Pickled beef and Nobel rats

The Dom from the river Trave.

Sunday in Lübeck dawned bright and fair, and with the promise of good weather for the morning at least, it was a case of getting out of the hotel early as quickly as possible – but only after breakfast.

Now this is the point at which we are going to talk breakfast. Usually, on my travels with The Other Half, we find a nearby café and have something pastryish and a coffee. Hotel breakfasts tend to be vastly overpriced and not actually very good.

But the breakfast at the Alter Speicher turned out to be a veritable feast.

Small frikadellen, Nuremberg grilling sausages, hard-boiled eggs, several different sort of herring – oh, the herring – breads, fruit, honey (something that Tony comments on several times in Buddenbrooks, as a “nature food”).

There was fruit juice and coffee, an array of salads and more varieties of cream cheese than you could have shaken a cheese straw at.

The Dom from the Trave.

It was still early when I’d finished, and I wandered in peace and quiet, joyfully. I went back to the Marienkirche, looking for the devil that some wit had thought to sculpt and place outside.

Finding him, I also found a Japanese tourist who photographed me with him. I reciprocated. And my idea took off, as I was then asked to photograph an elderly lady and her daughter on either side of him.

Another wit had placed a paper cross around his neck. But perhaps it wasn’t intended as a joke? God only knows.

In another juxtaposition of the unexpected, bikers were starting to arrive for a big bikers’ service that was scheduled for noon.

Marienkirche from the Petrikirche.

The city was blissfully quiet and the sun was coming through, so I took the opportunity and headed straight over to the Petrikirche, which provides one of the seven Gothic spires that tower over old Lübeck.

The whitewashed interior has been turned into a fascinating gallery space, but I was visiting for the lift, which takes you up to a viewing platform in the tower, from where you can gain magnificent views over the old city and beyond.

Drifting up from the Trave below were the sounds of a brass band, as rowing eights oarred in for the start of a race.

Rowing is big in Lübeck: a boat trip around the old city later revealed at least two clubs, both bustling with cross-generational activity. And then there were all the cyclists and the joggers and the walkers. These Lübeckers are active folk.

But I headed first for the Dom – the cathedral – down a gentle hill from the Marienkirche and the Rathaus. A service had started inside, so I didn’t enter, but headed down a further hill to the river’s edge, and wandered for some time before coming across a boat trip that was within a very convenient five minutes of casting off.

Günter Grass Flounder

The trip on the river allowed for more lovely vistas. The boat itself was driven by an elderly man who doubled as our guide – having already decided that I should be charged the senior's fare.

I caught bits and pieces of his commentary, but the most extraordinary moment was when, ever so fleetingly, his speech almost sounded like someone reading Chaucer.

Watching Wallander on the television, The Other Half and I have, more than once, felt that understanding the spoken Swedish is like having something on the tip of your tongue: so very near.

In a three-part series on the contribution of historic immigrants to the UK, Eddie Izzard illustrated the closeness of old English and Dutch (or at least Fresian).

And here it was again – linguistic similarity and distance combined.

I was delighted to realise that I was remembering bits and pieces of German as the day passed. Hardly just tourist stuff either – I’d been really rather thrilled to realise that I knew der Taufel, the German for ‘the devil’.

But there was also the embarrassment of mingling my limited language knowledge.

When we first visited France, I’d find myself using German words. Here, several years of French trips asserted themselves into the language as I found myself using a French word instead of German. Thus the deeply embarassing nonsense of “tres gut”.

Günter Grass rat – and, err, smurfs.

More and more I regret being so lousy and so disinterested in languages at school.

Although I will also admit to feelings of enormous chuffedness that my pronunciation – and my attempts to speak German as much as I could – were praised by a number of people.

The first was an elderly woman in a shop that sold both model trains and cars, and hand-carved wooden Christmas decorations; bent and with hair of snow, she made me think instantly of Sesemi Weichbrodt, the girls’ teacher in Buddenbrooks.

The same efforts were also rewarded by someone giving me free cakes – and someone else randomly buying a white rose from a passing seller and handing it to me.

They don’t get many Brits up here – I asked – so perhaps it was partly the exotic value.

A piece of Nobel art.

One of the staff in the cafe where I was given the cakes also spotted my Manchester City polo shirt and found the last minutes of the FA Cup semi-final on the television, coming outside to tell me. Which was extraordinarily considerate.

