I have always been puzzled by Germans, as they are not one people at all in cuisine. The Russian Israelite Germans did not eat like the Lowland Israelite Germans as the Highland Israelite Germans never ate like the other groups.
Granted in America, all of them think jello is a food group and a hotdish is something involving cream of something soup, but in reality Germans of different groups will get the oddest expression on their faces when one group starts talking of noodles as that is not German to the other group in the least.
I place here the Russian Germans who were lured to Russia in the Krim and Volga region for farms, and then the Czar decided he wanted a crop of childen for his armies and Stalin followed up by murdering those who did not flee to America.
These are the dumpling and kuchen Germans, and are in this new "always experts" guise being termed what Germans eat. There are hosts of Germans in the midwest who never ate any of this in coming from western Germany.
Green Bean Dumpling Soup
4 cups green beans
2 sliced red potatoes
2 slices of bacon diced
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 tsp black pepper
Dumplings
1 cup flour
2 eggs
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp baking powder
2 egg shells water
Heavy cream to serve
Cook vegetables simmering until tender.
Make dumplings, and bring vegetables to a boil. Using a teaspoon slice off noodles from the bowl and place in boiling water. Noodle are done when they rise to the surface.
Stir in cream, and black pepper and serve.
This recipe like all faux "German" recipes by the experts has nothing to cook the veggies in for liquid. I would chicken or beef broth, as varrying it would give you three different recipes.
(Oh Germans eat soup with things in them. It is Norwegians who eat broth. Germans have no time for eating 12 bowls of broth as it makes your stomach hurt and who has time to eat that long at a meal. German eating is allot of efficiency in lots of fat, lots of compact bread and lots of cream.
A German had a cow for the cream, and they fed the skim and whey to the hogs, and ate all that lard too.)
The Swiss are precise, but the Germans are efficient. Doing things right is not enough to a German, it has to be done efficiently. Outsiders will never understand Germans or German food until they figure that out.
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Glauskies
1 large head of cabbage frozen
2 pounds ground beef
1 1/4 pound ground pork
1 onion
1 3/4 cup instant rice (I would use regular rice boiled and cooled.)
Salt Pepper to taste
1 14 ounce can of sauerkraut, liquid reserved
1 11 ounce can of tomatoe soup
Defrost cabbage and seperate leaves. Mix beef, pork rice and seasonsings. Place about 1/3rd cup of meat mixture into the center of each cabbage leaf. Roll them up.
Place a layer of cabbage leaves into a casserole, and place cabbage rolls steam side down. Spread sauerkraut over cabbage rolls, reserving liquid.
Mix liquid with tomatoe soup and spread on top.
Cover and cook on stove for 2 hours.
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Cucumber Freezer Pickles
12 cucumbers peeled and sliced thinly
1 large white onion thinly sliced
2 tsp salt
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 1/2 cups sugar
Mix cucumbers in salt and allow to sit for 2 hours and then drain.
In saucepan combine vinegar and sugar, bring to boil and dissolve sugar.
Pour and mix into cucumbers, and then freeze in containers.
Allow to thaw to slushy condition and serve. These pickles will keep 6 months frozen or 2 weeks unfrozen refridgerated.
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Butterball Soup
56 ounces of white bread toasted and crumbed
1 pound melted butter
1 1/2 tsp allspice
1 tablespooon salt
1 tablespoon pepper
12 eggs beaten
soup-
1/4 cup butter
1 cup carrots chopped
1 cup onion chopped
1 cup celery chopped
3 - 4 quarts chicken broth
Salt Pepper
16 ounces egg noodles (from dumpling recipe)
3 to 4 pounds of chicken chpped into pieces
Vinegar to taste
For butterballs, in a food processor grind bread to crumbs. Pour in melted butter and stir until coated. Add seasoning.
Mix eggs and cream and add to crumbs, mix well.
Roll into small balls, place on lined cookie sheet, and freeze as this will make 100 balls for other soups.
Use 4 balls per person for soup.
For soup, heat butter in pan, add carrots, onion and celery to saute. Add chicken broth, bring to a boil and simmer.
