Carbs galore!

Still on the subject of last weekend, what else did we eat apart from very expensive Tim Tams?

Well, German food of course!

German food was definitely great opportunity to replenish my body with those food groups that I’ve been missing: sugar, carbohydrates, fat….! To add to that, there was a huge street festival in our neighbourhood filled with just food and alcohol! And for a change, it didn’t rain! What more could we have asked for?

Anyway, in Frankfurt, the best place to fill up on German food on a cool winter summer’s day but the traditional Frankfurter Ebbelwei taverns.

Ebbelwei is apfelwein (apple wine) or in other words, apple cider. I’m not really sure exactly what the difference is between apfelwein and cider (apart from what I can find on the Internet) but apfelwein tastes less sweet than cider and has a cloudier liquid.

In any case, we’re lucky that we live in Sachsenhausen where our main street has 2 of the oldest (so they claim) Ebbelwei taverns in Frankfurt. These taverns are filled with long, solid and dark wooden tables and benches, and are often filled with merry Germans digging into hearty meals!

The first couple of times that the Hubs and I went to one of these taverns, we were completely unfamiliar with the food and so ordered by pointing at dishes that someone else was having at the table next to us! This time round, we knew what we wanted!

This is what I had.
This dish is apparently a Frankfurter speciality: Grüne Soße (pronounced “groone sosse”, something like that). The sauce is a mixture of herbs and sour cream, yogurt or cream. This lovely sauce is served usually over plain hard boiled eggs and potatoes.

Hubs on the other hand, being very dairy-intolerant, decided on the stereotypical German meal: sausages, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. His mashed potatoes seemed to have been mixed with what we thought was apfelwein, which gave it a little sweetness.
And we washed all that down with apfelwein naturally! 2 hours later, we all strolled out of the tavern clutching our bellies ;-)

Here’s a picture of what apfelwein is usually served in! Ok, the jug’s not usually that big but you get the picture ;-)
And this picture is for Lyrical Lemongrass who loves German beer! No, it’s not the umbrellas that you should be interested in; it’s what’s written on the umbrellas: Schöfferhofer, my current favourite German weizen beer.

Schneeballen

A while ago we took a short trip down the Romantic Road in Bavaria. Along the way, we stopped at a little medieval town called Rothenburg ob der Tauber. I use the term “medieval” very loosely seeing as the town has probably been restored over and over again and all the medieval bits don’t really look that medieval anymore.

Anyway, the local speciality in Rotheburg was a sweet little big schneeball (snowball) covered with anything from cinnamon and sugar to chocolate and grated coconut.

These little schneeballen are actually strips of dough all glued together in the shape of a ball, and then fried! Wish I had known that they were fried before I gobbled down 2 of those things!

While it looks like you could take a big bite into a scheeball, it’s actually quite hard. It was easier to break the ball up into little bits before eating it. The schneeball actually tastes like bits of shortbread or biscuits (the English kind). Very moreish…though I felt a little sick after greedily wolfing down the 2 ballen!

I haven’t tried to make them myself (I don’t think I could ever look at them again!) but here’s a link that shows you how.

Schneeball covered with cinnamon and sugar.

Schneeball covered with chocolate.

Freaky looking things aren’t they?

Spätzle

I have to admit, German food is still a bit of a mystery to me. However it’s not all sausages and sauerkraut.

A few weeks ago, at a loss for what to eat at a local restaurant (I didn’t feel like the over seasoned, greasy sausages), I tried the Kässpätzle (cheesy Spätzle topped with a generous serving of fried caramelised onions) and was hooked on this comfort food.

What is Spätzle you ask? This is Spätzle.

I agree, it looks a little scary. Kinda like a ton load of little white worms trying to wriggle their way out of the frying pan!

Spätzle is basically like weird textured pasta, made from flour and eggs and is served instead of potatoes with meat or just on its own as a main dish.

Ready-made Spätzle can be found in the fresh pasta section of supermarkets, or you can just make it yourself. I cheated and bought mine ready-made from the supermarket.

Recipe for calorie-packed very-moreish plain Spätzle with onions
1 packet fresh Spätzle
1 onion

Dice onion and fry in a pan. Add Spätzle and fry till cooked.

Looks completely bizarre but let me assure you, it’s very yummy comfort (and very anti-diet) food!

Ps.
If you’re a addicted to chilli like I am, eat your Spätzle with sweet chilli sauce. That’s how I eat my Spätzle!

Brunching in Frankfurt

The “brunch” I hear, is very popular in the U.S. and becoming more popular in Australia. Many of my friends back in Melbourne tend to do the “brunch” on Sundays where most people sleep in, skip breakfast then have a long and lazy brunch.

However I never really caught on to the idea. Given that most people have only 3 main meals a day, it just seemed that combining breakfast and lunch into 1 meal resulted in depriving me of 1 main meal!

Last Sunday however, after a big sleep in, we decided to stroll over to our local NY Café (yes, that’s its actual name) and have breakfast even though it was really lunch!

Hubs had the English breakfast, while I had the Huevos Rancheros. The English Breakfast was ok. Nothing out of the ordinary.
The Huevos Rancheros was topped with a very synthetic looking and tasting yellow cheese (cheddar??)! Even in the photo it looks plastic!

Anyway, the other thing missing was toast or just any kind of bread. For some reason, meals are not accompanied by bread here, while in France, I’d be jumping up and down if the waiter didn’t bring us any bread!

German servings

Being in a little town, we’ve been totally blown away by the prices of food here. Coming from Paris where prices are inflated to the maximum, the prices almost seem unrealistic. In fact, the prices seem inversely proportional to the actual proportions of food! Huge servings at a nice price.

We’ve been haunting a little Asian eatery with surprisingly relatively decent food, given that we’re in some tiny lost town in Germany. For a grand total of 3.90€, we were presented with a huge plate heaped with noodles each. We have since learnt to only order 1 plate of noodles or fried rice between both of us.

The only problem was in ordering the very first time we went there. Given our limited non-existent German language skills, it took us a while to decipher the menus until we finally learnt that they had an English menu! And even then, it took us a while to work out the English translations.

“Roasted vegetables and rice” gave me the impression that they were being extremely creative by using oven-roasted vegetables and serving that with a nice sauce and rice. However, when we started reading “roasted rice” and “roasted noodles”, we realised that by “roasted”, they actually meant “fried”!

Either way, the roasted noodles weren’t half bad.