Adam Balic

OK, I have a Kletzenbrot here (smells great), it contains Mahl, Salz, Natursauerteig, rum, rosinen, feigen, pflaumen, haselnusse, walnusse, aranzini, zimt and kletzen.

Yep, the book is "The 100 Classic Dishes of Austria", produced for the Kuratorium Kulinarisches Erbe Osterreichs, edited by Ewald Plachutta and Christoph Wagner.

You just reminded me that I have a loaf of this bread, as part of my haul back to Scotland. I have a few books on the food of Alsace, so I will look up the recipes I have in mind. It would be fun to know how widespread they are. The mother of my friend informed me that the bread in Edinburgh is not very good for dumplings (standard grade is sort of grey coloured and somewhat moist in texture). So obviously had to bring back some of the Austrian pre-made stuff.

Nor in Scotland, where they are pretty much the national vegetable.

The prosciutto cerainly adds flavour to the beef, but as I was using a great deal of other pig producs, not strictly necessary. I thought that this was an interesting variation on the Ragu theme. "Lard it with great lard, then roast it, and baste it with verjuice and vinegar, and a bundle of sage. After the fat is fallen, take for to fry an onion with, which being fried, you shall put under the loin with the sauce wherewith you have basted it. All being a little stoved together, lest it may harden, serve..." Guess what book.

Thanks for the information on the pears. I think that in Alsace they are are used in some savoury dishes too. Tranport. Flight times are relatively short and although I transport meat products on occassion, these are mostly preserved in some way. Even "Fresh" sausages from Italy that I have brought back have enough saltpetre and are fermented to not worry about too much. If it is hot weather of get a frozen bottle of water and place this next to the item, them wrap the entire lot in a towel etc for insulation., then put this in a plastic bag. Fragile things get transported as carry-on. I must confess that on this trip I bought back a very large bag of bread cubes to make dumplings out of, so maybe I am not the most practical person in the world.

What do you think?

Now another couple ofitems I tried at the market was a kebab from these chaps (who also sold large borek). They were very good and I can understand why the ex-pat Viennese I know crave these and make them into an totem object of home. I drank this Glühwein (sp?) with the kebab - Austrian fushion cuisine. One thing that I liked about Vienna and Austria is the diversity of the food and how it is intergrated. I bought a book on 'traditional Austrian foods', this included Hungarian, Slovech, Czech, Serbian and Croatian recipes. Obviously, all part of being an ex-emperial power, but still very interesting. One last thing from the market were these dried pears. They seem to be included in many traditional dishes (I was told), but I not sure what these are - any suggestions?

I have seen quite a few Tassel[led Grape] Hyacinth in the coastal areas of Italy, so I asssume that they don't eat it here often. This is a headless cabbage, sold as "Greens" in Scotland. I assume it is the same thing or very similar to the Medieval cabbage mentioned up-thread

I enjoy wine tastings of all sizes and styles, but I prefer to pay up-front so there is no issue over buying wine out of guilt (must have lived in the UK for too long). I ask a lot of questions and the people on the stalls are usually excellent, so I tend to learn a great deal which is the important bit for me. Occassionally, some sad-arse middle aged man will spend his time dishing out the wine to ladies who are obviously more attractive them me, but that's life. When tasting 50+ wines it can be difficult to keep the palate going, but it does hone ones tastes. I detest many of the confection type wines wines from Australia that are sold in the UK (which is a problem as I am always trying to tell people that Australian wine can be great). The only real problem I have is that the local events rarely have aged wine or vertical tastings. I can see little point in tasting some styles of wine at 2 years of age.

What I really like about the Austrians I have met is is what a central position food seems have. Everybody seems to want to talk about it. Still at the market, in the fish section you could eat cooked seafood or they could cook it for you. One needs something to go with Champagne it seems. The fish itself was quite varied, including a large amount of salt water fish. When you think about the dismal selection of sea fish that seems to be the standard in the UK, it is one indication of how serious the food is taken in land locked Austria. (Having said this, the fish in the centre of the image are freshwater char)