Return to boil and add frozen butterballs, as it returns to boil, add egg noodles.
Add chicken and heat through.
Add vinegar to individual taste.
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Bierocks
1 1/2 pound ground meat
1 onion chopped
1 small head of cabbage shredded
Salt Pepper
Cook in skillet until done. Set aside to drain.
Cut rectangles of bread dough 1/4 inch thick, 3 by 4 inches and place a mound of the skillet mixture in the center and fold over the dough to form a bun.
Place seam side down on a baking sheet.
Let rise in a warm place 30 to 60 minutes.
Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Brush with butter and serve.
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Knebel and Katoffel (dumplings and potatoes)
2 to 3 red potatoes (so you know the red potatoe is more starchy so it is more "gummy" in texture and that is what every good German expects a potatoe to be.)
2 tablespoons salt
Dumplings
1 cup flour
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
2 egg shells water
(some German recipes in noodles add nutmeg)
Bread topping
2 slices cubed
1/4 cup chopped onion
3 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup heavy cream
Boil potatoes in salt water.
Make dough and in pan, slice off with spoon little dumplings to drop in the boiling potatoe water. Dumplings are done when they float on the surface.
For topping, fry bread cubes and onions in butter until lightly browned.
Drain potatoes and dumplings. Cube potatoes and fry potatoes and dumplings until brown in same skillet.
Place in bowl, cover with heavy cream and top with bread topping.
Being a good German, they would immediately view this recipe and say, "Nine" as the meal would be better to either included ham strips browned, mincemeat browned or bacon fried and crumbled in which the bread and onions would be browned.
Then it would be Schmaks gute!!! as Germans leave nothing in eating to wasted time. Food is to be felt in heavy noodles, heavy cream, butters and fats and meat appearing somewhere as meat is what make a meal and the rest is filler.
*note Mincemeat is not mincedmeat, but minced or finely ground ham. Germans grind everything as they detest tough cuts of meat as stewing things wastes time and energy. Better to make sausages of things and to turn tough ham into mincedmeat than be tortured chewing things for an hour.
OK we end with Schwartzberra Kuchen
The schwartzberra is not black nightshade which is poisonous, but a black berry that is rather tasteless which if you cook it with soda, drain it, add lemon and sugar will taste like blueberries. It is grown in the garden and does grow like a weed as that is what it is.
This recipe has a hot roll mix in a 16 ounce box, but no German would do this, except in America where they think Jello is a food group and every hotdish contains cream of something soup as another food group.
Just use a cobbler recipe for the base, and after pressing it in, (if you need the premix just use prepare it as directed and put half into the baking pan) you put uncooked black berries or blueberries into flour, add 1/4 cup sugar, then spread over the dough......if you are too lazy to find a recipe you could probably get by with the noodle recipe with the nutmeg in it.
Over this poor 1 cup sugar, with cream and eggs.
I assume the other half of the premix ends up on top as a cobbler would do, but this recipe stops there. So I finish it with get a cobbler recipe and......
I would add dashes of cinnamon as berries always are better with cinnamon and if Germans had nutmeg they had cinnamon.
Bake at 40 to 50 minutes.
I grew up with Germans, and they never ate any of this stuff. I did know some Russian Germans though who did the most mesmerizing thing......
I had been left in their charge as Auntie was married to one, as my sister had died, and the parents were off gathering up the belongings or something a second time I think, anyway for dinner we had potatoes which had holes cut in them, and little pork sausages poked into them.
This was all boiled on the stove top and I had never seen anything like it.
First time I had pork sausages and I think it was the first time boiled potatoes did not make me want to gag in having butter on them.
Sour cream on all the above would be propper as you always had sour cream of some sort and if it did not go into Sour Cream Raisin Pudding, then it went on top of things.
Germans burned up like 5000 calories a day working in mills and farms. They always fed heavy and often.
I hate raisins, but that sour cream raisin pudding, even put into a pie is what the Germans I knew did, was make pies and ice cream, was just beyond good.
agtG
