(Not) Knackwurst In Beer

Ein bier, bitte!

Or two... One for the sausages, one to enjoy whilst preparing the sausages. This recipe for Knackwurst in Beer from Grandma's Cookbook resulted in quite possibly the most tender, flavorful bratwurst that any of us had tasted! We actually prepared them for guests (no, all of those brats below were not just for us), along with sauerkraut and kartoffelsalat. Do you think we remembered to take pictures of anyone actually enjoying the feast?

Silly fräuleins.

So sure, this is a bit more involved than just throwing some wieners straight from the package onto the grill.  But it's Oktoberfest, live a little!  Buy a whole bunch of sausages - knackwurst, mettwurst, bratwurst, whatever you can get your hands on - and invite the gang over for your own Oktoberfest celebration, wherever you may be.

We used this beer from Trader Joe's for the marinade:

And this bratwurst from Whole Foods:

...As well as some brats from their meat counter, but we won't show you the pictures of them in prep because, let's be honest, raw sausages just ain't pretty. But here they are grilling away on the barbie!

After grilling, they were all thrown back into the pot with the marinade to boil away.  We actually doubled the batch of marinade to accommodate all of the brats and tried our hardest, as the recipe suggested, to let the liquid boil down completely. This ended up taking much longer than anticipated, and we had a lot of hungry folks, so we eventually gave into our bellies' demands and pulled them off with a bit of liquid left.  And that was perfectly fine, we don't think they could have been any better.

The kartoffelsalat (potato salad) and sauerkraut pictured at the top will be  featured in upcoming Oktoberfest posts, so stay tuned!

Schnitzel Notes:

* Adapt this recipe to the amount of sausages required simply by making sure there's enough beer to cover them. We ended up with about 12 sausages and used 2 bottles of beer, with 2 cloves of garlic and 1 decent-sized onion. We originally planned on only 8 sausages and one beer, but were able to adjust on the fly.

* After marinating, we threw the brats on the BBQ until nice and brown, then transferred them back to the kitchen to simmer in the beer mixture.  Feel free to sauté them instead, and let us know how they turn out!

* We sliced up an extra onion, tossed it with a little olive oil in some tin foil, and grilled it alongside the brats to serve, as shown in the photo above. 

* Horseradish and German mustard, anyone?

Oktoberfest!

Gmiatlichkeit:

(Gemütlichkeit)
Germans love to sing about "Gemütlichkeit" but there's simply no direct translation. Imagine the way you feel when you're enjoying a fresh beer, delicious food, and great conversation in a warm bar. That's "Gemütlichkeit".

(This quote was taken from the following random Oktoberfest website: http://cvb311.aisites.com/imd110/site2/index.htm)  

And gmiatlichkeit - or gemütlichkeit, whichever you fancy - is what Ms. Schnitzel is going to attempt to offer over the next 15 days for Oktoberfest 2014! 

Yes, please! Hacker-Pschorr is one of the six official Oktoberfest breweries.

A little history... 

The first Oktoberfest celebration was held in 1810 when the royal couple, Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese, were married. Apparently they were so into each other that they wanted the entire population of Munich to be a part of the nuptial festivities! Sounds like quite a wedding reception, doesn't it? Imagine what those two must think now, looking down on the 6 million people that gather to celebrate in Munich today!!

The celebration was held on the fields in front of the city gates (back when cities had gates) and the fields were thereafter dubbed "Theresienwiese" after the blushing bride. This has since been abbreviated to Weisn:

Wiesn (Wiese)
Name of the field where Oktoberfest is held each year. Mecca to some. Wiesn to you.
Again, random website quote. 

So we all know what has happened since that initial, fateful five day celebration from October 12-17, right? Bavarians know how to host a party, that's for sure. And so do these girls.

Most of the time.

Hold on to your dirndls and lederhosen, grab your steins and wieners (we're talking mettwurst, bratwurst, knockwurst, even currywurst; get your minds out of the gutter) - off we go!

