"The garlic country in Bavaria is one of the best vegetable
growing areas in Germany - and the ideal place to understand what we are doing
wrong when handling the fruits of the fields. The column matter of taste.
A man with a five-day beard, rubber boots and baggy army
trousers scurries across the fields of garlic country at dawn, cuts off a few
heads of lettuce here, pulls a handful of kohlrabi out of the ground there,
then takes three or four fennel bulbs with him, stows his loot in a van and
then secretly disappears from the hallway.
Most would think they were catching a cheeky vegetable thief
in the act, but the man is righteous to the bone and also on an honorable
mission: It is Andree Köthe, patron of the two-star Nuremberg restaurant
"Essigbrätlein", who every morning leaves for the garlic country for
the early harvest shortly before six because on the one hand he is a freshness
fanatic and on the other hand he knows that he will not find better vegetables
anywhere than in this paradise on his doorstep.
We need a culinary map of Germany
Vegetable cultivation has been guaranteed since the
fifteenth century in the garlic country, which owes its name not to garlic but
to leeks such as onions and leeks. And for centuries it lived in a symbiotic
relationship with Nuremberg, which could only rise to become the richest of all
imperial cities because it was so reliably supplied with fresh food.
In return, the people of Nuremberg fertilized the sandy soil
of the garlic country with the contents of their drainage pits, which remained
what it was and still is today when the imperial city went into decline: the
best vegetable-growing area in Bavaria, managed by 130 mostly smallholders , a
treasure trove of crops between Nuremberg, Erlangen and Fürth that hardly anyone
outside of Franconia takes any notice of – another blind spot on the culinary
map of Germany that urgently needs to be drawn.
It is amazing how stubbornly and self-confidently the garlic country withstands the settlement pressure from all sides. In the east,
Nuremberg is close at hand, in the north it ends right at the airport, in the
south and west the other two cities loom large. But the farmers don't even
think about giving up even one square meter of their land. Because it is the
land of their great-grandfathers and should also be the land of their
great-grandchildren, and the beautiful old farming villages with their
fortified churches, manor houses and patrician palaces are certainly not
spoiled by new development areas or commercial areas.
Appropriately, agriculture is practiced here on a human
scale without industrial monocultures, which can be seen in an extremely
decorative way in the division of the fields: Usually only two or three rows
are planted with the same type of vegetable, then the next follows, which not
only affects the landscape the lively appearance of a geometric patchwork, but
also has very practical reasons - many farmers have market stalls with a wide
range of products and only ever harvest what they need, two or three rows are completely
sufficient.
This makes them brothers and sisters in the spirit of Andree
Köthe, for whom freshness, measured in hours, not days, is a flagrantly
underestimated quality criterion for vegetables and who therefore takes the
trouble to harvest early every morning - and his farmers, of course paid. In the summer months, however, he could also do without it
and use what the farmers regard as weeds or waste for his entire menu.
Again and again Köthe stops at the side of the road, jumps out
of the car and picks underestimated treasures of aromas such as radiant
chamomile, which he uses in the kohlrabi course of his current menu, dill
blossoms, which grow in carrot fields because of contaminated seeds, or red
purslane, Köthe's favorite farmer Mrs. Meier extra not weed for him. The chef
also snaps up the leeks that the farmers can't sell for visual reasons alone,
although the core tastes wonderfully of asparagus with onion aromas. That's why
he is allowed to eke out a highly delicious taste-blessed bread in the
"Essigbrätlein".
You can get absolution from the seven deadly sins that most
of us commit against vegetables from Andree Köthe and his co-chef Yves Ollech,
the undisputed vegetable pioneers in top German cuisine. We've already had disregard
for the freshness requirement, the other six sins are just as shameful: we
usually harvest much too early and don't give the aromas a chance to mature. We
throw far too much away instead of making stocks, sauces and juices from
leaves, peels or trimmings.
We ignore the fantastic variety of our vegetables - 160
beans alone - there are types – and instead let the agricultural industry scare
us off with a handful of varieties. We finally have to understand that
regionality and seasonality are the top principles when dealing with vegetables
and that South African onions or Peruvian all-season asparagus have no place on
our plates. We must be willing to spend money on taste and rebel against the
fact that when new varieties are officially approved, shelf life, disease
resistance or uniformity play a central role, while aroma is completely
ignored. And we should always prepare our vegetables à la minute – and never
overcook.
Then we bring in our early harvest in the kitchen of the
"Essigbrätlein". The hearts of lettuce are filled with shaved
kohlrabi, celery greens and a vinaigrette made from leek juice, celery oil and
cardamom, and the freshness makes such a noise in the mouth that our hearts
overflow. And the kohlrabi appears to us in three gourmet forms: as cooked
cubes that are dried, rolled in radiant chamomile and refined with a
vinaigrette of lime, leek juice and chamomile oil; as the top of the tuber,
which is cooked to the second exactly as tender as an elf; as the pomace left
over from the juicing of the leaves and sweated into it – as a dish so
deliciously intense and complex that we promise we will never again offend the
veggies.
Information at www.knobauchsland-gemueseland.com and
www.essigbraetlein.de."
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