Blogging from Germany: Frau Gronemeyer's Recipes

Sneha's Notes 

There is something simultaneously vicarious and lovely about people's recipes handed down over generations. A continuum of the senses, that transcends time. I have recipe books and notes from Konarak's mother that offer me a small window into her person. Even though I never met her, I know from her notebooks that she made menus for everything, from everyday lunches to dinner parties. eg Monday lunch: Tomato and cucumber salad, keerai, drumstick and mutton curry, rice, papads OR Dinner for MS & Vimala:  Spinach soup, cauliflower and cheese, roast chicken and caramel custard. I know she liked cooking Sri Lankan food because they had a wonderful time there when they took Twelfth Night over with Madras Players. I still cook from her Ceylon Daily News Cookery Book that her friend Malinie gave to her. I know her roasts and fish curry, learned from her father's recipes, are the stuff of legend. I know David and Doreen Horseburgh would drive down from Madanpalle just in time for one of her fine lunches perhaps of pork vindalho and yellow rice, take a nap and then go dancing at Blue Fox.

Ceylon Daily News Cookery Book

Last week Zui and I baked a Nusskuchen or Hazelnut Cake from a packet I bought in Munster! It was just stunning. From a packet! I have another packet from Germany, which I am keeping for next week, for Maulwurf Cake. This is a uniquely German combination of chocolate cake and crumbs and banana cream. It looks like a mole hill when ready, hence the name. Maulwurf means mole. But these packets are nothing next to the glory of real recipes, treasured and improved over time, by real people.

So it was a treat when Andrea Gronemeyer mailed me some recipes from her mum, Irmgard. Traditional German recipes for Apple Pie and Cherry Cheesecake. Yay!

Andrea Gronemeyer and her mother, Irmgard

Irmgard lives alone in a small village in north-west Germany. She is 87, a widow, with 7 children, 11 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren. She loves to speak on the telephone with all of them.  She loves the German tradition of coffee and cake in the afternoon and always asks if you would like to sit down for same "kaffe und kuchen". And  she loves to read and to go to theatre.

Andrea's mother's apple pie:

3 eggs - beat untill fluffy 

add:

- 150 gram sugar

- 100 gram butter

- 250 gram flour

- 1 cup sour cream

and mix it to a smooth dough and fill it in a buttered springform pan.

Peel 1 kilo apples and remove the seeds and slice it

mix it with

- 100 gram chopped almonds

- 150 gram raisins

steam it lightly

and put it on the dough

cover it with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon

Bake it for 30-40 minutes at 175 degree Centigrade

Cheese cake with sour cherry preserves

(As luck would have it, my mother gave me a jar of sour cherries. But in lieu of them I would use other soft fruit that is available - strawberry, cherry, peaches)

Mix  250 gram flour with 1 teaspoon of baking powder

In the middle of it, press a little hole

Add 1 egg and 125 gram butter

Knead this into a dough

Put two parts of it on the bottom of a springform pan

cover the dough with 20 gram ground almonds

Pour off the juice of 750 gram pitted and preserved sour cherries,  drain them and put them on the dough

Mix and stir

750 gram low fat curd cheese with

200 gram sugar

2 tablespoons of sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

3 eggs

75 gram butter

65 gram flour

grated lime/lemon peel

3 tablespoons of fresh lime/lemon juice

Pour it over the dough and the cherrys

Roll out the third part of the dough and cut it into strips

Put it on the cake as a reticule

Bake it for around 50 minutes at 175-200 degree Centigrade

5 minutes before it is ready cover the reticule with a mixure of the yellow of an egg and water

If you try the recipes please let me know!

Love and Hug

Andrea