Dinner party!

In celebration of having such a great host, I decided to prepare dinner! Here is the menu:

Delicious beer!
Penne Pasta with Schinken
Cream of wild mushroom soup
Tasty french bread!

for some reason our camera was malfunctioning and almost all the pictures from the night are horribly blurry! Here is one of Jess enjoying a bowl of Cream of wild mushroom soup! This was made by soaking 100g of wild mushrooms that we got at the Viktualienmarkt in boiling water for 45 minutes(turn off the heat when you add the mushrooms.) Then I prepared a roux with butter and flour. I cooked 500g of fresh brown mushrooms in the roux along with a tablespoon of fresh thyme until the mushrooms had given off their juices. I added the stock I made with the wild mushrooms and finely diced the now reconstituted wild mushrooms and added it back into the soup. Simmer for 30 minutes just to allow the flavors to meld together, season with salt and pepper. Just before serving I add whipping cream to thicken and make the soup more creamy. Don't bring the sauce back up to a boil once you add the cream or you risk one of two things, the cream will break and you will have oil floating all over the top of the pot or you will form a skin on the surface of the soup.

Schinken is basically German ham, It's a hot smoked ham that is cut razor thin and packaged a lot like prosciutto. We made a pretty basic pasta dish consisting of a can of whole tomatoes, garlic, onion, basil, fresh tomatoes, and eggplant. The sauce was simmering and at the last minute I added the Schinken so that the smokiness would remain in the meat and not permeate the sauce too much. Sorry there aren't any pictures, just think of a big bowl of penne pasta with little shreds of prosciutto in it.

Here is a great beer we had with dinner. I have had it before in the states but we learned a little more about it at the table. All the beers that end in TOR (Optimator, Salvator, etc) were specialty beers made by the monks for times of fasting. For religious reasons they couldn't eat anything during this time, but could only drink. So what do you want to drink during a fast, they strongest, heaviest, more stick to the ribs beer you could make, and thus were born this style of beer which always ends in a -TOR. I think this particular beer is about 9.8% and dark thick and heavy.
We had heard that a friend may be coming over later in the evening, so we figured that we should make some extra. We cooked 500g of Mushrooms and 1kg of pasta. Boy were we lucky we had. By the end of the evening we had a small party going on! And as all great parties do, this one ended up in the bathtub.

This was part of an artistic photoshoot organized by another one of the guests that me and Jess snuck up behind and photographed as well. In the end Stella's two friends from high school came and brought another guest. I guess my mom always taught me right, there is no excuse for not having enough food so I always prepare 2-3x more then I really aught to(plus I love leftovers). In the end we had plenty of food to feed the 6 of us and there were even some leftovers for Joerg(who was off playing with his band in Switzerland for the night.)


Stella has a bike that Jeorg fixed up for her that is exactly this color. So she named the bike Milka!
-NOM!

Bavarian Cuisine a La Munchen

Our first night in Munich(Munchen to the natives) we stayed with Stella and Joerg a wonderful native Munchen couple we met through Couchsurfing.org. I mentioned that I hadn't had any true Bavarian food since I have been in Germany(Deutschland to the natives.) So they took us out to a fabulous dinner at Fraunhofer restaurant.


Jess had a roasted pork shoulder with bread dumplings that was dripping in a velvety fantastic gravy. She thought the meat was a little dry but when you keep it well dunked in the pan sauce it turned into a fabulous luxurious meal. The bread dumpling was moist, and very flavorful. It had lot of herb and spices with just enough egg to hold it together. Dunked into the gravy it had me wanting to switch plates with her.

I had the wiener schnitzel(Weiner art) I was told this means it's a Vienna style weiner schnitzel, which means instead of the usual well softened peice of veal instead they used pork cutlets well breaded and pan fried. They were very well done with a little bit of lemon squeezed on top. When I was a kid my mom would make this style of wiener schnitzel and I would eat it dipped into blue cheese dressing.(for some reason they didn't serve blue cheese dressing here)* It had a really fabulous potato salad on the side. Perfectly cooked potatoes with still just a tiny bit of bite like al dente pasta, lathered in a creamy vinegary dressing. I was very well pleased.

