Hungry in Berlin

This summer has seen an outpouring of fresh vegetables like I’ve never seen in 14 summers here. Not only that, the “bio” versions in the outdoor markets are no more expensive — and in some cases cheaper — than the same items in the supermarket.

Making a very rare appearance this year are absolutely fresh green peas. In the past, you’ve been able to get these delightful legumes maybe one year in three or four, and by the time they got to Berlin, the pods were beginning to brown and you had to throw out 10% of the peas inside them. The ones I’ve seen this year are shiny and bursting with fat peas.

The other star of the show is a crop of green beans which are unlike any I’ve seen here previously. Also fat and shiny, they are surprising because, despite their heft, they’re not at all fibrous, and, when properly cooked, give up a wonderfully nutty flavor in addition to the green taste.

I’ve adapted two of my favorite pasta recipes for this joyous occasion, so click away and start boiling some water.

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Alphonso mangos have arrived in Berlin.

If you’re from the United States, you may never have tasted an Alphonso mango. A pale yellow papaya color, the mango has a deep orange, pulpy flesh that you can tell will be more appetizing than those Brazilian greens you find in Plus and Aldi. In India it’s used in the mango products exported to Indian restaurants abroad—juice, ice cream, lassi base—that all taste mysteriously better than what you can buy at home. No wonder: there was a ban on all imports of this special variety to America until last year.

Alphonse mangos (in all their spelling variations) hit the markets in India from March through May. Yet a Pakistani variation has suddenly popped up in Berlin during June, under the trade name of Honigmango.

You won’t find them at your weekly local market, at least not the schmancy one I go to in Charlottenburg, but they’re all over the foreign food shops. The picture is from a Persian food store (also selling merguez!) on Kantstrasse just west of the Charlottenburg S-Bahn. I’ve noticed that some Thai shops in West Berlin have boxes at their checkout counters as well (see the Thai-Viet Markt on Wilmersdorferstrasse), almost as an afterthought.

You can spot the mangos easily: they’re the ones packaged like fragile Christmas tree balls, in tinsel and shredded paper. Don’t be discouraged by the high per-box price; I bargained my man at the Persian shop down to 1.50 last week for a perfectly ripe Alfonso clone and 1 euro for a smaller one.

The exotic flavor is worth the splurge. Try it with yogurt or quark: the juices get all over the place when you cut the thing, and you won’t want to let them go to waste.

We’d been hearing about it for years: a huge Vietnamese market somewhere in the deep east, where the freshest herbs and vegetables you could want for your Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese cooking were available, and the space was dotted with lunch-stands serving many kinds of phô, the famous beef-and-noodle soup. The question was, where was it?

Which was exactly the question we found ourselves asking yesterday noon, as four of us, in two cars, in the wilds on the border of Lichtenberg and Marzahn, pored over cell-phones and GPS units, looking for this place one of us had scrupulously researched on the Internet. As it turned out, we’d found where it had been, but where was it now?

Eventually, an answer bubbled out of cyberspace: the word Herzbergstrasse appeared on a cell-phone, and buttons were pressed, speculation was tossed around, and eventually our caravan made its chaotic way towards the Dong Xuan Center, another planet in the Berlin cosmos.

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One of the things I struggled for years to find in this city was good fresh pasta. For a while, there was a place near where I worked in Charlottenburg called Ali Baba Pizza (I certainly think of Ali Baba when I think of Italy, don’t you?) that would sell good ravioli and tortellini out of the back of the store, like it was dope or something. Sometimes their stuff showed up at miscellaneous Italian delis, and then it vanished.

This seemed to be the way it worked: you’d find a good supply of the stuff and then it would vanish. There was no trouble getting it in restaurants, but for home use, it was hopeless. The stuff in bags that Buitoni and other commercial manufacturers like Rana was good as far as it went (although some of the Rana stuff had MSG in it), but it never really got al dente: it was either gummy from the git-go or it had a sort of industral hardness that didn’t go away.

Then, one day, I was at the market in Hackescher Markt on a Thursday and discovered the Pasta Ladies. That’s not their name: their name is Nudel & Co. I call them the Pasta Ladies because they’re all women, and from what I can tell, all their employees are women. They usually have about eight kinds of ravioli, five or six kinds of tortellini, two of tortellacci (huge fist-sized tortellini, usually with very exotic fillings), and a few other fresh Italian shapes. They also have a couple of kinds of Maultaschen, occasional Knödel, Schupfnudeln, and Spätzle for you Swabian food-lovers.

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It’s enough to make a Californian giddy. Our local Aldi (and perhaps other outlets, too?) is starting to stock more and more items from Trader Joe’s — the slightly upscale but still super-cheap grocer based in the U.S., which is owned, curiously, by Aldi. (For those unfamiliar with the grocer — imagine a small, quality bioladen with Lidl/Aldi prices. That’s Trader’s.) Perhaps these simple items just fell off the boat and then off the loading truck on to one of Aldi’s many tasteful pallet displays, but I’m hoping it’s a sign of more good things to come.

“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 »

I was on other business in Schöneberg yesterday when a market found me. I was walking down tiny little Mansteinstr., not far from the Yorckstr. S-Bahn stop, when I noticed a whole lot of trucks and people. Imagine my surprise to find a thriving market, populated mostly by Turks, stretching out over a couple of blocks by the side of the tracks. I’d stumbled onto the Crellestr. Market.

