BAVARIAN FOOD

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 39, 25 November 1937, Page 9

BAVARIAN FOOD

A LAND OF DUMPLINGS. COLD MEAT AND FLANS. That part of Germany famous for its beer is often called ‘‘the land of big eating.” The food is on the generous side, in keeping with the national beverage, but the meals themselves nowadays are simple, writes tlie “Daily Telegraph.” Even in the big hotels dinners are limited to three courses, and sometimes two, and in the ordinary restaurants one-dish meals are quite common. Bavaria is very pleasant to visit, apart from its gastronomic delights. Smiling valleys, fruit trees lining the roads, and picturesque villages, with houses that take one back to Grimm’s fairy tales, and flowers eveaywhere. Petunias and pink trailing geraniums 'literally pour from every available window-box and balcony, and even wedding carriages are decorated inside and out with white flowers and trails of smilax, instead of our conventional white ribbons. Dumplings Delight. About the food. If you like dumplings, this is the* place to find them: in the soup, by themselves, and as a sweet. Marrow dumplings are exciting, with the little drop of golden liquid fat in the middle and the potato dumplings are the lightest in the world. They often appear in company with a favourite stew of beef. Tlie meat is first soaked in vinegar to make it very tender, and is then stewed to a brown richness and served with a sprinkling of crisp/ green beans. Roast hock of pork is a popular, if massive, meat dish, as a whole one is served as one portion, with generous trimmings of carrots, asparagus tips, and potato balls. The inevitable schnitzel has many variations. Perhaps the nicest is one served with a thick egg sauce flavoured heavily with tarragon. Another veal dish is made from the thin part of the loin and is served with kidney. It arrives in a big dish with little pockets all round the edge. In these is a selection of salads and vegetables which varies in different places —there are usually about eight kinds, including lettuce, cucumber, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, puree and compote of cranberries. Another good meat dish is beef cooked with cabbage and served with gherkins. A delicious separate vegetable course is made by boiling a cauliflower until tender but unbroken, and-then smothering its head with golden buttered crumbs. Sour-sweet flavourings are popular; runner beans, for instance, are often cooked with vinegar, and salads usually have a very sweet dressing. A cold runner bean salad, covered with finelychopped onion, is particularly good, and so are their flat potato cakes, flavoured with chopped parsley and well browned. Blaick-Bread Sandwiches. Here the flan is developed into a dish of great distinction. One attractive and imposing dish has a deep layer of sponge cake in the pastry shell. On this are arranged borders of all sorts of cooked fruits. Pears oi peaches may overlap each other round the edge, then will come a border of greengages, then perhaps plums_ with cherries or other fruits piled up in the centre. As much variation as possible in colour and flavour is achieved, and the whole is covered with a thick syrup Blackberry flan is improved with a thick sprinkled border of chopped almonds on the fruit, and pancakes are served with a filling of apple cooked with currant and sultanas Peche Melba can be a hackneyed sweet, but not when the whole fresh peach is" topped with a generous spoonful of Bar le Due jam. Black bread is a pleasant change if cut very thin and eaten with plenty of butter.

A good sandwich is made with one slice of white bread and one of black bread, with a filling of cheese and jam. In the cafes and beer gardens well-scrubbed scollop shells are sometimes used for butter or jam and make quite nice little dishes for the purpose. Great trouble is taken to serve food attractively. Even a. few slices of liver sausage to accompany a glass of beer, will be brought on a glass plate with decorations of feathery carrot foliage and little roses cut from radishes. A dish of cold mixed meats is most enticing, with the various kinds of sausage, pink ham in wafer-thin slices twisted in coronets, large thin slices of gruyere cheesy, stuck among the meat like large visiting cards, and unexpected finds of pats of butter hidden under the carrot top garnisliings.