AMD 4 - Maria Young

Hallo Alle,

For this AMD, since I was home for break in NJ, with not much to do but stare at the rain I decided to do some German cooking. My Oma happens to be an incredible German cook who worked in restaurants in Germany and Austria when she was younger, so I had a master to teach me.

We made spatzle, schnitzel, apfelkielfle, pfannkuchen, and German potato salad.

Apfelkielfle is a breakfast food, which is sort of similar to pancakes, however the batter is much thinner and a lot of chopped apples are used. It is delicious and one of my favorite recipes my Oma used to make me when we were younger. Pfannkuchen, although its literal translation is pancake, is actually usually eaten as a snack later in the day or even at dinner. Many Germans make pfannkuchen and then with the pancakes that are not totally perfect, cut up the pfannkuchen into noodles for the Suppe. (We did not do this, because I had already made soup with real noodles, and who likes a noodle overdose.) The spatzle and schnitzel were not difficult to make, however very time consuming. My personal trick to making the schnitzel is to squeeze lemon juice, a lot of it, into the pan while it is frying. Most people just put lemon on top, but putting it in the pan gives it a better taste.

I learned a lot about German foods while cooking them myself, and it was fun to read the German recipes and try to find American foods to subsitute if I didn't have quite the right ingredient. Also, using a scale instead of measuring cups was hard to get used to, but much more efficient - how German.

That's all for now. Hope your hungry,

Maria Young