December 19, Dinner – German Meatballs with Lemon Caper Sauce on Egg Noodles,

December 19, Dinner – German Meatballs with Lemon Caper Sauce on Egg Noodles,

served with sautéed red cabbage

Another odd day of cooking and eating.  It started with about 6 oz. of gravid lax on French Bread with cream cheese and a cup of Earl Grey tea for breakfast.  Then no lunch because the lax was so filling.

Then at 5:00 p.m. Suzette, Willy and I met Jim from Bacchus at Vivace.  We said hello to Gordon and tasted seven German wines (5 whites and two reds) with a plate of fried calamari and an antipasti platter of cheeses, salamis, olives and peppers.  During the course of a lively discussion with Jim about German wines and regions and preferences for wines with which foods, we tasted the seven wines and picked four whites and a red for the Community tasting to be held at the Center in January.  The rejected red was a rather transparently light colored pinot noir that had little flavor and the white was a Riesling that had a musty, tannic after taste, unlike the clean fruity after taste of the other Rieslings.

Then we returned home at around 7:00 p.m. to cook one of the dishes Suzette selected for the Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery’s January through March special German menu, “German Meatballs with Lemon Caper Sauce on Egg Noodles with red cabbage”.

I started by shredding one-half head of red cabbage and throwing it into a sauce pan with about 2 Tbs. of olive oil and about 2 tsp. of ground cumin.  While the cabbage was cooking Suzette put in 2 Tbs. of sugar and ½ cup of apple cider vinegar.   

While the cabbage cooked we started preparing the German Meatballs with Lemon Caper Sauce.  That dish required three steps of preparation, including: mixing ground pork, beef and veal, bread crumbs made from 2 slices of French bread with their edges removed, 1/2 tsp. of lemon zest, ½ cup of chopped onion, salt and pepper, and parsley all processed into a paste in a food processor, then forming the meat paste into meatballs and cooking the meatballs for a minute or two (until the they floated to the surface of the liquid) in a pot of water in which an onion with a clove in it has been boiling for ten minutes and finally making the lemon caper sauce.  The sauce was a little tricky because it required a thin white sauce made with 4 tbs. of butter and four Tbps. of flour and four cups of the onion and clove poaching liquid.  After the white sauce cooked into a thicker consistency Suzette added 1 Tbsp. of capers and 3 Tbsp. of fresh lemon juice, and 2 to 3 Tbsp. of sour cream.  The result was about 1 cup of a smooth, creamy slightly lemony white sauce with capers (See picture)  

While the meatballs were cooking Suzette brought a pot of water to a boil and threw in a large handful of noodles and after they had cooked for a few minutes, I threw in a large handful of sugar snap peas into the boiling noodle water to cook.

Willy helped with dinner and set the table and I put the three white Rieslings we had tasted out on the table (two 2010’s from the Mosel, Essence and St. Urban Hof and a lovely 2006 from the Nahe River Valley, Two Princes)

We then plated up three meatballs on a bed of German flat noodles with sugar snap peas surrounded by the sautéed red cabbage and toped with the lemon caper sauce.  We put the three Rieslings on the table and each took a pour of their choice of wine.  Very quickly we all agreed that the Essence tasted the complemented the Meatball and lemon sauce the best.  This was an unusual form of food and wine pairing that I had never done before, where a set of new wines are given with a new dish and one is required to pick the best match of wine for the dish.  I felt like we had done a good job of pairing one of the wines with a dish that will be a successful dish at the restaurant.  (See Picture)

The meatballs had an interesting texture; very soft and tender with a slightly moist taste, like quenelles made with forcemeat, which, of course, is what they were.

The meat balls did not have much flavor, but the lemon caper sauce had a lot of flavor that made up for the meatballs and the noodles not having much.  Also, the red cabbage had a pleasantly vinegary flavor so it created a nice combination with the noodles and even for interesting when combined with the sauce because its vinegary flavor disappeared when combined with the Lemon Sauce.   I think I learned a secret of German cooking: Lemon juice masks the flavor of vinegar.  Since vinegar is such an important ingredient in many German dishes, this is a very important discovery.  It reminds me of the other Northern European Cuisine I am familiar with, Swedish Cuisine that also relied heavily on lots of sweet (sugar) and sour (vinegar) combinations to season their food because these colder countries lack the abundance of fresh vegetables and herbs found in Southern Europe.  

We were so stuffed and tired of tasting and cooking that we could not eat or drink anything else and went to bed around 9:00 after dinner and watching a bit of Antiques Roadshow.

Bon Appètit