I wish I had the chutzpah to take a picture of the meal that Stella had. She ordered pigs lung with bread dumplings. LUNG! The last great adventure for me! I have eaten pretty much every part of the animal, I love stomach, intestines, kidneys, liver, heart, skin, marrow, pig ears, feet, etc etc etc. but I have never heard of anyone making lungs, the membranous almost plastic-like organ into something edible! Her dish looked like finely chopped liver in a very thick soup. I was instantly jealous and ashamed of my silly weiner schnitzel, I could have ordered lung if I had only known German(Deutsch to the natives)

The way it's prepared leaves the final result quite sour but incredibly moist, and soft almost the texture of well prepared liver. The taste isn't organ-y at all but rather sour and a smooth texture that pairs well with the bread dumplings. I don't know a single other culture that has made the lungs into something edible. Simply amazing.

If I go back to Bavaria I am having the lung... And maybe some mark dumplings(Marrow dumpling) I couldn't find any while I was there, and that just sounds too amazing to pass up.


*For one it's not very traditional, and for two, I would have been too embarrassed to ask, let alone eat it that way

HüNERHAUS! House of Chicken!

So it all began with a bet. Jessie didn't have any change for the subway one day so she decided to ride without a ticket. Not too big of a deal but there are secret plainclothes cops who show up to check tickets. But she decided to hedge her risk with a bet, she bet me that there would be cops showing up to check our tickets since we hadn't seen any in awhile. And of course the payment would be a tasty rotisserie chicken. Why a chicken? Well...

So it all began with an argument, the kind you have when you spend 2 months straight with someone 24 hours a day 7 days a week. A silly silly argument about nothing that ends up with two perfectly normal sensible people screaming about chicken in the middle of the street.

I like roasted chickens. Jessie does too, but for some reason didn't like the idea of a rotisserie chicken in Berlin. Unfortunately there were a couple rotisserie chicken restaurant by our house I would mention "hey we should go there for dinner" pretty much every time we passed either one of them." One day this became too much for Jessie and we blew up and started screaming about chicken while walking home.

Five minutes later we were hysterically laughing just picturing what our neighbors must have been thinking, two people screaming about chicken walking down a street in Berlin. The neighborhood we lived in was predominantly Turkish and very few people spoke English so it would have been pretty unintelligible to them, but I figure 90% at least have to know the English word for chicken.

(internal monologue of Turkish neighbors) "oh dear those people are screaming loudly... Did he say Chicken? I'm pretty sure he said chicken... Why are they yelling about chicken... I must be wrong English is a hard language...

No NO she definitely said chicken too."

Anyways, we end up not being accosted by plainclothes police men and so I got my chicken!
I had my eye on a little stand that's right between Kotti(Kottbusser Tor) and Gorlitzer U-Bahn stations. We walked past this place early on when we got to Berlin and there was a huge line at this little tiny stand. Every time we rode our bikes past it after that I also saw a huge line, I knew this place had to be good.
Hünerhaus literally means house of chicken, which really I think is pretty generous. This is really barely a shed of chicken. But they did have tons of rotating, dripping, fabulously mouth-watering whole chickens. There is a succulent rainbow of browning chickens ranging from freshly skewered to dark caramelized brown. One of the true marks of a great chef is the ability to not screw up roasting a proper chicken. These were done by a master.

The skin is very crispy and crunchy. It's heavy on the salt and light on the other mysterious seasonings that make this one of the best birds I've ever eaten. Perfectly cooked, they meat was flavorful all on it's own. I don't think the chicken was brined but the flavor of the meat itself was potent. This was chicken Nirvana, one of the most perfectly cooked, obviously well bird, grown, and cooked by people who has been doing this for a LONG time. This bird was worth the lifetime of perfecting that it took to make it right. And that's why people line up day in and day out, waiting for a perfect meal. A whole rotisserie bird? 5.00 Euros, Half a bird 2.50 w/fries 3.75. Now that my friends is something special. That is why I love East Berlin.

-NOM!

