Germany’s culinary traditions - solid, nourishing, non-nonsense - have always relied on a well-stocked storecupboard to carry her through the cold months when nothing much grows.
For the self-sufficent farming communities of the Black Forest in south-west Germany, a six-month growing season - roughly May to September compared to year-round fertility available in the lands of the Mediterranean - necessity led to the development of a sophisticated repertoire of sweet and savoury breads and cakes that take advantage of the massive, ornate, ceramic wood-burning heating-stoves that provided warmth and comfort for a household that could be snowed-in for months
Some thirty years ago, in just such a kitchen heated by the just such a ceramic stove, Erica Butz - farmwife, gardener, mother of two young daughters - took me down to her cellar to inspect her stores. We were coming up for Easter, planting-time, and spring was already in the air, but the shelves were still crowded with shiny multicoloured bottles and jars, all carefully labelled.
“Everything is from the garden,” explained Erica with pride. “We prepare our own sauerkraut, and dig our own potatoes. Here in the jars are beans, peppers, gherkins, blackberry and blackcurrant jams, pickles, mustards and many other things for the winter. And we have apples and plums in the orchard, so we have permission to distill our own schnapps which sometimes we sell to the hikers as a little extra in the apron-pocket. And of course, we will be planting our potatoes at Easter, as we always do.” Carefully laid out sackcloth on the floor were sprouting potatoes awaiting their day in the sun.
Back in the warm kitchen, the camera-crew awaits our return with the main ingredient for Erica’s demonstration, an apronful of big, juicy brown-skinned onions, the topping for the family’s favouite supper, Zwiebelkuchen, an onion tart baked with a soft layer of savoury custard. The base, a yeasted dough enriched with lard, is patted into its baking-tin, spread with onion rings and a creamy custard, and baked on a high heat so the topping and bread-base cook together and absorb each other’s flavours in much the same way as pizza. Depending on the season, while onions ensure fresh vegetables all winter long, the topping might be apple or plum or summer berries, and the custard will be sweet rather than savoury and the dough prepared with butter. Whether sweet or savoury, the kuchen is served as the main course after a broth-based soup.
Tradition in all things is respected by the households of the Black Forest. And with reason. It is not easy to make a good life in what was until a thousand years ago, virgin pine-forest patrolled by wolves and bears, home to witches and hobgoblins hiding in the darkness whose stores were told by the valley-dwellers to frighten children.
The first settlers were miners - iron-workers and blacksmiths eager to make use of rich deposits of ironstone and coal buried in the mountains. Foresters and farmers followed, self-sufficient and hardy. In the older houses, the byre was under the living quarters - a useful arrangement for milking and feeding over-wintering animals whose warm animal-bodies kept the upper floors centrally-heated.
At the time of my visit in the early 1990’s, many of the Black Forest farms still kept and slaughtered their own pigs for bacon, hams and sausage - most important of all the winter stores. Germany’s sausage-tradition is all-meat (no bulkin-out with rusk or bread - perish the thought!) eaten fresh or cooked and smoked for store, with flavourings of nutmeg, garlic, coriander-seed, thyme, sage, rosemary and marjoram.
In the aftermath of two World Wars, new settlers arrived in the forest - demobbed, disillusioned soldiers and young wives who’d been raised bombed-out towns and cities - rewarded with land for free in the Black Forest and elsewhere as a way of avoiding political unrest. The result was a generation of politically-savvy and ecologically-aware mountain-dwellers who began, as early as the 1960’s, to warn their neighbours of the valleys that industrial pollution was killing the forest, felling ancient trees and creating a no-man’s land where not even a witch or hobgoblin could find a place to hide.
With the evidence mounting day by day in forest, lake and along the mighty river Rhine, it’s no surprise that Germany has the most powerful and informed Green movement in all Europe. Or that those who practise good husbandry in the Black Forest earn not only respect from the valley-dwellers, but claim the best and most prominant sites for their produce in the Saturday farmers’ market in Freiberg.
p.s. Sorry I’m late with this posting! Too much Christmas pudding. Back to my regular midday Friday post next week - promise!
p.p.s. Paid subscribers (don’t I just love you!) will shortly be receiving Erica’s recipes for linsertort and spåtzle. Meanwhile, if you want to catch the cook herself at work, head for https://www.talkingoffood.com/the-rich-tradition and click on ‘Germany’.
p.p.p.s. check out my website for my fruit and veg prints - order at https://www.elisabethluard.org/shop
Thanks so much for comments on growing season in Maine, Nancy - the season was also lengthening considerably over the 25 years I lived in the wilds of Wales (same latitude as Maine). But the difference was in use of polytunnels for organics. Traditional field-grown crops suited to the climate - leeks (too wet for onions), carrots, potatoes, cabbage, veg marrows (reluctance to pick them small, so overgrown courgettes), parsnips, turnips - had already vanished from the farmers' market within the first ten years (family reasons - children didn't want to carry on). Traditionally the region is sheep and dairy with fishing by the coast.
Oh my Elisabeth -- my beloved will love this recipe. It ticks all his plain-food boxes.
And in reply to Nancy Harmon Jenkins below -- it's so exciting to see even here in Montana, where we too have a May-Sept growing season (tho it's shifting to June-Oct), that we have people building greenhouses, some of them with geothermal heat. I can now get local greens all winter, where I couldn't when I moved here 20 years ago. However, it's not quite the norm yet, but the canning/pickling tradition never quite died out, so a lot of us are breaking into our home-cured krauts, and pickles, and for me the fruits: blackcurrant jam, preserved sour cherries, and apples from both my fridge store, and from the peeled/cut chunks I put up in the freezer this year. And plum jam! I jammed 8 kilos of little plums this year. Jam for the whole neighborhood.