German Food

We are almost done with the olive harvest! I think there are less than 10 trees out of 500 to go. Of course, this is an off year for the trees, so not all of those 500 had olives on them. On bumper years, Ursula says they can go for over two months. This year we have brought in a little over two metric tons of olives, but last year they had close to 10 metric tons. That's a lot of olives!

Anyway, what I really want to talk about is food. Our hosts are German, and as such we are served mostly German meals. Dinner is a little boring (especially after some of the farms we've been on) and usually consists of bread, cheese, cured meats, and of course several bottles of homemade wine. Sometimes we make bruschetta and very occaisionally Ursula decides to make a soup. Lunches are where she shines, however.

Today we had a kind of cabbage soup. It was not complicated, but I'm going to post about it here so I can remember how to make it in the future. The soup consists of equal parts cabbage, carrots and potatoes, and I'm going to make up the rest.

1lb cabbage, chopped
1lb carrots, diced
1lb potatoes, cubed
1 onion, diced
1 stalk of celery, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1lb of ground meat (beef, pork, lamb)
1 16oz can of diced tomatoes
Your favorite soup spices plus salt and pepper

Saute the onion and celery until soft. Add in the ground beef and garlic and saute until the meat is browned. Add in the tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and whatever spices. Cover everthing with water or stock and cook until the potatoes are soft. Season to taste with the S&P.

That's how I would recreate this soup. It's kind of a rustic farmhouse thing, so precision on the recipe probably isn't important.

Next, there is Ursula's favorite dish, potatoes with mustard sauce and hardboiled eggs, which she has served us twice so far.

The potatoes should be washed and peeled, but kept whole. Cover them with cold water and cook until they are soft all the way through. While that is happening, make a basice bechamel sauce. (Melt butter and saute flour until it turns a pale golden color, then slowly whisk in milk --or find a more exact recipe on the internet). Whisk in a couple tablespoons of nice German mustard. Divy out the potatoes and hardboiled eggs and cover them with the sauce. It's a pretty swell dish.