Odds and ends Berlin

A little felafel place we heard was pretty good near Gorlitzer bahnhof. A couchsurfer said it was his friends favorite place. The felafel itself were no match for Maroush(see post on Maroush) being a little too mushy and didn't really hold their shape, but interestingly they made a strong concession to the Germans, The standard felafel sandwich was loaded with mint cucumbers, onions and tomatoes but in addition to the yogurt sauce came yellow mustard. Not really my favorite felafel condiment but and interesting one.

Now I'm not 100% sure, but I think this sticker translates to, "People love us on Yelp" in German(I know it doesn't really say that but feel free to correct me in the comments section)
To quote my Father, a wiser man then me "I'm not made out of money!" So unfortunately I didn't have the money to eat out for every meal. Luckily we had a very nice kitchen in Berlin to bring back spoils from the Turkish market

This is a very simple Ratatouille made with tomatoes, red bell peppers, onions, garlic, and eggplant all slowly simmered in olive oil and seasoned with herbes de provence. We ate it with the crusty German bread.
This has become something of a staple of our trip so far. Penne pasta with fresh tomatoes onions garlic and some Italian herbs. This also has some fresh mozzarella on it. This is something I miss about Germany Fresh Mozzerella at the grocery store, you can buy tiny 125g balls for 50 euro cents!
Anywho, I think that just about wraps up Berlin!

Rogaki! Since 1928!

Rogaki we first heard about from one of my heros, Anthony Bourdain. His show No Reservations featured Berlin and this was one of the places that they went. A real old school German deli/lunch place. Since 1928 Rogaki has been serving up quick meals of Meat, fish and fixings. The place is shaped like big horseshoe where you walk down the middle and are assaulted by fresh fish on this side, smoked fish on the other, and meat meat meat galore, cooked, marinated, fresh. The bar of pickled fishes, and other accoutrement is easily 50 feet long. They locally source over 70 types of fish daily and and have every part of the pig or cow for sale.

I started off with a hunk of fried cod and a few types of potato salad. Both the salads were great German potato salads heavy on the vinegar and set off the fried fish well. One used a more creamy sauce and one less(I don't think most people get both) They do everything by weight at Rogaki so they weight your plate out charge you for the size of the fish you want and the weight of your sides. Mine came out to something like 5.50 euro but I saw another guy with a massive piece of fish and some mound of potato salad and I sneaked a peak at his recipt 12.65 euros! Now that's a lunch!

The next round was pickled fish! This is a herring fillet that has been pickled and wrapped around a pickled cucumber(sometimes called a pickel) that has been stuffed with pickled onions. This was a MASSIVE herring fillet. I really like pickled fish, and Jessie doesn't really, but for some reason she decided she needed to get two huge pickled fish rolls. The herring was quite nicely pickled still a bit delicate and actually Jessie said she wouldn't have been able to eat it except for the tasty pickle inside, it helped balance out the fishiness to a point where she could take it.

Now I'm not exactly sure what this was:

It seemed like they battered and fired a herring fillet, wrapped it around a pickel and some pickled onions and then pickled the whole thing again. Weird, yes, very pickle-y yes. Tasty... I guess so? but I wouldn't order it again.

Lastly, but certainly not least, we packed some smoked fish for dinner. Smoked Ahi tuna, butterfish, halibut and little tiny bite sized fish whose name I couldn't translate. The tuna was ok, but not worth the price, the halibut also wonderful and wonderfully expensive. The real treat for me was the very dirt cheap butterfish that lived up to it's name, almost creamy flesh when smoked, took on a lot of the flavors of the smoke and had a fabulous texture that seemed to thrive in the slightly drier condition that smoking brings out. It was by far the most tasty, texturally pleasing, and overall incredible experience. But it also cost about 1/5th as much as the rest of the fish! Sometimes you don't really get what you pay for.


I wish I wish I wish we lived closer to Rogaki so that I could have eaten my way further into the hidden delights.
In addition to traditional headcheese they had specialty seafood headcheeses. I didn't even get a proper sausage, or any of their meat products at all! They had yard and yards of special dips and sauces and mysterious creamy chunky things all written in German. Sigh, I think I need to go back to Berlin. Anyone want to hire an ex-Neuroscientist in Berlin to do non-researchy things?

