Traditional dish
Plucked finches: bean stew as the whalers once ate
Pluckte Finken is a one-pot dish in Bremen’s cuisine. The original recipe comes with an ingredient that cannot be found in any supermarket today.
© Joerg Lehmann
Nothing warms you better from the inside than a hearty stew. No wonder, Pluckte finches were once very popular with the Bremen sailors. A traditional dish with a special insert that shouldn’t really exist anymore.
The traditional Bremen stew “Pluckte Finken” comes originally with an ingredient that cannot be found in any supermarket today. Because the recipe comes from the time of the whalers and means something like “diced whale”. Those days are of course long gone. Whale meat is no longer on the menu in this country, and that’s a good thing. Especially since the stew also works in a slightly different form – in this case with smoked pork back bacon.
Jörg Reuter and Manuela Rehn set out on a journey to save recipes like this one from being forgotten. They visited institutions for the elderly all over Germany and met older people in order not only to talk to them about the recipes from their home country. In Franconia, the authors learned what it means when the carp is eaten “Ingreisch” (fried offal as a side dish) and in Swabia it didn’t take long before it comes to “Herrgottsbescheißerle” (Maultaschen).
And it was also cooked – side by side by top chefs such as Micha Schäfer from the Berlin star restaurant “Nobelhart & Schmutzig”, Lisa Angermann from the Leipzig star “Frieda” or Ricky Saward from the world’s first vegan star restaurant “Seven Swans” in Frankfurt. The result is the cookbook “Our culinary heritage: Favorite recipes of our grandparents’ generation”, a collection of regional, seasonal and, above all, traditional dishes.
Traditional bean stew “Pluckte Finken”
ingredients
250 g dried white beans
500 g carrots
200 g parsnips
500 g small potatoes
70 g onions
300 g slightly tart apples (e.g. Boskop)
20 g lard
1 liter of beef broth
250 g smoked pork back bacon
Rock salt
1/2 bunch of flat-leaf parsley
black pepper from the mill
30 ml apple cider vinegar
preparation
1. Rinse the beans and soak them in 1 liter of water overnight. The next day, drain the beans, bring to the boil with 1 liter of fresh water and cook for 45 minutes.
2. In the meantime, peel the vegetables and apples. Cut the carrots and parsnips into slices, dice the potatoes and apples.
3. Dice the onions very finely, sweat in a large saucepan in the heated lard until translucent and pour on the broth. Add bacon, 2 teaspoons of salt and prepared vegetables and cook for 25 minutes over low heat.
4. Remove the bacon, dice it and put it back in the broth. Wash the parsley, pat dry, pluck the leaves and chop finely.
5. Season the stew with salt, pepper and vinegar. Stir in the parsley just before serving.
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