The World Cup 2010 Series: Deutschland v. Australia

We interupt the regularly scheduled (Georgian) series and interject with the WORLD CUP 2010 SERIES!! I like soccer/football, but to be honest, I am no more of a soccer fan than I am a basketball or (American) football fan. That is to say, I enjoy watching a good game, I have the concepts down although some of the rules I still find confusing (Offsides?? Why? I still don't get it). But I loooove the World Cup. Soccer is the world's game and the World Cup is the world's tournament in a way that kicks the Olympic's ass. If you were to walk down the street in any German town last night from 8:30 - 10:30 p.m., you would find the streets barren and the sidewalks full. Every other front yard, bar, wine shop, kiosk, municipal building etc had a TV set up in front and a makeshift row of chairs arranged before it. There is a certain commaraderie of the World Cup that happens when Germany plays here that is infectious. And it's not only when Germany plays. In the Portuguese quarter when Portugal and Brazil play, in the Italian and Greek restaurants when Italy and Greece play, at the Ghanaian church when Ghana plays. And whether you are a fan of one of these teams or not, you might head over to one of these communities when their team is playing just to be part of that atmosphere. Just to drink whatever is being passed around and scream and blow on the ubiquitous vuvuzela (love them or hate them, they are as omnipresent in Germany as they are in South Africa).

So, to kick off Germany's first game of the tournament, we filled our front yard with fans and our table with meat and salads. I have to bow to Food 52 for the salad recipes: lemony green bean salad with feta, red onions and marjoram, the asparagus and radish salad with spring herb dressing and the BLT panzanella. I also whipped up some of my own American-style potato salad (i.e. with mayo, celery, green apple, hard-boiled egg and dill) and Judith fixed some German-style potato salad (i.e. with oil and gherkin). There were also green salads and crudité. And for dessert, everyone dug into Frauke's delicious strawberry quark (thick German yogurt) and Nicola's smashing rhubarb-strawberry rote grutze and a few handfuls of black, red and yellow gummi bärchen. 

And of course the centerpiece of any bar-be-que - the grill. In addition to the various shades of würsten, Susanne made her famous (at least in our house) miso lachs spies (salmon skewers marinated in a mixture of miso, mirin, sake and brown sugar - faaaabulous).

And I threw some American-style bauch rippen or ribs on the barbie, in the parlance of the team that Germany thrashed 4-0 in their World Cup opener. The bbq sauce is a work in progress and I hope to glean insight into the subtleties and nuances of the perfect sauce when we are in the States later this summer.

Well played and well fed - Germany's first World Cup game and our first World Cup cook-out were successes on both counts. SCHLAND!!!!

Ribs wie in Amerika

I never thought I would see this in my German oven: American spare ribs. I didn't realize how difficult they would be to get my hands on (are you sensing a pattern here? Not only do all of the poultry stores know me through my hunt for duck fat but now all of the butcher shops know the American woman whose been asking around for some sort of ribs you can eat off the bone - odd that, ne Dieter?)

Most butchers patiently explained to me that "we don't do that here". That Germans eat another cut of the rib - the back rather than the front or "stomach ribs" as they are called in German. And they are not eaten off the bone here but simmered in stews or used in stocks. But I finally hit upon the right place, an old school butcher shop called Schlachterei Hans Wagner with a neon sign that had obviously not been changed since the 1950s. And when I asked for ribs, "like the Americans eat them, off the bone", the butcher smiled and nodded, "I have an American customer who is always ordering them." Thank you, fellow American customer! 

I am a complete novice when it comes to ribs - have never made them, have never even thought about attempting to make them, but I can appreciate them and I know what goooooood ribs taste like: candy bars. Well, not exactly but with the right sauce - and by the right sauce I mean my stepdad's secret bar-b-que rib sauce - they are as gooey and chewy as a Snickers bar. I didn't even bother asking him for his recipe; it's not called "Coach's secret recipe" for nothing. Instead I tried one out of Cynthia Barcomi's "Kochbuch für Feste" cookbook. While it sounds like blasphemy to take a recipe for a dish that one practically can't even make in Germany from a 'Kochbuch', Ms. Barcomi is an American living in Berlin running my favorite American deli there - and she knows her shit. At least, her tuna melts make me completely homesick.

I won't even bother reposting the recipe here - because by the time I got done with it, it was no longer her recipe. It included an entire baby bottle (it was the only thing I had on hand to measure in milliliters) of white wine vinegar and 60 ml of Woschester sauce. The first time I stuck my face over the pot to smell it I think I burned off all of my nosehairs. I made Ingo smell it and he came an eighth of a second from sneezing into the pot. Mmmm, maybe that's the "secret" to a "secret sauce". Gross, I know. I had to tame the vinegar with more ketchup and then I added two ingredients on the fly: maple syrup and Jim Beam. I think it worked out quite well actually. At least they looked amazing.

For sides, I threw together a horseradish cole slaw and stuck these sweet potato fries with coriander in the oven. They were really good and worked well with the ribs.

Our lovely neighbors, Susanne and Matthias came downstairs and dug into their first American spare ribs. Either they were just being nice, or they really liked them. Susanne is a fabulous cook and very honest with her critiques when asked and therefore, I believe it was the latter. That and look at how happy she looks in this photo.

Now that I have secured a dealer and with springtime hopefully in our foreseeable future, I believe American-style ribs will be on the grill on more than one occasion this summer. And I can't wait.

End note: if anyone has an amazing barbeque sauce recipe you would like to share, I am all ears!