-Nom!

Thai food in the Park

Every nice weekend day at Preussen park in the Wilmersdorf neighborhood. Thai families gather to cook, eat, play games and spend the day in the park. Luckily for the rest of us these families have begun selling their food. The day we went about a dozen families were out selling soups, meats, fried pancakes, and all manner of sweets and even mixed drinks.

I got a plate of extremely spicy chicken bits and a plate of rice for 5 Euros. It had tiny little hard crunchy peas, eggplant and lots of Thai chili peppers. One of the Couchsurfers who organized this little outing to the park commented that you have to put your toilet paper into the freezer before you leave to go to the park or you are out of luck...


Jess got a plate from the same vendors of a dish that wasn't spicy. It was also chicken meat but it was mostly dark meat and chicken livers, hearts and kidneys. I was SO jealous! Also 5 Euros and a very tasty meal. Little bamboo shoots, onions and loads of organ meats.


There were also some other snacks to be had these banana leaves are stuffed with fermented raw pork, eaten with tiny little fire engine hot peppers as a chaser. I had only a tiny bite, but the family was eating them and I haven't gotten sick yet!

There were also some tasty deep fried battered Thai yams. Those were amazingly good but I unfortunately didn't get a picture of them! Those you'll just have to go and get for yourself! Here is a cool article about the park. This is definitely a must see if you end up in Berlin on a nice summer or fall day.

-NOM!

Maroush Lebanese restaurant

OK, I'm not going to lie, we heard about Maroush the second or third day we were in Berlin. It was supposed to have the best felafel in the city. Now I'm not going to say we ate there EVERY day... but I would say that we ate there 15 times in the 30 days we were in Berlin would be conservative. It was a few miles from our house at Kottbusser Tor nicknamed Kotti by the locals.


The first time we went to Maroush I got the Felafel Teller which is basically a plate with a small salad 6 felafels, hummus, pickled vegetables all drowned in their fabulouus tahini. The use pure unadulterated 100% pure sesame paste sooo delicious. For 5 Euro this was a massive meal and well worth it.

The thing that really got us hooked on Maroush was the Chicken Shawarma. Here is the spit they used:
Now that's one big pile of chickeny goodness. on the top of the shawarma they have some whiteish stuff that I think is fat to drip all of its tasty goodness slowly through the cooking process. The chicken meat is highy marinated and to me looks like they just deboned a couple dozen chickens and stacked them up on a huge skewer. They take a pita bread dough and dump a huge dollup of garlic sauce inside it then layer french fries and a bunch of pickled vegetables inside, a mish mash of chicken and a huge dollop of their amazing tahini. Then they tightly roll it and shove it into a panini press. 2.50 euro. great lunch.

It may not look super duper appetizing because of the amazing garlic sauce running over everything but it is to DIE FOR. This makes up at least 13 of the 15 times we went. Worth flying to Berlin for.


We also tried their beef shawarma, Skewered beef, parsley, grilled tomatoes, pickled radish and tons of Tahini. They make a lot less of the beef every day then they do of the chicken. The skewer is about half as tall as the chicken and a lot thinner. I kind of agree, it's beefy but slightly drier then the chicken. The sandwich tastes more fresh because of the parsley but it's not as satisfying and amazing as the chicken. Worth a try but not worth flying to Berlin for. 2.50 Euro


Last but certainly not least is the Felafel Sandwich. This is a tasty meal in it of itself, 3 freshly fried balls of fluffy on the inside crispy on the outside goodness. Made fresh in a proper felafel scoopy thing to order. The dough always looks fresh and comes out in a medium size bowls throughout the day. To be honest their felafels are some of the best I have ever had. They aren't too squishy and they hold their shape when you bite into them and yet they are soft and delicate inside. The perfect blend of crispy and moist, healthy and fatty. The dough is mostly chickpeas, parsley, onion, mint, and any other tasty aromatic herbs you can think of high in protein and vitamins and minerals. You take that dough and you deep fry it! 2.50 Euro Maroush

Packed with cabbage, parsley and pickled turnips and cucumbers. Of course, tons of tahini.

