Cooking in Germany

Well this meal was totally delicious, but the real adventure came in acquiring the ingredients to cook it!  Outdoor markets seem to be a regular occurrence in various parts of the city.  Feeling inspired by the chill in the air, I set out to make an autumn dinner.  I knew I wanted to roast seasonal vegetables with some good German sausage, so after dropping Fritz off at class, I headed over to the market.  

So far, I only know about one kind of German sausage.  Bratwurst.  But that is better served in a bun with mustard.  Not so great for Autumn Harvest Dinner.  So I, in my confident ignorance, marched up to the first sausage stand and scanned through the 15-20 different varieties of meat, each labeled with an equally incomprehensible name.  Noticing a potential customer, a woman behind the counter said something to me in German.  I'm guessing it was something like "can I help you" but I really can't be sure at this stage in my German language proficiency.  So I smiled and asked, "may we speak in English," to which she made a distorted face and said in a heavy German accent, "She will help you," gesturing to the woman next to her.  

I waited while the second woman finished helping her current customer and then began to explain that I wanted to buy a sausage.  Something I would serve with vegetables and I didn't want anything spicy.  She grabbed a sausage hanging above her head and said, "I think you will like this one.  Would you like to try it first?"

"Sure," I said not realizing these sausages had not yet been cooked and they didn't have any grills back behind the counter.  The woman cut off a piece of the raw sausage and handed it to me.  Not wanting to insult her and trusting that eating raw sausage was a normal thing to do in Germany, I put the mushy slice in my mouth and chewed.  

"Perfect," I told her.  "I'll take one."  And trying not to think too hard about what I had just done, I handed her 2 coins for payment, shoved the sausage into my purse and scurried over to the nearest vegetable stand to complete my market shopping experience.    

Pictured above is the delicious finished product (after fully cooking the sausage).  I think the meat was called something like Baurn3jkbf76sdfj.  It was a really long name starting with a B.  Hopefully I'll recognize it if I see it again.  I really don't want to have to do another raw taste test!  

Pictured above from left to right: sour cream, flour, cumin, chicken broth, milk, eggs

In other culinary adventures, I have become a regular at our local Rewe (pronounce ray-vay), the neighborhood grocery store.  I'm pretty good at picking out vegetables since they look the same in the US as they do in Germany.  Packaged items can be a bit harder.  And if I go to the store with a recipe requiring special spices or canned goods, I become excessively dependent on my Google Translate app.  Seriously this app is amazing!  I can do live scans of actual printed words!  Of course this means my shopping experience takes twice as long and even then I may or may not end up with the right thing.  

For example, last night I made a white bean chicken chili.  The recipe called for many packaged things including a can of cream of chicken soup.  Well, it seems the Germans aren't really that big on canned soup to start.  They did, however, have packets for cream soup.  On the back of the packet, directions (written in German) are printed explaining the proportions of water (wasser) and milk (milch) that should be added while stirring the contents over medium heat.  Or at least that's what I am guessing it said.  I grabbed a packet and figured there would be enough chicken in the soup that it wouldn't matter that much if this isn't cream of chicken soup.   Feeling pretty confident in my selection based on the packet's picture of steaming white broth, I did not use my google translate app.  And it's too bad I didn't because turns out "Spargelcreme" means "cream of asparagus."  Oops.  Luckily, my nose told me that something wasn't right about this cream soup before I dumped it into the white bean chili pot.  I ended up making my own cream soup from scratch which I like to think is better than a canned product anyway.  

The other interesting thing about following my US recipes, is that Germany doesn't use cups as a measuring system, they use milliliters.  Which means every time I am following a US recipe, I have to convert all my measurements to the metric system.  It's a strange new world.