Week 46 - Potatoes

The problem with a theme like potatoes is that we love potatoes, which means there are too many great-sounding dishes to choose from! When this theme came up, the first thing that came to mind during these cooler days was a warm potato salad, and after some looking around, I decided on Swabian kartoffelsalat from the southwestern area of Germany (based on this recipe from Five Heart Home). Usually when I think of warm German potato salad, there is some sort of bacon involved, but this one was just potatoes and onions, so I was curious how it would turn out.

I usually like to do all of these challenge meals on my own (with some prep help from A when needed so we don't eat too late at night), but A did most of this one after I accidentally crushed my thumb hard with the refrigerator door. It's thankfully better now, but there was no way I was going to be able to peel and thinly slice potatoes with only one working hand (and the other one in throbbing pain). At least I chopped the onion before that happened.

The recipe here was fairly straightforward. Just boil the potatoes until tender, then peel them and slice them thinly. Put them in a large bowl and top with some beef broth, minced onions, apple cider vinegar, and salt and pepper. Then the bowl gets covered with plastic wrap and sits at room temperature for half an hour to let the potatoes soak up all those delicious flavors. Parsley goes on top as a garnish once the time is up, along with mixing in a few tablespoons of neutral oil.

This potato salad was simple but so good! Letting the potatoes and onions sit in the beef broth made such a difference from other potato salads. We ate this with some bratwurst (TJ's) and cucumber onion salad (which thankfully I had made earlier in the day before the thumb incident), and it was a lovely German night for dinner.

Week 41 - German

I love learning about dishes from all over the world (no surprise, given our Around the World Cooking Challenge), and when I was watching one of Beryl Shereshewsky's videos about sandwiches a while back (love the whole series - video link), I heard of something called toast Hawaii for the first time. Apparently it's ham, cheese, and pineapple on toast (sometimes with a maraschino cherry on top), and it was made popular in West Germany in the 1950s by a TV chef there. It sounds a lot like our (very controversial) Hawaiian pizza, but based on German commenters, it still seems decently popular now (although it seems most skip the cherry, which was fine by me, since I did not plan on buying maraschino cherries just for this). I marked it down on my list for the German part of the AtWCC, and with the Week 41 challenge being German, it sounded like a great brunch!

Although the dish seemed straightforward enough to make without a recipe, I used the one at Daring Gourmet as a guide for oven temperature and cook time. Basically, toast the slices of bread (I did 6, two for each of us), melt the butter, and then to each slice, add a layer of butter, a slice of ham, a pineapple ring, and a slice of Swiss cheese. I baked it at 425 degrees for 10 minutes, and the cheese was melted, so this was pretty quick and easy.

The one complication I did have was that we had no cans of pineapple rings, and when we went grocery shopping the day before, they had no cans of pineapple rings. I'm actually not sure if Whole Foods even sells pineapple rings. So I took the pineapple chunks we did have, halved them, and made my own rings, and it worked out just fine.

The toast was really tasty and a great breakfast! If I made this again, I think I would use a little extra butter (did 1/2 tbsp for each slice of bread) and add garlic powder and some pepper to the melted butter before spreading it. I also think that, if I use the same ham that I did this time, I would use two slices instead of one for some extra ham flavor, as this one was sliced fairly thin. This toast is similar to some I've made in the past, but with pineapple added, and although I'm not a huge sweet-savory person, I do think it was good with the pineapple. Then again, we also like Hawaiian pizza, so it's no surprise this worked for us.

Berlin Currywurst

On one of the first really nice days of the year, M and I went out for a nice afternoon because I had taken the day off from work to help take care of some repairs around the apartment. We ended up walking down the High Line and generally enjoying the day and weather. Near the end of the walking path we found ourselves down at Chelsea Market looking for a snack. We walked around for a little bit, and we ended up stopping in at one of the newer spots in the market, Berlin Currywurst.

The menu was very straight-forward which makes sense since they're trying to capture the simplicity and feel of a Berlin street cart serving this iconic dish. You first pick your sausage and then decide how you want it (in a roll or as currywurst). We opted for the Bratwurst Currywurst with their original sauce since that's how it's done in Germany. The currywurst comes out sliced and smothered with sauce along with a small hunk of bread.

