BOOK REVIEW : German Food Lightens Up : THE NEW GERMAN COOKBOOK: More Than 230 Contemporary and Traditional Recipes, <i> By Jean Anderson and Hedy Wurz</i> ; <i> (HarperCollins: $25; 416 pp.)</i>
Time was when some bastions of German cooking enjoyed real international renown. But not in very recent time. The great hotels of the casino towns, spas and Hansa ports were at their zenith before World War I. At tony pre-Depression men’s clubs, wealthy Berliners dined as augustly as wealthy Londoners. Between the wars, Alfred Walterspiel, among the reigning European chefs of his age, presided over a celebrated kitchen at the Four Seasons Hotel in Munich. And then--well, when postwar America started busily “discovering” that people knew how to cook in a zillion other parts of the world, the food of Germany was mostly ignored.
Winning back enough eclat to reach American awareness took a while, though a canny observer could have guessed that the territory pictured in Mimi Sheraton’s fine “The German Cookbook” (published in 1965 and still an endlessly pleasurable introduction) was no kitchen wasteland. In time, food professionals who read the language began seeking out first-rate publications from West Germany (for a long time a center of interesting food photography and reference works). In the 1970s and ‘80s, glowing reports and Michelin stars signaled the rising trajectories of a few bright young post- nouvelle chefs. American and even French tourists at last began to visit Munich in quest of drop-dead elegant restaurants. Around the time of reunification, a New Yorker cartoon fantasized a Berlin-style cafe as the next wave of Manhattan chic.
Jean Anderson and Hedy Wurz’s enjoyable new survey clearly acknowledges the current wave of glamour, but without the too-familiar tactic of ignorantly brushing aside anything more ancient than last Thursday. Their take on the “new” German scene capably steers between reportorial judgment of recent developments and home cooks’ personal gleanings. Different insular possibilities of the subject are firmly rejected. This isn’t a trend-spotters’ Germany of gaudy invention or a pretentious archaizers’ Germany of supposed Ur-ingredients. It is also a long way from the Reformhaus, the health-food store, which has many earnest Teutonic devotees--or the very, very German wonderland of everything canned, powdered and instantized.
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What’s left is far from negative despite the absence of some illustrious traditional specialties like steak tartare, May wine, Rapunzel (mache) salad, or fruit compotes. The Anderson-Wurz new Germany rapidly defines itself as a domain of pleasant hobby-cooks and chefs from whom the old Deutsche Kuche blends naturally into newer styles.
Of the roughly 215 recipes, most could be described as “traditional, with a difference.” A very few are the kind of opulent presentations that might grace stylish restaurant menus anywhere from Brussels to Seattle--for example, a warm salad of roast squab and julienned vegetables with a dressing based on the pan drippings, or a sole-salmon-lobster terrine served with a sorrel-dill sauce. More are sturdy old faithfuls like apple-horseradish sauce, boiled beef, sauerkraut and apples cooked in Riesling, Zimtsterne (cinnamon stars, without which Christmas is hardly official in many households), or Bohnen, Birnen, und Speck (green beans, pears, and bacon--a strange-sounding but venerable combination). And many give a traditional dish a minor facelift or whimsical spin--e.g., Bavarian cream with fine pumpernickel crumbs in the custard, some filo-wrapped versions of things that would more usually be made with short pastry or yeast dough, or chef Eckhart Witzigmann’s “Lebkuchen souffle.” (This has no earthly connection with Lebkuchen, the dense, chewy German equivalent of gingerbread, except that it contains some of the same spices.)
The sort of mix that Anderson and Wurz are after is obvious from a little browsing. The appetizer section is almost entirely devoted to fish and seafood, anything from miniature potato pancakes prettily adorned with smoked salmon rounds or vinegar-marinated raw fish fillets in sour cream-herb sauce to good old Rollmops or herring salad. Pungent, smelly cheese spreads of the “handcheese” and “cooked cheese” tribes are notably missing. But the authors take great pains with the different members of the dumpling family and the traditional holiday yeast breads. The bread chapter also investigates home-baked non-sweet breads, ignored in the Sheraton book. (Germans historically have been able to buy a splendid variety of breads including dense, flavorful rye and mixed-grain loaves from their local bakers, who also supplied the sourdough starter for those who wanted to make sourdough breads at home; from-scratch bread-baking is a relatively new field for sophisticated hobby-cooks.) A handful of interesting venison recipes testify to this abiding German passion--in the most unusual, the meat is roasted in a coating of pureed chestnuts. The national love of wild mushrooms finds lively expression in a sauce for pork medallions, a filling for crepes and a noble-sounding combination of asparagus and morels.
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One part of the “new German” emphasis strikes me as limiting: the heavy reliance on kitchen machinery. Many recipes tie you to an electric mixer or food processor without mentioning hand methods as alternatives, even for something as simple as pureeing raspberries. I also wish that the many mentions of “rich beef broth (preferably homemade)” in ingredients lists had moved someone to provide a recipe for the characteristic German beef broth with its interesting accents of celery root, parsley root and leek, a major building block of the cuisine for those who don’t joyously substitute that classic German expedient, the Suppenwurfel (bouillon cube). Another minor annoyance for people who grew up on the German name of some old favorite is that the index almost wholly omits German terms, even for such familiar dishes as Hasenpfeffer or Maultaschen. (Sheraton’s “German Cookbook” has separate German and English indices, a nice touch that few publishers would spring for nowadays.)
On the other hand, Anderson and Wurz provide a long and intelligent glossary of German culinary terms that’s almost a book’s worth of information in its own right. This volume also has a good chapter on German wine and beer by the late Lamar Elmore, an unintimidating primer for those ordinarily driven up the wall by words like Trockenbeerenauslese.
Jean Anderson’s reputation for clear, reliable directions was amply borne out by my three cooking experiments. A full-flavored but surprisingly subtle mussel soup was a good example of an approach that seems to be frequent here: making use of rich ingredients like cream and egg yolks without apology but also in a decidedly careful, restrained manner to give the suggestion of creaminess rather than a lushly opulent texture. Onions hollowed out and baked with a savory pork filling had the faint bittersweet headiness of the dark beer used to finish the sauce. Best of all were braised veal shanks--not left in one piece as they often are in German treatments of this cut, but sawed into rounds osso buco-style and served with a rich, intense sour cream sauce.
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The great attention of this book is that it is soundly enough rooted in traditional cooking to please those loyal to past memories, shrewdly enough geared to the cosmopolitan present to make prejudiced American cooks take a second look at “that soggy German cooking,” but not heavy-handed in pursuit of either goal. Many--if not most--of the familiar areas are covered more thoroughly in Mimi Sheraton’s book, but Anderson and Wurz excel in discreet, uncontrived originality.