Schweinsbraten literally means “roasted pork”. If you order it in an Austrian restaurant, you will get a slice of greyish meat, usually but not always from the shoulder of the animal. If you order it in an Austrian Heuriger, you will get something a bit different.
All the food at a Heuriger is served cold, and meat is typically cured. Schweinsbraten at a Heuriger is cured, like ham. What makes this particular ham so special is the cut of meat it is made from: the Schopf.
The Schopf extends forward from the loin of the pig, into the shoulder primal. It has the same round cross-section as the loin, only it also has a very healthy amount of … Continue reading.
When I first had Blunz’n at a tavern in Austria I had a very narrow idea of what blood sausage was. Most of the blood sausage I had eaten before this moment I had made myself, following recipes in Ruhlman’s Charcuterie and the Au Pied de Cochon cookbook. These versions are simply pork blood studded with cubes of pork fat and onion. The Austrian Blunz’n before me was radically different: it was soft and moist, but closer in texture to a dumpling then boudin noir, and it was burgundy, not black.
Before I left Austria I got a Blunz’n recipe from one of my chaperones. I read through the recipe and thought there must have been some kind of … Continue reading.
Leberkäse is an emulsified sausage mixture that is shaped into a block, baked, and sliced to order. Picture hot dog filling, only instead of stuffed into casings it’s packed into a loaf pan.
Yes: a hot dog terrine.
For the record the name literally means “liver cheese,” but usually contains neither liver nor cheese. There is, however, a preparation called Käseleberkäse, which is Leberkäse studded with cubes of cheese in the style of a Käsekrainer.
Where would you eat Leberkäse? Austria and Bavaria, for starters. More specifically sausage stands, beer gardens, grocery stores, and any other place that might hot-hold food for quick service. The loaves are baked till they have a … Continue reading.
The potato salad I grew up on was “creamy”,[1] that is, dressed with mayonnaise. While I remember that dish fondly, I now make a very different type of potato salad, one closer to those I ate in Austria.
The single biggest challenge in making potato salad is having well-cooked potatoes that still hold their shape, and the most important factor in this regard is the variety of potato used. It must be a waxy, yellow-fleshed variety. North American varieties like Yukon Gold are okay, but there are some European varieties, like Linzer Delikatess, that are quite simply made for German potato salad. They have the proper smooth, creamy mouthfeel, and a roughly cylindrical shape that means they slice into … Continue reading.
Tourtière is made differently in every home, and can incite intense feelings of loyalty to ones mother. I will proceed cautiously with a definition, but I warn you: there are lots of qualifiers in this post.
Tourtière is meat pie. It is often based on pork, though veal and game are also common. If anyone tells you that it was traditionally made with pigeon, you can politely dismiss their story as folklore. A false etymology has developed because of the similarity between the words for the pie tourtière and the Quebecois word for the now-extinct passenger pigeon, tourte. Certainly many a pigeon has been baked into pie, but the similarity between the two words is entirely coincidental. Tourte also … Continue reading.
Last year I wrote that ham hocks are only consumed in one of two ways in my house: either slowly roasted so that they have glassy crackling, or simmered so that their intense, smoky, porky essence can be collected in a broth.
This ham-hock broth is the distilled essence of eastern Canada, and the foundation of split-pea soup.
Once you have simmered the ham hock and collected the broth, here are some thoughts on making split-pea soup.
After extensive cooking the ham hock itself has very little flavour and seasoning, but it still makes for a good garnish.
I use yellow split-peas, because the green ones look like baby poo once they’re cooked.
Of the handful of places I worked in Austria, Looshaus, near Kreuzberg, was my favourite. Looshaus is a restaurant and hotel with maybe twelve rooms in the mountainous borderland between Lower Austria and Styria.
I didn’t know this at the time, but the building itself is a fairly famous little piece of architecture. It was designed by Adolf Loos, an Austro-Hungarian architect who worked in the first part of the last century. His most famous buildings are the American Bar in Vienna, a short walk from Stephansplatz, and the Goldman and Salatsch building, on Michaelerplatz, also in Vienna. In 1930 he designed an alpine home for Paul Khuner, the Viennese food … Continue reading.
This is a very old-school Québécois way to preserve herbs, onions, carrots… really any manner of aromatic vegetable. They are chopped finely, mixed with salt, left in the fridge for a week, then transferred to a jar. That’s it.
Ingredients. It would be silly to offer a “recipe” as such for herbes salées. You shouldn’t go to a grocery store and buy a set of ingredients; you should use whatever you have in abundance in your herb garden in the late season. There are, however, some useful ratios to keep in mind.
1 part salt for every 3 parts aromatics, by weight. In other words 33 g of salt for every 100 g of herb mix.
For me, the most shocking part of buying a side of beef was how much liver we got.
A lot. I like liver more than most, and I thought it was too much.
If you have to get through a lot of liver, there’s no better way than to just sear it in a pan and tuck in. When the distinct, glandular texture of liver wearies the palate, there are liver dumplings.
This was a staple when I was in Austria. Lunch always consisted of soup, meat, and dessert, and the soup often contained some manner of offal. Most notable were the soft, bready liver dumplings the size of a toddler’s fist, floating in beef broth.
All the food at a Heuriger is served cold, and meat is typically cured. Schweinsbraten at a Heuriger is cured, like ham. What makes this particular ham so special is the cut of meat it is made from: the Schopf.
This is a very old-school Québécois way to preserve herbs, onions, carrots… really any manner of aromatic vegetable. They are chopped finely, mixed with salt, left in the fridge for a week, then transferred to a jar. That’s it.