Modern German Food [Paperback]

Roz Denny (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2001

German cooking is known for old-fashioned virtues: high quality ingredients, simple preparation and robust flavours. These modern recipes capture the new style of German cooking: lighter, fresher and more healthy. This is how Germans cook today. Few nations enjoy their food quite as much as the Germans, but German cooks have learnt the lesson of recent years; even the most traditional dishes are now made in a lighter, fresher style. And Germans know a thing or two about freshness; their farmers and retailers have long been at the forefront of the organic revolution. It is a style of cooking which fits in perfectly with current trends for simple, homely dishes with robust flavours. There are plenty of new twists on traditional recipes; a crusty pork loin with sauerkraut and rhubarb, for instance, or a spicy bread and butter pudding made with stollen. As well as a wealth of recipe photographs, there are also some scene-setting shots of German festivals, shops and street cafes that help place the recipes in the context of German culture.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Roz Denny is a highly experienced food writer who has written numerous books and articles. Most recently she has worked with Gordon Ramsay, the London chef, as co-author on his cookbooks.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0859419894
• ISBN-13: 978-0859419895
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,443,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #71 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > European > German

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good recipe ideas, a little iffy on the instructions, June 18, 2006

By 

Esther Schindler (Scottsdale, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Modern German Food (Paperback)

I often find that I have to explain to people that German food is not all about sausage and saurkraut. So I was thrilled to see another book about non-traditional "current" German cooking.

Overall, this is a good cookbook. It has plenty of recipes that I haven't seen elsewhere, using traditional German ingredients in not-so-traditional ways. Sure, there's a pork and beer stew, but this one has carrots, mushrooms, and allspice. A recipe for crispy fish has you bread-and-fry it with pretzel crumbs. And beets are livened up with blue cheese and cumin.

The cookbook is from the UK, so the author doesn't assume you can't get ingredients like Quark (which you *can* get in the U.S., you just have to search a bit) and Black Forest ham (which isn't the same as is available in Germany, but is still good). Most German cookbooks published in the U.S. make substitutions that aren't quite the same and dumb-down ingredients.

This authenticity advantage occasionally backfires when you can't find an ingredient after all (I'll need to go for a hunt after katenspeck), but at least I know what I'm looking for: among the positive attributes of Modern German Food is that it has lots of pictures, including sections with photos and descriptions of common categories (such as ham, pickles, sausage). For example, the book shows photos of 15 kinds of German cheese, with a sentence or two for each one.

While measurements are given in both grams and pounds (for instance), the book is still very UKish: one potato salad recipe calls for 600g (1 lb 5 oz) potatoes, which we'd consider an awkward measurement. That's not a problem for me (I weigh everything anyhow) but it might irritate you.

Plenty of recipes are "lighter fare," including an entire section devoted to "Food for Friends" (such as mini onion tarts and party canapes -- we'd call it "grazing" food). The instructions are simple, but not *too* simple; you could make most of these dishes on a weeknight.

With all that praise, why do I withhold the final star? Because the recipes aren't brilliantly written. So far, I've cooked two dishes from this cookbook (and do note that I plan to cook many more!). The apple, lemon, and Kirsch streusel cake calls for two apples, but it never tells you how to prepare them before they get folded into the batter: peeled? diced? sliced? (Diced worked fine. Delicious, actually.) A vinegarette-based potato salad recipe claimed that the just-boiled potatoes would soak up 300ml of chicken stock as they cooled; it was wrong. I poured off the excess. It tasted pretty darned good, and maybe they tested with a courser potato... and it's just a potato salad after all... so I'm not really annoyed. On the other hand, if I were a novice cook, this might make me feel as though I'd done something wrong.

It's a good cookbook and I'm glad to have it in my collection. I'm already planning a dinner around that pork-and-beer stew. But this isn't the Must Have cookbook for the German section of your cookbook shelf.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Treasure of Modern German Dishes, July 9, 2002

By 

rodboomboom (Dearborn, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Modern German Food (Paperback)

Ever looking to find more modern German and Austrian cookbooks, this is wonderful find. Well worth search and obtaining.

Inventive recipes which capture much of German cuisine traditon delightfully done in well done, full color picture work.

Feast upon such inventions as Crusty Pork Loin with rhubarb and celery Sauerkraut, Turkey Fillets with pepper brie and Black Forest ham, Light Potato Dumplings with Buttery Croutons, Cherry, Quark and Pumpernickel trifle, Pumpernickel Ice Cream, Stollen Bread and Butter Pudding.

Truly a delight to explore finding ingredients or substituting available ones to create this atypical German fare using vast array of German culinary base: ham, sausage, strudel, etc.