Before that, though, the day had also allowed a visit to Günter Grass-Haus, where many of his sculptures and drawings are on display, together with his Nobel certificate.

It was also housing a temporary exhibition of John Lennon's art.

This was, in many ways, far more ‘alive’ than Buddenbrookshaus had been. If I’d expected too much there, I’d expected little here – and found much more.

For me at least, Grass is not only a fabulous writer, but an artist of huge integrity – in many ways, a continuation of Mann.

And the paintings and drawings and sculptures that are on display remind vistors that he is also a great visual artist.

Most surprisingly, though, was the discovery that there were limited-edition books available, each with a numbered, signed lithograph inside.

In all the art from our travels that now hang on the walls at home, we had only a print of a Grosz Berlin street scene to represent Germany – and that was bought in London.

Not any more.

Admittedly, I’d have snapped up one of his wonderful rat sculptures if that wouldn’t have meant really shoving the boat out beyond what I thought would be acceptable. But a signed, stamped, numbered lithograph by a Nobel laureate is still pretty impressive.

The culture vultury continued with a visit to the nearby Museum Behnhaus Drägerhaus.

Caspar David Friedrich: Kügelgens Grab

Formed from two old merchants’ houses, it is partly a museum, with half a dozen rooms furnished in early 19th-century style. The rest is the gallery.

I don’t know why they bother with attendants, though – the floors squeak so much you couldn’t possibly snatch anything surreptitiously and hope to run away noticed.

It does, however, have a cloakroom with lockers, where 1€ secures you a locked space until you’re finished.

In true ‘n’er cast a clout’ mode I was still wandering around in a heavy leather jacket. It was blissful to be able to take it off.

The gallery houses a collection of paintings by the Nazarene school – early 19th century painters dedicated to spreading religious faith through their Italian-influenced Biblical scenes.

Johann Friedrich Overbeck – with Bible.

Although one of their founders, Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789-1869), did occasionally break out into less overtly religious topics to paint something such as the self-portrait with his family, for instance. Although another self-portrait, ‘with Bible’, hardly screams ‘life and soul of the party’.

I have to say, I wasn’t over-impressed. And that has nothing to do with the religious aspect: rather, that they simply seem rather poor by comparison with other painters of religious scenes, whether Italian or Flemish, to mention but two.

The gallery’s five paintings by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), including Kügelgens Grab (1821-22), were, on the other hand, a welcome tonic, even allowing for their over-blown romanticism.

There was also a huge, temporary exhibition by Lübeck's own Johann Wilhelm Cordes (1824-1869), which had some interesting studies and paintings. His Norwegian fjord paintings were good and the studies of clouds intriguing, but otherwise he was obsessed with painting soldiers and seamen in fantasised scenes that look … well, fantasised.

Johann Wilhelm Cordes study.

One of these had a poacher lying on the ground, one hand holding his dog’s head down, the other a rifle, a dead deer with them, while above, a gamekeeper and dog hunted for them. It was oddly rather comic book.

Of all things, it made me think of a sort of 19^th century combination of the likes of Chris Foss and those little 'Commando' comics.

But the gallery also had work by another Lübeck artist, Albert Aereboe (1889-1970), whose paintings in the early 20th century provided some interesting thoughts.

A self portrait from 1924, with the old city seen through a narrow window behind, was particularly interesting, and reminded me of the patrician, very formal way in which Thomas Mann presented himself to the world in portraits from that era and later.

Albert Aereboe

And Aereboe repeated the trick too, in his portrait Bildnis Dr F Bonhoff, from the same year. It's difficult not to see this as a reflection of a time and place and attitudes, rather than the responses of Mann in particular to how he revealed himself to the public.

Albert Aereboe: Bildnis Dr F Bonfoff

Aereboe’s Rote Jacke, from the same year is a very good still life: classic yet modern at the same time.

There was also a Kirchner and a Beckmann (Bildnis Elsbeth Goetz, 1924), and a few by Munch from his time living in the city.

A 1929 painting by New York artist Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956), of Lübeck itself, was one of the most intriguing there. The Cubist influence was clear, but it was also highly reminiscent of an Expressionist film set: think Das Kabinet des Dr Caligari – in colour.

And finally worth a mention is Flugzeugabsturz ins Kornfield by Franz Radziwill (1895-1983), which is not exactly a familiar art subject.