The sausage itself was nice and soft with just the right amount of snap to the casing. It was seasoned beautifully. It wasn't too salty, and the spices they mixed into the meat complemented the sauce we chose. The sauce was a great mixture of sweet, tart, and spicy flavors as the curry powder really brought out the rich flavors of the tomato-based sauce. The bread, which they describe as a crispy German bread, was not all that crispy, but we preferred that as the soft interior did a great job of sopping up the remaining sauce after we were done with the bratwurst.

Overall we both liked our snack. It wasn't the cheapest, and it certainly wasn't the healthiest, but it was definitely tasty. Would we get it again? Sure, but there's so much to eat in and around Chelsea Market that we're not sure when we're going to make it back here. (We do also want to try it for breakfast sometime though, since we've never had those dishes before and they sound really good.) Since the previous spot we visited for currywurst (Wechsler's) is now sadly closed, at least we now have a place where we can get our currywurst fix if the craving ever strikes.

Goodbye to The Marrow

Back in January 2013, we went to The Marrow, Chef Harold Dieterle's new German-Italian restaurant that had opened about a month earlier. We've always been big fans of Chef Dieterle and love Perilla and Kin Shop, so it was a no-brainer that we would head over to The Marrow that winter (for our dating anniversary, actually). Earlier today, we read on Eater the sad news that, for economic reasons, The Marrow was closing up shop tomorrow night. Since we never got around to posting about The Marrow back then, we figured now was a good time for a nostalgic look back at our visit.

The Marrow had a menu of German and Italian inspired dishes, based on the two sides of the chef's family.  The menu was split up into meat plates (appetizer sized), starters, mains and sides. Since we like both German and Italian cuisine, we tried to get a mix of both sides of the menu for our dinner.

We love German Rieslings, and A especially loves Riesling Spätlese, so we were happy with the selections on the wine list.  We decided to go with the Meulenhof 2011, and it was wonderful.  It had a nice sweetness to go with hints of summer and fall fruit.

The first food to arrive was the bread in the form of a pretzel roll.  The bread was really good.  The outside of the roll was a little harder than M thought it would be. She had been picturing one of those soft pretzel rolls with the same texture as a warm, soft, buttery pretzel (like these).

For dipping, they gave us olive oil and stoneground mustard.  The olive oil wasn't really necessary, but the mustard was a great match for the pretzel roll.

We got a bunch of starters and meat plates, together with one main course, to split.  One was the garganelli with tuna, puttanesca, olives, capers, and bread crumbs (one of the night's specials, if we remember correctly). It had both tuna marrow and tuna belly. We were mostly attracted to this because we had no idea what tuna marrow was or what it would taste like. Overall it was good, but the flavor was more olives than tuna. The sauce and the homemade pasta were both quite nice.

We also got the duck liverwurst with cornichons, green mustard, and grilled bread. We're both big fans of liverwurst on sandwiches, so we just had to try this. The liverwurst itself was very good, probably the best part of the plate. We had thought the grilled bread would be grilled with olive oil (like bread we had in Greece and other places) but it was more plain. The cornichons were fresh and crisp, and the green mustard had an unexpected sweet and tart flavor, like a green apple. Overall, we liked this dish.

Next was the skillet-braised cuttlefish with garlic bread, guanciale, and white wine. The broth, which had bacon and a nice garlicky flavor, was a little on the salty side. The cuttlefish head was good though, very tender. We don't really remember as much about this dish as we do about the liverwurst though (good thing we have some limited notes from that night).

There were two dishes that we knew for sure we were going to get at dinner since they were the two that everyone was always talking about in their reviews of the place. One was the bone marrow, which came with sea urchin, fried potatoes, meyer lemon aioli, and baby celery greens (which reminded us of watercress). The grilled bread was just like the one that came with the liverwurst, but it worked well here because it was just the vehicle for the very flavorful bone marrow and uni. This was a very tasty and well-balanced dish. The uni was not that briny and didn't taste as much like sea water as it sometimes does, and the marrow wasn't as gloppy as it could be, so the two textures worked well together here. We liked this.

