American-French-German combo.

Incidentally, yes, Hellmann’s is available at those awful “American” sections in department store food sections, but it’s very expensive. Best Foods tried, through their German partner, to introduce it to Germany a few years ago, but discontinued it after a couple of months without really trying to sell it, although they had television ads about Herr Hellmann bringing his mother’s recipe to the New World and everything.

And anyway, it’s time to make your contribution to ending the seemingly-ongoing Franco-Prussian War around here. Check it out.

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