-NOM!

Doner(where is the Umlat on my keyboard?)

Döner(thanks copy and paste!) Kebab which was actually first stuffed into a piece of bread in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin at a little place called Hasir.

A Döner is a Massive hunk of heavily seasoned mystery meat. I mean massive, MASSiVE This is an image I captured after the lunch rush. Can you imagine this bad boy at breakfast time?

I have loved Döner ever since I first got one in spain last summer. My girlfriend also has a fondness for Döner, well a little fondness. I was well on my way to having a Döner a day and she was suddenly not too fond of Döner anymore. But this delightful bit of mystery meat had found its way into my heart(not literally though it probably would have at a Döner a day).

At least this little guy with his face buried in a Döner Kebab agrees with me.

Almost everywhere claims that their Döner is Halal which means no pig parts but a genetic test run by a major newspaper showed some places had meat containing beef, lamb, chicken, and pig all at once. Not really Helal, but tasty none the less.

So there are two main choices when it comes to a Döner sandwich in Berlin, Durum Döner and Döner Kebab.

A Döner kebab is a quarter of a turkish flatbread with a big layer of meat along with cabbage, onions and red cabbage(we are in Germany after all). Then there are several sauces yogurt, chili and brown. I never really figured out what the brown sauce is... I think this is for the best.



A Durum Döner is a tortilla like flatbread that is filled with the same ingredients and rolled into a burrito like shape and wrapped in aluminum foil. For some reason this option always costs 50c more.



Kaplan is a major player in the Döner game, a game which now is estimated to be worth something 3.25 billion dollars in sales in just germany


They aren't my favorite producer of Döner, but the are well seasoned heavily salted and a great go to lunch. There are still a few independent producers of Döner usually their skewers aren't quite as beautiful and uniform as a kaplan Döner, and often cost a bit more. But they can be more unique and more tasty. I think of kaplan maybe as the McDonalds of Döner, it's not very good, but you know what you are going to get when you order one.

One of my favorite places for a good one off unique Döner is Mustafa's outside Mehringdam U station right next to Curry 36 stand where the best currywurst in Berlin is(see my currywurst post for more on this.) Check out their Website pretty awesome. The Döner here has a more real and unique taste. The meat is sliced off and mixed with roasted fall fruits(apples pears etc) that have been sitting under the turning spit. A Döner comes with yogurt sauce and chili sauce, the usual vegetables and with a very strong salty feta cheese which sets off the roasted fruits in the meat and makes for a very tasty Döner. The only problem I have with Mustafa's is the very lackluster bread. it tastes like plain white hamburger buns and is more of an afterthought than a compliment.


Very tasty and very very messy:
What? I'm just saving some for later... on my face.

-NOM!

Currywurst! Spysnack or a hot dog with ketchup?

Currywurst is a uniquely Berlin invention created in the Charlottenburg neighborhood by Herta Heuwer. It starts with a wurst or pork sausage that is fried in oil(deep fried or pan fried) sliced and doused in ketchup and raw curry powder. It's sold out of trucks, small imbiss(fast food) stand and in restaurants around Germany.

Rumor has it currywurst stands around Checkpoint Charlie(American diplomatic checkpoint in the Berlin wall) were used as a incognito meeting place for spies, informants, and generally people who weren't supposed to be in each other's company.
My first currywurst was disappointing. A little burger/wurst fast food stand in Hermanplatz, quickly scarfed to appease a grumbling tummy. It was literally a American hotdog fried, slathered in American style ketchup with a tiny bit of curry powder on top of the ketchup. With fries(pommes) and the smallest coke I have ever drank .2 l 2.50 Euro. The soggy fries were just the final kick while I was down.


I'll admit it, I wasn't very happy, and I had just about written off currywurst at one go! But I have a rule, I will try ANYTHING not once, but three times. We were walking around Checkpoint Charlie and I spied, with my little eye, this truck:


It's a German Weinermobile! If someone made a truck, and even a MUSEUM for currywurst, it must be worth another shot! Where better then the currywurst museum itself! With 4 or 5 people handing out fliers for the museum it couldn't be a huge tourist trap could it?