Flugzeugabsturz ins Kornfield by Franz Radziwill

The thing is, not every gallery in the world is stupendous. But you can learn things from smaller galleries too – and perhaps, in some ways, even more than from seeing iconic paintings.

The evening was given over to a different sort of culture – a visit to Schiffergesellschaft.

Characterising itself as a ‘posh pub’ might seem like overdoing things, but this 1535 building has housed the seamen’s guild for centuries and has also been a place to eat and drink.

Sure enough, it gets a mention in Buddenbrooks, when Thomas takes guest of the family, Herr Permaneder, there, and is described fleetingly, complete with it’s fleet of vast model ships hanging from the roof.

Lübeck by Lyonel Feininger.

The interior is extraordinary – the menu full of traditional, northern German food.

I started with herring three ways, which came on volkornbrot and with pickles. It was gorgeous; the firm, sweet fish combined with different dressings, including a very light curry one with fat, juicy sultanas.

To follow, it was always going to be the labskaus. This is history on a plate. A traditional seamen’s dish, it is made with preserved meats – corned or pickled beef – and grated beetroot, and is traditionally served with a fried egg on top.

It is an interesting taste – a remarkably subtle mix of sweet and sour, with the egg adding further sweetness. It came with more pickles and half a herring on the side.

Labskaus found its way all around the Baltic and Scandinavia – and also to Liverpool, where it gave its name to the local residents of that port city.

Herring three ways.

These sort of food connections are fascinating.

In a 2009 Telegraph article on Lübeck as a city break destination, Simon Heffer enjoyed it, but commented that he received strange looks as an Englishman ordering it.

Well, I can report no such looks. So perhaps it was just him. Or perhaps it was me!

In her classic book on German cuisine, The German Cookbook, Mimi Sheraton says that the Schiffergesellschaft labskaus is the best she tasted on her travels in the country, and the recipe she includes is from this incredible Lübeck institution.

Labskaus.

I finished with plettenpudding à la Thomas Mann – in other words, the trifle with raspberries and cream that is served as dessert at the housewarming for “the house on Mengstraße” that opens Buddenbrooks.

It was tasty enough, but I’m afraid it bore only a passing resemblance to what Mann describes. I shall have a go at recreating it myself at some stage.

For the record, I had a small beer – a Jever – on the side, and very pleasant it was too, and I concluded the evening with a Fürst Bismarck corn vodka – memories of which go back to our first trip to Berlin, in 2002.

And that was that for day two.

I slunk back to my hotel and sank into my bed.

But I was already beginning to understand just what a wonderful place this was – and I had a full day and a bit to go to explore it.

Time for a change

Just the thing to lift the tastebuds.

Mid-March, and a change of culinary tune was needed more than ever; something to provide a little zest as the gloom continues, with rain added in for good measure.

Early Saturday morning, pre-market, was invested in swotting both Mimi Sheraton’s The German Cookbook and Elisabeth Luard’s European Peasant Cuisine.

On the one hand, Germany is beckoning loud and clear now. After months of procrastination brought on by both a complex work schedule and underlying panic, the last week has seen bookings finally made. Lübeck, here I come!

My first solo trip outside the UK might have had to wait until my 51st year, but now it is looming, less than a month away.

Of which much more in due course.

In the meantime, back to yesterday morning’s culinary ruminations.

Sheraton’s is a remarkable book, thorough and packed with culinary history. But it's not particularly easy to actually cook from. So for instance, I’ve put off trying frikadellen for ages on the basis that her recipe contains so many ingredients.

I’ve had these little burgers ready-made from Lidl in the past, but really wanted to make my own. A spot of Googling served to reveal that they can be much simpler than something like 18 ingredients.

But that’s for another day.

In the meantime, before the onslaught of Germanophilia, a change was still required. And it came via Luard’s wonderful book.

Like Sheraton, Luard's scholarship is a joy – with the added bonus of a deliciously dry but light writing style. The answer to my need came in the shape of a French classic, chicken and 40 cloves of garlic.

Now if you don't like or aren't used to garlic, that's going to sound like a vast amount, but long, slow cooking makes it beautifully soft and sweet.

It's an easy dish.

Take your cloves of garlic – it's about three large bulbs – but don't peel them. Pop them in the bottom of a good, solid cooking pot and add about half a wine glass of olive oil.

Ready for the oven.

Take your bird and wipe it inside. Season and place on top of the garlic before adding more oil 7 the same amount again – on top of the bird. Just olive oil ordinaire, of course - not virgin.