OK, here is what I did. First the meat. A kilo of braising steak in a single chunk, preserved lard, salted pork ribs (my substitute for trachiolelle), preserved pig skin (to add body like gallinelle), pancetta amd prosciutto. The pancetta and prosciutto are cut into lardons, rolled in chopped parsely and black pepper, then used to lard the beef. The whole lot is tied into a compact bundle. The preserved lard is processed with the onion and this is put into a pot and cooked through. The meat is then added. A cup of red wine added bit by bit until only the fat reamains. From adding the onions to the pot to this stage is about 2 hours. The rest of themeat is now added and the lid is place on the pot. After 2 hours, the sauce looks like this. At this stage the tomato is added. I used a preserved tomato paste I bought in Syracuse (looks like dark red/brown putty), which is my substutute for conserva. This is diluted in a little beef stock. This is added bit by bit until absorbed and it darkens in colour. Before tomato After tomato - this took almost 2 hours. The meat is put back in and the whole lot is covered in broth and cooked until tender. I chilled it overnight. The fat was removed and and the sauce was reduced until it was thick and glossy. The sauce looks like this at this stage. Used to dress the pasta (sorry chaps, no Ziti in Scotland) it looks like this. And the meat. Utterly fantastic flavours, pure essence of the meats. I hope that this is some what similar to the real Neapolitan version?

The Sturm in the image is made from the Schilcher variety and the Rose is one of the wines I brought back along with some other stuff I will discuss later.

I must admit that I drank quite a bit on this trip. There are hot mulled wine and cider stalls everywhere and if this wasn't enough there are dozens of other fruity variations on the theme of drinking hot alcohol in public on offer. I had every one. But, this is a slightly out of season treat "Sturm" ("Storm"). It is the new season wine, fruity slightly fizzy and delcious. It is also cloudy due to the suspended yeast cells. French friends inform me that this is what BNV is like if consumed locally, rather then the mass marketed stuff. In Austria Sturm comes as a red or white wine. I liked Sturm very much, but I am not sure it liked me.

And should anybody wish to know what the basis for a soup/stock in Vienna is, now you know. Two types of Pumpkin. I think (?) that the green striped type is the variety that produces the wonderful shell-less kernals that are local to Styrian region. The pickled cabbage at this market was pretty special. It was described as "Champagne" cabbage, not sure if this refers to a grade or to the production process, but it was the best I have eaten. Not ouvert sourness and it was delcious raw.

So the next morning after a two hour drive we arrived in Vienna. The very first thing we did, before going to the flat evern was to visit the Naschmarkt. I think that this translates as "Sweet market", but actually the range of produce is very diverse. There is large Turkish food presence there especially. In general the produce was outstanding and quite varied. Root veg, including a long yellow turnip, a kind I have never seen before. Artisan bread Beautiful stuffed veg. Interesting Turkish cheeses The veg was espcially good quality.

There are a lot of other Christmas bakery items in Austria (people must be baking for the rest of the year to produce them all). Including traditional cakes and some frivolous offerings. One of the traditional cakes is nearly exactly the same as a Scottish cake that is made around this time of the year. I will photgraph both later to make a comparison. "Snowballs"

Ah exellent, thank you for the name of the Deli. What I wouldn't give for a place like that in Edinburgh. Graz is a beautiful city, great historical places, but also some interesting modern buildings. December the 6th is St Nikolaus Day and in Austria St Nick has a companion in the form of Krampus, who is depected to look like a devil. These chaps are relatively widespread in Europe in one form or another and are thought to be the vestigial remains of earlier pagan deities that were celebrated at around the same time as the modern Christian ones, for obvious reasons. So in Greece in the early 20th century there was much were parts of the country were the people were scared to go outside at night due to centaurs - But in Austria Krumpus is made into a brioche type cake, larger versions depict him holding a broom.

As you might expect the bakeries in Austria are pretty special. This is the facade of one sadly closed) version.

That night my friends mother cooked. This is wonderful, as not only was she a great cook, but as a vistor you get to try a different style of food to what you get in restuarants. Dinner was: Salad with the local pumpkin seed oil and toasted pumpkin (more of this delcious products later). A "fan roast" of pork. In this case the pork is slashed longitudinally and ham and mushrooms are placed in the slits. This is roasted at a low heat and the end product is pork slices that look like a fan in cross section - delicious. This was served with veg and a Serviettenknödel (Napkin Dumplings). The latter is an ultra light dumpling of bread cubes and egg cooked in a 'napkin'. These were excellent, so light they could float away. Dessert was Christmas cakes and biscuits with 10 year old plum brandy from a local farmer.

