These delicious treats are found in bakery shops throughout Austria and Bavaria and are enjoyed as part of a continental breakfast or brunch with a cup of coffee. They are best made with authentic german quark “Recipe #476124”, but ricotta or even cream cheese can be substituted. Use canned apple pie filling or check out “Recipe #481442” for a homemade pie filling. This pastry can also be made without the apple pie filling, just increase the amount of cheese and sugar to taste.
In Austria, every Cafe and Ice Cream Parlor serves Peach Melba during the sommer months. I worked in an Ice Cream shop in Salzburg in the 1960’s, this is how we used to make it. Amarena cherries are available in Italian markets, they are dark red and have a slight almond aroma. Use real, only lightly sweetened whipping cream to garnish, serve with vanilla wafers.
Vanillekipferl are very traditional German and Austrian Christmas Cookies. There is no Advent or Christmas without these typical cookies in the shape of a horseshoe or half moon. Use the best vanilla bean you can get, because it makes these cookies so special. The dough is a shortcrust and to shape the cookies might be tricky sometimes, because the dough will not stick together as you would like it to. But if that happens, the dough is right on, just be patient and take some time.
My adaptation of Huey’s Weiner Schnitzel with a Proper Potato Salad. It is the homemade mayonnaise that makes this potato salad particularly delicious – or as Huey described it “proper” – and making it in a food processor couldn’t be easier, although it could, of course, also be made by hand. Huey opts for vegetable oil here rather than olive oil as he insists that it can more effectively be flavoured with other ingredients such as herbs and garlic. The bacon he panfries in olive oil and then adds to the hot potatoes which readily absorb the bacon juices. The leftover eggwash he suggests saving and later adding to some extra eggs to make scrambled eggs. To avoid getting lumps in the breadcrumbs, he suggests using one hand for dipping each schnitzel in the flour and egg and the other hand for dipping the floured, egged schnitzel into the breadcrumbs. If you want to enjoy the potato salad at its most flavoursome, it is essential that it NOT be placed in the fridge but that it is made and eaten on the same day.
My most memorable meal to date was many years ago when our family was on a European vacation. We stopped at an inn on the Plansee in Austria (Tyrol). The rainbow trout was freshly caught from the lake (Plansee) the same day. It was simply fried whole and served with fried potatoes and a garden salad. We sat outside with an amazing view of the lake and the mountains. The air smelled so fresh and clear. This recipe is close, but I rarely get rainbow trout as fresh as we had that day. I don’t serve it whole as the family doesn’t like their food to stare back at them!