Pop a lid on and, if it isn't a really good tight fit, Luard suggests sealing the pot with flour and water paste. I used my Le Creuset, with a sort of cartouche of foil over the top before the lid was placed on top.

And then it's into the oven at 170˚C (fan) for half an hour before the heat is turned down to 160˚C for around another 45 minutes.

Luard suggests serving it with toasted slices of bread, onto which you can then squeeze the garlic.

Unfortunately, I have a combination oven and grill, and there is no toaster in the place, but a sliced, decent-quality baguette is perfectly good.

And it was served with a salad of frisée lettuce, endive and watercress, with a dressing of white wine vinegar, olive oil, seasoning and grain mustard.

The chicken skin doesn't brown, but in this case, no matter: the meat is moist and wonderfully tender.

And given that there were just the two of us, there was plenty left over. My lunch tomorrow will involve some of the meat, plus a dressing made from the jelly that was left over, reduced and then whisked with the juice of half an orange.

For a jaded appetite in need of a lift, it was the perfect thing – not least the salad: how do I forget that salad is not just a summer thing?

Then today, I roasted a rolled and boned piece of pork shoulder.

The oven was set for 180˚C (fan). Sage leaves were pressed into the rolled meat and the scored skin rubbed well with coarse salt.

It had half an hour at that temperature, before the oven was turned down to 160˚C, a little boiling water added to the dish, and a peeled, cored, chunked Bramley apple tossed with liquid and fat, before the meat was put back on top.

It had another 90 minutes like that, with par-boiled spuds tossed in melted lard and popped in alongside after an hour.

On the side, tender stem broccoli.

Apart from sausages and mince and the very occasional gammon steak, I tend to avoid pork; fear, mostly: getting it too dry can be an issue after all.

But this worked well, was tasty and well cooked, not dry but with crispy skin – and like yesterday's chicken was a welcome change from a diet that seems to have been largely the same, week after week, as the second half of winter has dragged on.

And of course, could there be anything much more German than a bit of pig? Well, I'm going to start exploring that cuisine a little in the coming days.

A turnip for the book

After a week in which the suddenly-darker evenings and the equally sudden cold had conspired to make the thought of hibernation an enticing one, came a weekend of unexpected triumph – and fair old bit of learning.

It started, as all weekends should, on Friday evening. In this case, the penultimate episode of this year’s Gardeners’ World on the BBC was the inspiration.

It was only the second edition I'd caught since getting going on my own little patch, generally imagining that it would have little of interest or use for someone with an urban patio of approximately three metres by nine.

But this one featured presenter Monty Don gathering leaves – and explaining how it’s worth bagging them up to keep for next year when, as leaf mould, they’ll provide little nutrition, but wonderful structure to soil, which is particularly good for bulbs.

There you are. In the last couple of weeks I’ve spent money on buying compost for the bulbs, and here was a suggestion of how to use something that needs getting rid of anyway.

The forecast for the weekend was sun on Saturday and rain for much of Sunday. And sure enough, Saturday dawned bright and sunny and cold.

After the week’s trip to Broadway Market, I set about a number of tasks – starting with the leaves. There were a few in our own little patch, trying to hide beneath and behind pots, but the wind had swept many, many more into insouciant heaps in the carpark at the back.

It was an easy job to fill a garden sack, which then had a couple of small snips made in it to ensure that the leaves don't get waterlogged.

That done, it was on to stripping out the tomato plants, which were looking rather sad, with the few remaining spilt, unrippened fruits and bedraggled leaves. We didn’t do badly from the tomatoes, but like so much else, I'll know more next time.

And then it was out to the back and to my Schleswig-Holstein patch of ground in the carpark itself.

After finding only dolls house-sized carrots in recent weeks – and there should have been edible baby ones in September – plus no hint of turnips or swedes, I had given up any thoughts of a harvest and was set simply to clear that patch.

But then, as work began, I found a human-sized carrot! Okay, it wasn’t ‘big’, but it was as large as anything you’d see in those pricey packets of ‘baby veg’ in the supermarket.

A few more – smaller, but still edible – also emerged. I was nearly skipping around in excitement.

And better was to come. Because while the swedes really had failed to do anything whatsoever at all, there were small turnips popping above ground; an assortment of shapes and sizes, but all of them cream, topped with a rich, dusky purple.

Excitement squared.

