Germany vegetarian, Stevan Paul

People often talk about the past when they remember the traditional cuisine of their grandmothers. During my childhood in the late 70s and early 80s, I was often cooked lunch by my grandma. Perhaps out of tradition, but probably also based on Catholic principles (did I ever mention that I’m from Paderborn?), there was a pretty binding law: Fridays were always cooked without meat at my grandma’s house. This happened on other days too, of course, but for Fridays it was a firm rule. So there were often delicious pastries, sometimes Pickert, then pancakes with fruit and if I was particularly lucky Reibekuchen with applesauce (of course from their own garden) and in addition some rice pudding with sugar and cinnamon.

And this traditional, meatless cuisine exists in many regions. Stevan Paul has dug up these treasures and compiled them in his new book
Germany vegetarian
together with editor Katharina Seiser. A homeland kitchen, which inspires without fish and meat, is called then also rightly on the flap text. A vegetarian cuisine without tofu, sometimes hearty, sometimes sweet – and sometimes with slight variations of traditional recipes.

We were able to convince ourselves of this fact a few days ago, when we had the opportunity to look over Stevan’s shoulder as he prepared some recipes. As part of the book launch these weeks, there will be a Pleasure menu tour (soon also in Cologne, Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin) with the chance to taste some of the recipes directly from the hands of the author: Gratinated goat cheese bread with pear and celery salad, pumpkin cream soup, leaf frogs with chard on spinach in horseradish sauce and plum dumplings.

It was not only very tasty, it was above all an all-around beautiful evening at the Koch Kontor, accompanied by wines that matched the menu, selected by Elke Berner of the Hamburg Vineyard.

Germany vegetarian
has become a beautiful book, a review of traditional German cuisine, but also an uncomplicated source of inspiration for spontaneous, meatless excursions.

Together with editor Katharina Seiser, I was also able to take a look at the sister work Austria Vegetarian, which was published a year ago and which, by the way, is now already in its third edition. Naturally, sweet main courses and pastries form a major focus in the book, which was written together with Meinrad Neunkirchner.

Since there is no overlap in content, it certainly makes sense to purchase both works – at least that’s how I will do it, of course….