Revelers enjoying the River Isar in Munich

Fried Potatoes

Guten tag und willkommen to Ms. Schnitzel!

We are keeping things simple today as we are busy preparing some fun and exciting content for our Oktoberfest posts. Busy, busy fräuleins! Check back for all things Oktoberfest from September 20th through October 5th.  

Following this recipe exactly results in deliciously soft and crispy, perfectly browned potatoes like you would find in your favorite mom & pop diner. We cooked them over medium-high heat and flipped them for the first time after about 6 minutes.  Using a mandolin to slice the potatoes made this recipe a breeze, but feel free to pare them as Grandma's Cookbook suggests.

 

We served the Fried Potatoes as part of a larger meal, with Breasts of Chicken Paprika (from the previous post), and they were delicious with the extra sauce from the chicken.  Next time we think we might try them with sautéed or caramelized onions added to the mix.  How could we go wrong with that?

 

Schnitzel Notes:

* We used organic yellow potatoes and they worked great, but feel free to try russets, red skins, or whatever taters suit your fancy!

* We left the skins on the potatoes - bring on those extra nutrients!

* The exact amount of butter that we used is kind of up in the air because we fried them in the same pan in which we seared the chicken in butter, and then just threw an extra tablespoon or two in as they cooked.  Our guess is that we used between 2-3 tablespoons when all was said and done.

Breasts of Chicken Paprika

Glücklich Donnerstag (Happy Thursday) from Ms. Schnitzel!

We are 12 days from the Autumnal Equinox (9 days from Oktoberfest!) and if you're not living in sunny LA, that means grilling season will soon come to an end for all but the bravest. But even here in LaLaLand, the advent of fall and the cooling temperatures inspire cravings for slow-cooked, hearty comfort food. This recipe for Breasts of Chicken Paprika is a rich and delicious dish reminiscent of a slow-cooked stew. 

So little did we know when we embarked on this recipe in hot, sweaty August...
  
Tara skimmed the recipe before shopping and interpreted it as sautéed chicken with a quick pan sauce.  Not so much.  But we all agreed that turning Jen's kitchen into a hot sauna for a couple of hours was well worth it once we were sitting on the patio enjoying it!

We also realized after we began that the original recipe was most likely calling for bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts (all that was available in 1973?), and that it was probably a good call to scale the amount down to about 3 lbs since we opted for boneless, skinless, humanely raised chicken.  

We already had half a 16oz. bag of frozen pearl onions on hand from Trader Joe's that we threw in the pan to sauté first, and found this fun 8oz. bag of Cipolline pearl onions pictured above to make a pound.  If you can get your hands on some Cipolline onions, do it! Everyone LOVED them.  We wish we had a close-up pic of one of these little guys; they're super cute too!

Our final adaptation was to boil down one quart of organic, free-range chicken broth to make roughly 21 oz. of condensed broth. This is a very simple thing to do: Just throw your quart into a sauce pan, turn it up to a manageable boil, and walk away for awhile.  Check back periodically until it's reduced to about 2/3 its original amount (or whatever the recipe calls for). It worked beautifully! Of course you can buy already condensed broth, but in our experience it's not easy to find free-range condensed broth so we did what we had to do.

Ok, it's time to sear your chicken.  Make sure not to skip this step because otherwise your chicken might be dry! No one likes dry chicken.

 

Schnitzel notes:

* The carrots were so delicious, buttery, and velvety that we would double them (at least!) next time

* Fresh pearl onions are definitely tastier than frozen, but the frozen will do just fine if that's what you can get your hands on

* Please make sure to whisk as you add the flour paste; we were momentarily distracted when adding it and ended up with a few accidental spätzle.  Not that that's such a bad thing...

* This recipe made a ton of sauce.  We served this over fried potatoes (next post!) and, speaking of spätzle, Tara and Rob made a whole batch of it to mix with their half of the leftovers for a German version of chicken & dumplings! So good.  

* Spätzle to be featured at a later date

Cheddar-Beer Spread Part 1

Guten tag und willkommen to the first of two posts on Cheddar-Beer Spread!