We only got one main dish and it was the one that everyone talked about - the pan-fried duck schnitzel with quark spaetzle, hazelnuts, cucumber-potato salad and stewed wolfberries. What was really nice was that they knew we were sharing, so they automatically brought it out to us on two separate plates without us even asking for it. We would have been perfectly happy just picking off of one plate, but that was a really nice service touch.

There was a reason the duck schnitzel was the most famous dish to come out of The Marrow. The whole dish was excellent. Although M isn't usually a huge fan of the texture of duck, she thought it was perfect for schnitzel here. The amount of the frying was just right, and the various salads and sides that accompanied the schnitzel were good complements. After all this time, we don't quite remember which was our favorite, but all together, it was a really good dish.

We also got grilled baby romaine lettuce with pecorino and a warm lemon-anchovy vinaigrette for a side dish, since we felt like our other choices were severely lacking in vegetable matter. Although grilled romaine often tastes really good and this was no exception, we probably didn't need to get this. It was overshadowed by how good the other dishes were, in our opinion.

As we were celebrating our dating anniversary, we had to indulge in some dessert. One dessert that we got were the Berliners which had Goldschläger cream and malted chocolate. We didn't take any notes about dessert so we don't remember exactly what we thought, but we think these were good. But donuts are often good.

Over a year later, we have no memory of what these are, but we got them. Streusel cookies? No idea. Sorry.

Overall, we had a very satisfying meal at The Marrow, especially the duck schnitzel. But given the choice, we would go back to Perilla or Kin Shop before The Marrow, and for that reason, it doesn't really surprise us that this is the one that's closing up. It's sad because it was an ambitious concept that was executed fairly well in our opinion and we can only imagine that, as a place reflecting the chef's heritage, it's especially hard to let go of something that's so representative of you and your family. We're glad that we were able to have dinner there once, and we're looking forward to even more of Chef Dieterle's food on future visits to Perilla and Kin Shop.

Wechsler's

One German snack we really enjoy (and which we hope to get someday in Berlin) is currywurst. So we continued our food crawl into the East Village and made a stop at Wechsler's to get some!

A started out with a beer - the Köstritzer dark pils ($5), which is brewed at one of Germany's oldest breweries in Bad Köstritz (back to 1543!). It had a lovely malty flavor, and had a nice bit of sweetness to go along with the subtle bitterness of the hops. A had never had a schwartzbier before, but if this is what they're supposed to taste like, he might have to get more of them.

Wechsler's has all sorts of sausages on the menu - lots of German style brats, as well as some from "around the world." But we were there for their signature dish, the currywurst, sliced up bratwurst with their homemade curry ketchup and hand-cut fries.

This dish was everything we hoped it would be. The thinly cut and salted fries and the sausage were tasty, but the star was that curry ketchup. We dipped everything in it. Curry ketchup is great with sausage, but it's also fantastic with fries (which we discovered a few years ago in Amsterdam).

We only got the small size of the currywurst (for $7), and decided to also get a pretzel as a side dish ($4). This was a Bavarian style pretzel with sweet mustard on the side. The mustard to us tasted more spicy than sweet, not quite horseradish mustard but not really that sweet. It also had a bit of a vinegar hit to it. The pretzel was more hard and salty and less soft and buttery like the ones we had on our PA trip. This was a good side, but the currywurst was better.

We really liked the currywurst at Wechsler's and would definitely go back for some more. Maybe next time we'll also try some other brats or maybe the sauerkraut or potato salad!

Wechsler's is located at 120 1st Avenue (between 7th and St Marks) in the East Village.

Bratwurst and More

Another vendor we visited on both days of the 9th Avenue International Food Fair this year was a German stand selling bratwurst. We hadn't seen them here before and aren't sure of their actual name, so we don't know if they showed up just for this fair from someplace far (like Millie's) or if they're one of those vendors who hits up every street fair in the summer. Either way, once we saw that the condiments and other products were actually from Germany, we were in the mood to try some bratwurst.

