Roasts, sauces and dumplings, hearty and fatty – that’s what many people associate with German cuisine. A prejudice, says top chef Christian Rach. A conversation about the variety of German dishes, our vegetables – and his grandmother’s cuisine.
Mister Rachwhen was the last time you ate really good German cuisine?
Just recently in Cologne. There was organic chicken, breast only, and a vegetable side dish: parsley root and carrots, well brushed, not peeled, and then nicely braised in the oven.
I’m thinking more of dishes like schnitzel, spaetzle, sauerbraten…
We have to ask ourselves: Typically German, what is that actually? What do we mean by this, apart from these common dishes? To stick with my example with the chicken and the vegetables: Let’s take a look at the method of preparation. Braising – searing and then letting it cook – is traditional German cuisine. My grandmother, born in 1903, still had an oven that she fired with wood and coal. Vegetables such as salsify were often simmered in a cast iron pan – and rarely meat, as we usually associate it with German cuisine today.
Today, hardly anyone knows salsify, let alone knows how to prepare it. And today the oven is more likely to be heated up for ready-made pizza than for a braised dish. You recently published a cookbook about German cuisine. Was it also about preserving the recipes that you remember from your grandmother?