German Food

When I was growing up, dinners were usually pretty similar. Most nights, we had chicken: either breaded chicken cutlets or a roast chicken. As a side, we had pasta with tomato sauce or roasted or mashed potatoes. There was always a vegetable: usually broccoli or green beans that had been boiled or steamed and then buttered. It was good food and it was well-made, but it didn’t vary very often.

Every once in awhile, though, we would have something a little different: paella was a summer favorite, as was fish like salmon or swordfish. Sometimes we had breakfast for dinner (a favorite amongst us kids) or lasagna or spaghetti and meatballs. One of the special meals we sometimes had was a little bit of a sore spot: I loved when my mom would make “German food,” but my sister absolutely hated it.

“German food” consisted of pork chops, cucumber salad, red cabbage and cornbread. I never touched the red cabbage, but everything else ranked high in my book: the cornbread may have come from a blue box, but the combination of the vinegar from the salad, the pork and the cornbread dipped in the sauces was amazing.

Unfortunately for me, my little sister went though a phase where she wanted a pet pig–she would actually peer at every box delivered to the house, hoping it was “my pig”–and so when she realized that pork chops were, in fact, pig, she refused to eat them, and German food stopped appearing on the menu.

That’s the only way I was ever served pork chops growing up, and so I don’t usually buy them at the supermarket. Every once in awhile, though, I am drawn to the huge, orange “5-euro” sticker on the packs of six that my market always has on sale, and so I pick one up and make three meals out of it.

I’ve never made “German food” myself: we don’t have instant cornbread or red cabbage in a jar, and it had never occurred to me to make those things myself. This week, however, was one of the weeks that I picked up some pork chops, and so I sent my aunt an e-mail, and the rest is history.

This is one of the only meals that comes out tasting the way I remember it, and, oddly enough, I think that it’s because I don’t make it the same way my mom did. When I copy her recipes as written, I always feel as though they’re missing something. But when I riff off something I remember, trying to put it together based on what I know works in the kitchen, I end up with something just as special as those dishes my mom made for me so many years ago.

This meal ends up being fairly sweet: the applesauce is my own addition–I love the way that it goes with pork–but it makes the ratio of sweet to savory pretty high. If you’re serving enough people to warrant actually making a fifth dish for the table, I would recommend making some cornbread (Hint: Fry up some lardons and use the grease instead of butter in the cornbread) to have another savory dish to mix with the two sweet ones. We just had bread though, which is a perfectly suitable vehicle for mopping up the juices of sweet and sour cabbage, acidic cider vinegar and spicy mustard.

Please, don’t be nervous about the fact that there are four dishes in this meal! They all really take care of themselves, and the most difficult thing to do is chop all that cabbage (and get the purple stains out of your cutting board).

This is my entry for Family Recipes: Memories of Family, Food and Fun. This foodie event asks us to delve into our memories about family and food, something that many of you already write about daily! If you’d like to add your recipe to the round-up, you have until May 23rd.

Mustard-Rosemary Pork Chops

2 pork boneless pork chops
1 cup milk
1 branch fresh rosemary
1 tbsp. spicy French mustard
1 tsp. cider vinegar
1 tsp. vegetable oil
salt and pepper

Place the pork chops in a bowl and cover with the milk. Add the rosemary and cover with plastic. Marinate for 1-2 hours in the refrigerator, turning at least once.

When you’re ready to cook the chops, heat the oil over medium heat in a skillet. Remove the chops from the marinade, allowing the excess to drip off. Salt and pepper the chops. Combine the vinegar and mustard in a small bowl, and brush the chops on either side with the mixture.

Fry the chops over medium heat until completely cooked through, about 3-4 minutes per side.

Anne’s Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage

1 tsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. butter
1 large yellow onion, sliced thinly
1 small head red cabbage, cored, cut into eighths and thinly sliced crosswise
2/3 c dark brown sugar
1/2 c red wine vinegar (I used cider vinegar)
One cooking apple, peeled and cut into dice
salt and pepper

In a skillet, heat oil and butter over medium heat. Add the onion and a pinch of salt and cook, stirring frequently, until soft and lightly colored, about 5 minutes.

Add the cabbage and cook, stirring regularly, until just wilted, about 8 minutes. Add apple, vinegar and sugar, and cook until the cabbage is soft but still has a bit of a crunch to it, about 20 minutes (Note: My aunt’s recipe notes 8-10 minutes of final cooking time, so check and see if you would like to cook it as long as I did.)

Season with salt and pepper, and adjust the acidity or sweetness with vinegar or sugar.

Applesauce

Note: This is not a very sweet applesauce, seeing as it’s made to be served with savory foods. If you want to make applesauce as a dessert, consider adding a bit more sugar.

8 small apples
1/4 cup water, plus more as needed
1-2 tbsp. sugar, depending on the sweetness of your apples
1 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1 tsp. Quatre Epices (if you don’t have this spice blend, use equal proportions of nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and black pepper)

Core and peel the apples and roughly chop them. Place them into a saucepan with the water, sugar, vinegar and spices. Heat over medium heat until the liquid boils, and then cover and reduce the heat.

Add more water as needed until the apples are cooked through and easily mushed with the back of a spoon, about 20 minutes. Mix the apples until the mixture is saucy but still has a few chunks of apple.

German Cucumber Salad

1 English cucumbers
1 tbs salt
2 tbs sugar
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 tsp. olive oil
1 tsp. black pepper

Using the slicer portion of a box grater, slice the cucumbers. Drain any liquid that accumulates as you slice. Add the salt, sugar, vinegar, oil and pepper to the cucumbers. Allow to sit, outside the fridge, for at least thirty minutes, tossing occasionally. The longer this sits, the better it is.