What followed, of course, was the question of what to do with this unexpected harvest: not quite enough for a portion of veg each with our main meal, but demanding to be eaten at the first possible opportunity.

In the event, I’d been planning to try my hand at Königsberger Klopse – a form of German meatball/dumpling that I’d first tasted in Berlin a few years ago.

Mimi Sheraton’s The German Cookbook (which even has a look of scholarliness) had come down from the shelf in consideration of the weekend’s food and, while contemplating frickadellen – the good burgers of Germany – my eyes had landed on her klopse recipe, memory was triggered and the decision made.

After spotting a rather majestic purple kohlrabi on the market, if’d been considering that as a side dish, but my own root veg were calling.

I’m not used to cooking turnips. To be honest, I’ve eaten them so rarely it’s difficult to recall why I decided to sow some. But sow some I had  and now, at long last, they were ready.

The packet had seemed to suggest that we’d have had baby turnips available by the time we arrived back from France at the beginning of September – a thought that, at the time, had produced mouthwatering ideas of a French dish of roast duck and baby turnips.

But once they were in my hands, inexperience meant I was fretting that, with growth having been so slow, they'd be tough if not downright inedible.

But first it was a matter of preparing the klopse.

First, take some mince. Now personally, I’m afraid I tend to ignore amounts when making meatballs: it’s one of the few dishes I now have enough practice at to know how much I need.

So I know that approximately 300g of mince will be fine for two of us.

In this case, that was half and half pork and beef. Tradition allows that it could be a third each of these two, plus veal, but pork is a must.

Take some breadcrumbs – I suppose about a coffee cup full for that amount of meat (goodness knows that that translates to in weight) and mix with the meat. Add two or three finely-chopped anchovies, a finely chopped shallot or two, some chopped parsley and a little grated lemon.

Then add an egg. I don’t normally add egg to meatballs or patties – you don't need it in order to get the mixture to hold together. But in this case, it made sense: the klopse I remembered from Berlin had a very light texture and would benefit from the egg.

In that went. Everything is mixed thoroughly and then, with moist hands, shaped into balls.

I do love how Sheraton almost screams at her readers at this point, warning them not to taste the mix for seasoning because there’s raw pork involved. Would anyone actually do that?

And this is hardly a new publication, with health and safety panic, but one for a US audience, originally published in 1965.

The next step is to take some beef or veal stock and bring it to boiling point.

Cue the fun of defrosting stock quickly – then finding there wasn’t enough beef stock, so having to rapidly defrost a jar of chicken stock and add that.

Yes, I could have used a cube, but even though I’ve finally traced an acceptable veg stock cube (and one that doesn't involve the farming of palm oil, which is damaging orangutan populations), there is a world of difference between a mass-produced stock and a home-produced one. Whatever Marco Pierre White might claim (for money).

And when you’ve bothered to buy decent ingredients, it seems frankly daft not to use the best stock you can.

Once a large pan of shimmering liquid had been brought to a boil, the klopse went in for 15 minutes.

While that's cooking, chop an onion finely and start to cook it in butter. Once it’s browning, add plain flour and mix to cook through and make a roux.

Now at this point, Sheraton would have you add this mix to the stock to thicken, and then continue cooking the klopse in it for a further 15 minutes.

But it seemed easier to let the klopse continue as they were, simply taking a ladle of stock at a time to thin the sauce.

Five minutes from the end, add some capers. And if you want, at the end, pour in some sour cream – a Bavarian addition.

On the side, straightforward boiled spuds – and then the veg, grown by my own fair hands.

I washed off soil carefully, and topped and tailed everything. Then it all simply went into a small pan to boil until tender, with a few peas added to bulk it out.

The klopse were light and satisfying – Sheraton’s tome will not be gathering as much dust in the coming weeks and months.

Unexpected as anchovy and lemon are as ingredients in northern European cookery – they seem its antithesis – they blend well here and don’t dominate.

And so to the turnips: well, they could have done with another two to three minutes – such is my lack of experience in cooking them º but oh my goodness, the taste!

That will be amongst the freshest vegetables I’ve eaten and honestly, there is a difference. There’s a natural sweetness you can barely imagine, together with a complexity and depth of real taste that, in its ability to surprise, is indicative of how much we have become accustomed to blandness on our plates and in our mouths.

The little taste of carrot wasn’t to be sniffed at either.

One thing is certain: my little turnips were an unexpected triumph – and they will most definitely be on the menu again for next year.