We always read through our recipes before starting to make sure there aren't any wild cards, such as in this recipe where Grandma's Cookbook instructs us to seal the spread with paraffin wax and keep refrigerated for several weeks…. Wait… What?! We have to wait several WEEKS to sink our crackers into this?! Unacceptable.  So we looked into other similar recipes online, and without variation the instructions were to leave the spread (sans wax) in the fridge overnight.  The conclusion we came to was that we simply had to make two batches (there's no such thing as too much Cheddar-Beer Spread, right?) and, for the sake of authenticity, try the paraffin wax method as well as the overnight method and compare the difference.  What a delicious experiment! In Part 2 of this post, we will let you know how the aged spread turns out.
 

We think, as with any simple recipe, the key is to use high-quality ingredients so the flavors really shine.  We also look for pasture-raised and humanely treated animal products, so our version was not exactly cheap, but we both agree the expense of using a high quality German beer and Kerrygold cheddars was totally worth it. Kerrygold, you ask?  Isn't that Irish?  Well, we couldn't find any German cheddars, which we're pretty sure Germany is NOT known for, so we thought to ourselves, "Irish cheddar will do!"  And Kerrygold's website assures us that all cows are raised on lush, green Irish pastures.

Yay, happy cows!

Since we were making a double batch, we needed two 7oz blocks of cheese. We decided to try a little mix and bought Kerrygold's Reserve Cheddar and Red Leicester Cheese. On a side note, while perusing the cheese counter we witnessed a young man without a cart or basket walking around the store creeping on unsuspecting female shoppers. 

Oh, LA.

Afterwards, we went to our favorite local beer store to pick out a German beer (or three) and that was its own adventure. Make sure to look for our future posts on this awesome store and it's massive German beer selection!

Now that we have our ingredients all that's left to do is start mixing, so get your bowl and spoon ready!

This is a fairly simple recipe to throw together, but the flavor is everything you could ask for and more out of a cheese spread - at least the way we made it. The first batch went over so well we had a hard time not eating the entire jar in one sitting! 

Stay tuned for part 2 ...

Strawberry Bavarian Cream

Willkommen to Ms. Shnitzel’s first ever blog post!  

We decided to start on a sweet note for a couple of reasons.  First of all, this dessert is just too pretty to hold back!  More importantly, strawberries are still in season here in California (depending on what source you choose to believe, but our strawberries were absolutely perfect).  That season will sadly soon be over, so we wanted to showcase this delightful fruit while we still can. 

Did you know that strawberries are not technically berries?  We know, shocking.  But Google it, it’s true!  Berry or not, this dessert which was so aptly described by Jen as “a strawberry cloud” in her mouth was a hit with all four of the mouths that tasted it. 

And now, on to the recipe.  We decided to cut the original recipe in half and we're glad that we did.  Our adaptation made six generous portions, and it should be noted that the “cloud” texture really comes through after that first night in the fridge.  The cream is still delicious over the following few days, but it definitely loses some of it's fluffy texture and the strawberry liquid starts to separate from the cream.  It can obviously be stirred back in, but be warned: it’s not quite the same.  So eat it up, and keep how many people you are serving in mind to determine which recipe proportions to use.

If you were looking closely, you might have noticed a discrepancy in the proportion of sugar we used.  No, it’s not because we have a super-sweet-tooth... quite the opposite actually.  When we got to the sugar, we were so busy taking photos that we forgot to cut it in half and thought we were using less sugar than the recipe called for!  Fortunately for us, it was still delicious and not overly sweet, but feel free to cut back to ½ cup if you are following our adaptation.

Now, start hulling your (non)berries!

Schnitzel Notes: 

* mint is a really nice touch of flavor, chiffonade your garnish and throw it in! 
* we used a stick blender and roughly pureed to leave chunks of strawberries
* this could work with frozen strawberries in a pinch...let us know if you try it?
* try this as a fruit dip with your fruit of choice..YUM!