my german dish - meine leberkäse und schweinshaxe

I have been on a roll to try my hands on making dishes amongst the German cuisines. This is my first attempt to make leberkäse. Seems it is a pretty easy thing to make. I also tried making schweinshaxe - a common German beer garden (Biergarten) staple. My excuse for going wholehog? To break up the monotony of learning the German language. Why of all the languages, German, and for a Chinese? That would be another subject of my post to come soon.

While North Eastern United States have been having some of the worst Winter weather, we are enjoying extremely mild January and February. Birds are singing their love overtures, and yes, we have cherry blossom.

this Saturday I saw one precious blossom on my cherry tree; today there are many more.

We have been having many stretches of unseasonably mild days in January and February. Most of them last between 7 to 10 days. It is not unusual to have sunny days this time of the year. What is different is typically sunny days here accompany with blustery Easterly wind. Not this year. We have been blessed with mild stretches with relatively light East wind.

i took advantage of the nice days to visit the ethnic grocery stores in my neighborhood

 Korean noodles

i went to this Mexican store to get some dried prawns

 this is what I am here for - dried Mexican prawn

 i bought a piece of deep fried pig belly - decadent!

Back to the leberkäse. I didn't try too hard to find a recipe online, and with a bit of improvisation to adjust for the ingredients I don't have.


Ingredients:

• 1 lb of beef
• 2 lb of pork shoulder
• 3 oz pig liver
• 1/2 onion finely chopped
• 1 ts oregano
• 2 ts salt (may not be accurate)
• 1 ts ground white pepper
• 3 ts garlic power
• 1 pt of heavy cream
• ice cold water (about 1.5 cups)

Cut the meat into strips the meat grounder can handle. Grind the meat with a fine die. Transfer the ground meat into a dough mixer. I used the cake making K attachment. Start with about 1/2 cup of cold water and set mixer to medium speed. Add the spices and salt. Slowly add the cream and water until the mixture forms an emulsion. Add the chopped onion and mix. Only add enough water to reach a think paste consistency. The paste should not slump excessively or else it would be too runny. Test cook a small ts of the mixture to check for seasoning. Add more salt if necessary.

Preheat the oven to 350F or 320F for convection.

Grease a rectangle loaf baking pan with tallow or lard on all 5 sides. Transfer the meat mixture into the baking pan. Bake for 1.5 hr or 1.25 hr for convection.

 this is to test the seasoning

 i greased up 2 baking pans with tallow

 it turned out i only need one baking pan

 into the oven it went - for about 1.25 hour

 next i went about to prepare the schweinshaxe

i forgot to ask the butcher to cut off the hoof so i have to take matter into my own hands - it pays to have tools

Actually the reason that I forgot to ask the butcher to cut off the hoofs of the ham hocks are many. This supermarket used to sell whole ham hocks uncut without the hoof. They always assumes the patrons want it to be cut into slices because most folks don't know how to deal with a whole piece. As such I have been accustom to stop them from cutting it and this time is no exception out of instinct. No big loss for me. Just a bit of elbow grease, so to speak, as I consider my kitchen a shop, or better yet, a laboratory. I cleaned my metal hacksaw blade free of any clinging metal and a bit of workout they are done. Cutting the bone make you appreciate your body and mother of nature of our bone we take for granted. It is not easy to saw though the bone, and I am glad we are supported with nature's most amazing structural purpose-made building material.

 after about two hours the meat is still a bit tough so I put it back in the oven for another 45 minutes

 finally the Schweinshaxe is tender - the truth is I would prefer it have been smoked

 leberkäse for breakfast the next morning