I was in Austria for the weekend visting friends. One night in Graz, two nights in Vienna. What a great place, lovely people excellent food and a great deal of fun due to all the Chrismas markets. In Graz we stopped of at a bar/deli "Frankowitsch", really nice vibe, loads of people of all ages. The speciallized in bars snacks of bread with various toppings, similar to what I saw in Vilnius, but a little more refined. This is not my beer - my beer was much bigger as this is the tiny 125 ml tankard. These are cute enough I guess, and it was nice to see tiny children drinking juice from them, but in general I don't approve of these small volumes.

Would they alter the recipe for local v mail order consumption? Another thought is do they alter the recipe for regional taste peferences (like say Champagne), but have got it wrong? Damn, I was in Vienna on the weekend and didn't taste it.

Damn, just lost a long post. A shorter version. The importance in the high fat:aqueous liquid v low fat:aqueous liquid is that the results will be very different. In the former you will get lots of caramelization (actually Maillard reaction I think), this gives very different flavours and colour to the dish that is simply braised in a lot of liquid, so matter how long it will be done for. In the English translation of Francesconi's recipe there is much talk of adding a little then another little bit over a very long period and a description of how the tomato must go very dark. This is a description of the effect of the caramelization/Maillard reaction. It is a lot of effort to make the dish in this manner, so you would only do it if you wanted to get these specific secondary flavours and colour into the dish. Or if there was another benefit. If you use the same ingredients, but braised in a lot of liquid, the dish will be very different, not matter how long you do the braise for. Unless you braise until completely dry and then allow the meat to fry in the liquid fat. This is what happens in Beef rendang the meat fries in the fat from the coconut oil, so that the meat and 'sauce' turn a very very dark brown colour. In this case the technique was develope as a way of preserving meat. I am thinking that the origins of the Neapolitan recipe may lie in a way of preserving meat also - this is just a guess though. Also the Francesconi's recipe contains a hugh amount of fat for the volumne of the dish, so I am thinking that this must be because the dish requires a specific cooking technique. If you reduce the amout of fat to more 'brighter' dish, then you will radically alter the cooking method. I find the amount of fat a little overwhelming, so after chilling the dish I will remove most of the fat. I think that this is a better solution the reducing the amount of fat in the recipe. Just a thought.

As a peace offering to my Neapolitan friends (and for the non-academics ) I made "Ragú" in a traditional manner as possible yesterday. It is settling at the moment, but I will post photographs and comments tomorrow. On comment though, the recipe I have is based on that of Francesconi, in this recipe there are several stages where it is very important that minimal aqueous liquid is maintained. In other words a little bit of wine is added at a time and a little bit of tomato. This means that these ingredients actually fry (in a manner very similar to Indonesian "Beef Rendang") in lard - this means the temperature of sauce at this stage is above 100.C, so you get interesting flavor developments and the sauce becomes very dark. However, in some recipes (Ada Boni and Artusi) this (at least the English translations) emphasis on low reduced aqueaous levels is not maintained, so the end product will be very different. In fact I would say that the cooking techniques are so different that they will really be different dishes. How much variation is there in this dish in present day Neapolitan cooking? Also, I found out that a dilect word for Ragú is "Rrau", does this sound right?

Just to clarify, I'm not American - not that there is anything wrong with that. And nor are Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari as far as I know. I'm curious that if you stress the importance of academic sources, why there is this insistance that Neapolitan Carne al Ragú is the origin of "Ragú" in print. As the oldest recipe that you have demonstrated for this dish is from 1837, which is very late and there are other earlier references that have that use the word, this is not logical. Not that I think it that important, other then to point out that there are likely to be numerous dishes in Italy that can be called "Ragú", even if the origin of the word is likely to be an Italianization of the French word and this is likely to have occured in Naples. But, there is no evidence that I can see that the word was originally applied to the Modern dish at all. It would be great if this is so, but an 1837 reference is just far to late. Also, language is not set in stone and is determined by usage, I imagine that in the last 160 years a few more legitimate regional uses of the word "Ragú" may have evolved I think that I might take that tact of Artusi and drop the all reference to "Ragú" and just name the Northern and Southern dishes after there cities of origin. I must say that I have enjoyed this discussion as I have learn a great deal. I am really interested in how important Naples was in changing the food map of Italy. It does seem that many innovations (especially French and Spanish) were introduced into Italian cuisine via Naples. For instance the first centry of tomatoes is centred aroud this city. Latini's 1692 (alluded to above) recipe is the first Italian reference to a tomato recipe, it is called "Spanish Tomato Sauce" and is essentially the same as a modern salsa fresca.