Autumn
The air is crisp, the trees are bald. Builders start constructing the booths for the Herbstmesse. It is time for blut and leberwurst.
PS: Rhyming is hard.
Ochsenmaulsalat
Try googling that word and most likely, the word ends up in people’s list of the most-disgusting food in the world. But I love it. Ochsenmaulsalat is a typical menu in the German-speaking world but it’s rather hard to find. The young or the refined find it disgusting due to its fat content. One of my worldly bosses once commented that Ochsenmaul salat is only for old people. For fear of sabotaging my career advancement, I didn’t dare to tell him that I, despite my age, love that stuff - one bad vice (he already knows that I frequent the beer halls in search of authentic food) is bad enough.
Ochsenmaul is paper-thin slices of cow’s cheek pickled in vinegar and therefore contains a lot of cartilage. It is normally served with oil, salt, pepper, and pickled gherkin. I was introduced to this dish by an old colleague whose eyes brighten whenever he spotted two big bowls of transparent, pinkish slices in the canteen’s salad bar. Thinking that nothing can be more scary than the stuffs we eat in Asia, I was game to try and I was hooked.
Like anything cartilage, the meat is eaten more for its texture rather than flavour: it is tender and oily. The vinegar in the pickling liquid creates a sourish flavour to temper the oiliness.
It’s normally available from the butcher or supermarkets. We get ours from our favourite butcher, Kuhn.
Girolle and Tête de Moine
Our first encounter of this uniquely shaped cheese was in a wedding apero. I couldn’t stop munching on that stuff it was embarrassing.
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Wurstsalat
Despite its rather Germanic origin (famous in South Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), this dish is a Swiss staple, normally found in beer halls or just any restaurant selling typical swiss food.
My first encounter of this salad was in Hasenburg, a notorious beer hall in the city. Reading the name, I thought it was something of a cobb salad, a salad with chunks of veggies and bits of sausages. Little did I know that it was chunks of sausages, cheese, and onion with bits of veggies drenched in either Italian or French dressing. It is normally served as einfach (or simple) as an appetizer or with pommes frites (or french fries) as a heavier main course.
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Blut und Leber Wurst
It’s autumn again so it’s time for the blood and liver sausages. I made it last year. While it was great, the side dishes weren’t optimum. This year I made another attempt with some improvements.
Last night, the liver and blood sausages, freshly obtained from Kuhn, my husband’s favourite butcher, were accompanied by supermarket-prepared rösti to which I customized with mushroom and left-over green pepper. Normally, the vegetable involved is sauerkraut but I hate sauerkraut so I substituted it with zucchini simply roasted with olive, salt, and pepper.
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