Guilty Food Secret: Fischstaebchen (mit Erbsen)

Fish sticks are best fried and with little breading, and should definitely be served with green peas. (photo by Joachim)

In dishing out guilty food secrets, I mentioned I loved fish sticks as a kid. Come to find out, so did Joachim. So we bought some here, but they were unsatisfyingly bready and didn't have the same taste we remembered.

Back in Eitelborn, we refound the fish sticks of our youth, and I learned a secret. The fish sticks in Germany, even the cheap ones, are made with filets and not minced fish and have a much thinner breading than those here. To make things even better, they traditionally are fried in fat, not baked in the oven, which gives them exactly the aroma and taste I remember.

And it turns out he also likes green peas on the side. What a guy.

Courtney's Huehnerbrust mit Gefuellte Schweineback and Kaese

It's hard to go wrong with chicken rolled up in ham and cheese. (photo by Joachim)

My in-laws have the type of busy professional lives that lead to an expensive, unused kitchen and a lot of dinners out. So when I produced a variation of these (with regular ham instead of the wonderful gefuellter Schwienback that I got at the butcher in Montabaur) her immediate question was "wow-they sell this at the butcher?" Well, they sell the pieces, although in Eitelborn getting chicken is non-trivial. And putting it together is remarkably easy. Recipe after the jump.

Deutsche Food Pr0n: Erdbeeren Teilchen

Baking is not necessary in Eitelborn. (photo by Joachim)

Motivation to cook in Eitelborn is stifled by a great Metzgerei and excellent Backerei. Witness the strawberry tart -- erdbeeren Teilchen -- with its flaky and not-too-sweet pastry surrounding fresh berries and just enough gelee to set everything off.

Goat Sausage Bangers and Mash (sort of) with Applesauce and Bratkartoffeln

British-style goat bangers make a nicely complex one-dish meal when cooked with apples and served over fried potatoes. (photo by Joachim)

The decision between goat chorizo or bangers was made when Jeanne from Many Rocks Farm said we just had to try the recipe for British-style goat bangers and mash, a traditional pub-fare item. When it came time to make them, though, I realized I lacked two important ingredients: apple cider and mashed potatoes. Jeanne's recommended recipe can be found here. My amended recipe after the jump.

Cold-start Fried Potatoes with Skins

Cold-start fried potatoes come out golden and crispy. (photo by Joachim)

This is our second experiment with the cold-start method for cooking fries I found in the New York Times by way of Bob delGrasso's A Hunger Artist. This time we made regular fries from Yukon Gold potatoes, and elected to keep the skins on.

They cooked...

...and cooked...

...and cooked until they were done. Again, the cooking time was long, at about 1 hour 10 minutes, but friendly, with the oil boiling but never splattering. The results were excellent. We'd used the fat left over from cooking the sweet potatoes, and a bit of that flavor jumped over, which we found to be a positive contribution. Unfortunately, keeping the skins on was not such a great idea. The saucepan tended to have a gradient, and steam, trapped under the skins, kept the fries orienting themselves skin side up so that it was hard to get the skin sides to brown at the same rate as the exposed sides. Fortunately, this means more experimentation is in order.

1966 WDEC - Seviche

Seviche with squid is enhanced by canned North Sea shrimp. (photo by Joachim)

My German in-laws recognize only these tiny creatures as shrimp. The outsized "jumbo shrimp" and even the normal party-sized dippers are perfectly welcome at their table, but they are most definitely *not* shrimp. In any language, shouldn't shrimp be tiny, by definition? Unfortunately, I've only been able to lay my hands readily on the canned variety of this versatile creature that can enhance many a dish.

For this round, the shrimp were added to the Woman's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery "Fish" cookbook entry for Seviche, one of my favorite warm-day meals. "The citrus juice 'cooks' the fish," notes the introduction in italics. Recipe after the jump.

1966 WDEC - Broiled Shad Roe

Broiled shad roe is a simple treatment of a classic spring dish. (photo by Joachim)

My friend Lane introduced me to shad roe a few years ago. I was skeptical until I tasted it.  Now, it's one of my favorite elements of spring. This year, shad roe season happened to coincide with my working through the "Fish" section of the Woman's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery. James Beard's simple recipe and its results after the jump.