This was a food-intensive market, featuring a bounty of vegetables like I haven’t seen since I was last at the famous Turkish market on Maybachufer — only this one wasn’t nearly as crowded. Which isn’t to say it wasn’t crowded, because it was.

What I saw there was a huge amount of late-season berries, mostly strawberries and raspberries, with a few pathetic-looking blueberries, and some nice late-season melons Read the rest of this entry »

Man, I am so happy that I took up a friend’s invitation to check out the Wittenbergplatz market today. What a color explosion! Pink tomatoes, purple beans, yellow/white/green squash, red radishes, tan potatoes, the aptly named rainbow chard…and on and on. This is a fantastic market (at least in this season). One: the food comes straight from the farms of Brandenburg. Second: it is all about food. There are no souvenirs to be found; just amazing meat, cheese, hot food, and produce vendors. And people with some serious dirt under there fingers.

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The tomatoes were out of sight. There were so many varieties, shapes, and shades. I waited in line for a long time to get my hand on some, but man was it worth it. Three kilos of just gorgeous tomatoes for a little more than €6! That is incredible. I brought them home and made a cold tomato sauce pasta (from here), and it was just unbeatably fresh tasting. If you cook the recipe, make sure to let them sit and really let the flavors meld.

Berries – and good looking, unmushy ones – were in full abundance, but the prices seemed about 20% higher than I’ve seen them elsewhere.

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Summer squash was ubiquitous in amazing numbers and types, the most beautiful of which were the green- and white-striped pattypans.

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A couple things caught my eye for their beauty, but I need to go research them more. For example, what are these purple beans all about? And these things called Mirabellen? My little helper book book tells me that this stone fruit (aka “yellow plum” or “cherry plum”) is “sweet, but not acidic enough to make it very interesting when eaten raw. It does, however, make delicious tarts and preserves.” Anyone have a recipe? They look so good; I’d love to try them out.

Two more things: (1) the vendors were extremely nice. Special gratitude to the potato guy who really spent some time educating me about some of the different potato types (see future post). (2) The prepared food was very German, but good. There was a large selection of sausages, potatoes, rotisserie chicken, Kartoffelnpuffer (potato pancakes with dips, such as apple sauce), etc. And they seemed very fairly priced, unlike a few other places I know. Here’s a nice shot of a Schmalzbrötchen for you!

(jw)

A drizzling day for Hackescher Markt’s market. (Say that ten times!) A thin crowd and a number of empty stalls. Even without the rain, I think it’s fair to say that the Saturday-version of this market (when compared to the Thursday version) is not worth any special trips. For one, most of the good stalls head up to Kollwitzplatz, where they get the bigger-spending locals. Second, it’s become far too touristy. There are too many stalls with jewelry, ladies’ bags, ceramics, felt hats, and those ubiquitous printed-on-canvas “paintings” of Berlin. And, regarding the edibles, it would seem that some of the small-scale vegetable sellers are being pushed-aside by larger vendors wearing their “small vendor” hats. Look for dirt under the finger nails.

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Ok, to the food. Lots of berries…berries, berries, berries. Strawberries still looking mushy and you can play the sucker game by paying €1.95 for 500g at this stall or €2.95 for 500g two meters down, even though I saw them taken off the same truck. Lots and lots of beautiful blueberries (Heidelbeeren, i.e., not wild Blaubeeren). The bio ones are expensive (€2.90/250g or €5.50/500g), but look burstingly beautiful. The true beauty of the market today was a pile of purple grapes from Italy. Wow (and yikes at €4.90/kg!). And the bio-beauty sash goes to an amazing bunch of carrots with a strange strawberry tint.

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Complaints aside, there are a few neat things at this market that I haven’t seen up the street at Kollwitzplatz. For one, there are a few bread-stands with large assortments of fantastic looking loaves, especially those of Soluna (which has a store here in Kreuzberg). And a stand selling really beautiful “Arabic Sweets” called Habibi, with an assortment of Baklawas and Maamuls. Honey heaven.

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As a last note, I didn’t see many green beans here today, but Ed says they are aplenty, cheap, and fantastic. (jw)

This is the first in a series of market reports, in which Hungry In Berlin visits the city’s outdoor markets to see what’s fresh and what’s a bargain. Today’s report is from Kollwitzplatz.

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Yellow squash: rare, but beautiful – and expensive at €2.50/ kg. Beets running at €1.90/ bunch (usually 3) and really quite nice, as it was in a cold soup I made this week.

Most-appetizing prize goes to the peas, though they were in short supply. (Why do they seem so difficult to find, unless you head to one of the Turkish markets?) And they’re dear at €2.95/500g. Stone fruits – peaches, nectarines, apricots, and plums – are bulging out of their crates and even coming from Germany, rather than (what was available earlier) from Spain and Italy. Berries (mostly) from Germany are – finally! – everywhere, and perhaps the rumors of a rain-busted berry season were unfounded. Cherries at €2.95/500g and sour cherries (pies, people! Be American, and give me a piece!) at €1.50/500g. Strawberry prices have gone down a bit (now €1.95/500g), but they looked slightly past-prime and mushy.

Prettiest is the purple garlic, though way out of my reach at €1/piece. Most exciting appearance, for me at least, is sweet corn, but €2.50 for three relatively small ears seems a bit much. Wondering where all the beautiful rainbow chard went.

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(Note: We’re always looking for volunteer reporters from Berlin’s other markets, such as those at Wittenbergplatz, Maibachufer, Winterfeldplatz, and the Rotes Rathaus. If interested, drop us a line.)

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