On day 1, we ordered the bratwurst ($6) and added some of the German curry ketchup.

This was really good. Although the bun was nothing special, the bratwurst had lots of flavor. Adding the curry ketchup gave it the tanginess that you get with currywurst and also the spices of the curry flavor, which was exactly what we wanted.

Even though we really liked the bratwurst, we decided to do something different for day 2 and got the bauernwurst (also $6), which is a smoked sausage. This time we had them add sauerkraut, which came from big cans that also appeared imported from Germany.

We also added some mustard which they said also came from Germany. We were looking for the German horseradish mustard that they had the day before, but they appeared to have run out. The sauerkraut and mustard were great. The sauerkraut had some nice tartness to it from the pickling, and the mustard had a little bit of spice to it. The bauernwurst was pretty good, but the bratwurst was still better.

We enjoyed our German snacks. Anyone know the name of this place?

A Tour of Germany

The next stop on our food and wine journey brought us to the Germany kiosk. We've really enjoyed German food stemming from our many trips to Hallo Berlin and especially because of our mini-trips to Frankfurt and Munich.

Clearly this photo is from our Monday walkaround and not Saturday when we actually ate there and it was a zoo
Germany had a complete menu filled with savory snacks, dessert, wine and beer:


Between the Germany kiosk and the Brewers Collection kiosk, there was a small grassy area set up with wooden tables like a biergarten. It was cute and it added a nice authentic touch.


We split a table with a nice couple enjoying some beers and talking about working v. loving what you do. The festival spirit was definitely alive in the little biergarten which was nice.

First, the goulash soup ($3.50):


The goulash was full of meat. A wasn't sure what to expect since he really didn't know what goulash was besides some sort of soup. He thought it was very reminiscent of a beef and vegetable soup. It didn't have much seasoning, though. From the look of the soup, M was expecting it to be more like a stew. It was relatively heavy on the meat and didn't have a strong flavor, but it also wasn't as soft and melt-in-your-mouth as a stew. On top of all that, it wasn't that easy to get through a cup of hot soup on a very hot day.

Second, nuernberger sausage in a pretzel roll ($4.50):


We love sausages. M doesn't really eat much red meat or pork, but she certainly loves hot dogs and sausages. The sausage itself was nice and soft and had a mild flavor. The pretzel roll was wonderfully soft, slightly salted, and tasted amazingly like a NYC soft pretzel. The mustard was a little spicy, and it finished the flavors of the dish beautifully. The dish was simple but the flavors were good.

And lastly, the dessert - apple strudel featuring Werther's original karamel and vanilla sauce ($3.25):


The strudel was light on apples, but it was full of sugar. Combine the syrup used to cook the apples, the frosting, and the caramel sauce and the dish is chock full of sweetness. The strudel itself wasn't very crisp on top, and as normal the bottom layer was nice and mushy. It would have been nice to have some crispness on top, though. Another dish that wasn't that easy to eat on a hot day, in M's opinion.

The Germany kiosk also had a selection of beers (not as many as the Brewers Collection kiosk next door) and 4 wines from the Selbach-Oster estate. That is the maker of A's favorite riesling ever and was a really nice surprise! They offered a 2009 vintage of the Selbach-Oster Riesling Spatlese which was a far cry from the 2005 vintage that A loves so much. From what he's read, 2005 and 2007 were extremely good years for rieslings, and 2009 was weaker. From the first taste A could tell the difference. The wine didn't have the vibrance or flavor of the 2005 vintage, but it was still light, sweet, and refreshing.

No photo of the wine by itself but you can see it in the goulash photo and the table photo
We had previously eaten at the Germany Pavilion at their lunch buffet, and outside of the pretzel roll, we thought the food inside at the restaurant was much better than the food at the kiosk. If we had more time at Epcot, we probably wouldn't drop by the kiosk again except for the sausage and pretzel roll (and even then, we might not stop by since it was a little pricey for one sausage roll).

Favorite dishes at the Germany kiosk:
A: Pretzel roll sausage
M: Pretzel roll sausage