This was the second stab into the world of Currywurst. Here they added the raw curry powder directly onto the currywurst, and I was faced with a decision: Skin or no skin. Apparently this is a big debate in the currywurst world should this pork sausage be incased in a snappy, crisp skin, or should it be unbound to marinate in its own juices and fry the meat itself rather then the barrier of fettering pork intestine.

Here I tried the skin on variety. The skin itself becomes rather tougher then a sausage skin usually does on the grill or boiled. It gives a different texture to the outside which vaguely reminded me of a thin piece of tendon, luckily I love gristle tendon and all things with this texture(tendons and hearts and kidneys OH MY!)

Sorry, back to the Currywurst. With the curry powder applied directly to the meat and the ketchup over it I feel it lets the curry flavor concentrate more on the meat. Also they used a tomato sauce/curry blend without the zing of vinegar that ketchup has. The sausage was OK but not remarkable. We decided not to go into the currywurst museum mostly because Jess probably would have killed me if I made her sit through a couple hours of Currywurst history and toys.

So far, lets be honest, Currywurst is not very impressive, it's a decent sausage(sometimes) drowned in tomato based sauces with a tiny hint of curry in them. Cheap, maybe a utility food, but really nothing to write a blog about. I was quite disappointed since you can't seem to spit in Berlin without it landing in a pile of ketchup soaked sausage.

I was being tested. I knew I had to go all out for the final attempt, find the greatest currywurst in Berlin, and see what all the fuss is about. Asking around and trying to find where the locals go for great currywurst I came up with Curry 36 right by the Mehringdam U station. By this point my lovely girlfriend has given up on currywurst and won't even try mine, luckily there is another tasty treat up the street Mustafa's(for more about that see my Doner post[coming soon]). This place is packed during the day with a half hour long line. Luckily we snuck in during a Germany World Cup game and I grab some food without a wait.

Glory of glories, non-encased sausage with a most heavenly of homemade sauces. Heavy on the tomatoes with just a tiny hint of vinegar and a light sweetness. Heavy on the curry blend and extra raw curry directly on the meat. The sausage itself was light and the flavors penetrated the meat well without the casing. Even the crispy fries were coated with a touch of curry! This place, I had to go back to, and I did, right as were were leaving town, I waited 30 minutes with my huge 85 liter backpackers pack on just to get a last taste of currywurst before leaving Berlin.
-Nom!

Berlin's snacks

So we've been in Berlin a little under a week. This is just a few little tasty tidbits that I have had in Berlin!

This is a go-to snack that I have in the fridge. Leberwurst(liverwurst) with cornichon(tiny french pickles) on some brot(bread). Sure you can get liverwurst and cornichon in the states but shit I got a huge jar of Cornichon(79c) and a half a tube(yes it comes in tubular sausagelike plastic) of liverwurst(1.29) for under 2 euro. This is like 10 meals for 2 Euro. Berlin is one cheap city. Yumm I love liverwurst. It's basically just German Pâté. Maybe the germans are just worse at marketing then the french. Liverwurst is cheap and Pâté is very expensive.

Another thing about german food. Hühn is chicken the animal Hühnerfleisch is chicken the meat. Schwein is pig and pork is Schweinefleisch. The meat is all named Chicken flesh and pork flesh and human flesh. I think the German food might be bigger around the world with some better marketing.


Turkish market!
These I got from the turkish market. I really can't resist any cultures version of doughnuts. These were pretty awesome. They looked a lot like a churro but the dough is a lot more gummy. they maintained a nice crispyness even though they were throughly soaked in a simple syrup of sugary caramel-y goodness. I couldn't just eat one. I had to eat them all. Jessie had a few and decided they were too sweet. I managed to pass up the Turkish delight which I have sampled in the past... but I can feel it pulling me back to the market next Tuesday. I don't really understand how they managed to keep the dough so hard and crispy while the whole thing is soaked in sugar syrup. But, more power to the Turks!

-Nom!