TIMOC #2: Salzburger Bierfleisch

Got myself my own acronym, ha!
For the second instalment of Traveling In My Own Cookbooks we make a trip to Austria.
If you have read me before it will not sound new.
Yes, I bought the book during my recent trip to Salzburg, and I don't know exactly why I put it up there on the top shelf, so that it became the second book to be examined.
If you consider that during last week I was reading a biography of Mozart's, you will see how Austria is not letting me go.
Think of it as making the best of my trip, it's like it lasted a little more.

Anyway, Salzburger Bierfliesch is meat cooked in a beer sauce.

Main ingredient of course is meat, of tender beef, 600gr, about 1lb 5oz.

Then starting from the top, clockwise:

100gr/3oz onion
150gr/5oz smoked pancetta
1 slice rye bread
40gr/2tbsp flour
250ml/1cup dark beer
2 slices speck
20gr/1tbsp tomato paste
4tbsp pickled onions
80gr/3oz strutto
750ml/3cups beef broth (not portrayed)

Now, as for strutto: I find that the English word is "lard", only it's not the same as solid lard, the one you can slice.
You put that solid lard in a pan, heat it and you will see that it releases fat. That liquid fat, taken, filtered and cooled is strutto. Most of the time it's substituted with butter, but of course it's not exactly the same.
I must say that the concept of strutto makes me and my arteries a little uncomfortable and that this was the first time I talked myself into using it, for the sake of discovery and of some kind of return to the roots.
I understand the sense it makes in a recipe, yet it's really a concentrate of pure fat, they're making sure not a single molecule of water, not a single fiber is left in.

Dice the meat, cherish it with salt and pepper and put it into the pan where you will have melted your fat (at least, it will be yours soon!)

Cook it one every side, then set the meat apart and in the same pan fry onion and pancetta, both finely diced



Let them take some color, thicken with flour then dilute with beer



Pour the beef broth in, adjust with salt, pepper, and thyme and marjoram if you like, add the meat, cover and let it cook completely (about 15 minutes)

To garnish, stir fry in a little oil the diced bread with shredded speck and pickled onions



You will put this mix on the finished plate.

Talking of "finished plate", I wasn't completely satisfied, I had to make an appropriate side, so I ended cooking two recipes from this book, too.
The choice was quite obliged, I picked the Kartoffelknodel (Potato Dumplings) I was served at Gablerbrau.

500gr/1lb 2 oz potatoes
50gr/2 oz semolina flour
150gr/5 oz flour
2 egg yolks
30gr/1oz butter
salt

Boil and mash the potatoes



Work them with all the ingredients, one at a time, then let it rest.



Form the dumplings and boil them (I'd say 6/7 minutes, the book is not clear with times of cooking).

Put your two pieces of work together, and enjoy your taste of Austria

A Kitchenlander day in ... Salzburg, Austria.

This is the Kitchenlandish side of a day in Salzburg, Austria.

We arrived late in the afternoon, after a rather adventurous journey, with weather spanning from unbearable heat to snow! In June! So we stayed in the hotel for dinner.
Maybe not very typical, but I got a nice and light meal with spinach palachinkas (kind of crepes) in a gorgonzola sauce:



I wouldn't be bothering to write about this if I didn't find the pairing very well chosen, and it's something quick and easy to make at home.

The day after, we were fresh and ready to discover the city.
Salzburg is Mozart's hometown, and you can never forget it: almost everything is about Mozart here (which is why we went, my 6yo can't quite get over the fact that the composer is dead).

So, one stop was at Mozart's birth house (Gebursthaus); deep inside I kind of questioned my recent buyings of nice kitchen tools, thinking that the meals that Wolfie had for the first seven years of his life were cooked in here



If a kitchen like that produced such genius, you don't want to know what will be of my two messy sprouts (I'm aware that Bree van deKamp should have taught me something!!).

The tour went on, there's another house, the one where the Mozart family moved when Wolfgang was seven, then we wandered around the city center.

Passing in front of a shop window, my eyes caught this cutie



"Hey, look at how they decorated this egg shell!"

"But hey, wait, there's more!"



"But we're in June, why did they have to make an Halloween themed window?"

As we lifted our eyes and got a more global view of the shop we were in front of, we realized that there was more



and more



The only thing the shop was selling were these real egg shells, painted, dressed and decorated with a patience that I won't have in 20 lives!
The massive quantity was really hard to register: I had never imagined to see so many eggs all together, let alone thinking of each one of those eggs being emptied and handled to produce that result! The price of the ones we checked spanned between 3 and 6.50 Euros (say between 5 and 11 USD), each.

So you can imagine my heart rate when I realized that these two



were actually those two!

Off we went, and for the first time since the kids are around we didn't stop for lunch, but hung out in a nice and tidy market, picking brezen and speck sandwiches



As for dessert, we were not far (well, the city center is pretty tiny, you are never far from anything) from the Stranz and Scio restaurant, which is famous for its "Capezzoli di Venere" (Nipples of Venus)



If you have seen the movie "Amadeus" (and if you have not, go see it! I mean, right now, I can wait!) these are the pralines that Salieri uses to convince Constanza to show him some of her husband's music sheets.
Their filling is of chestnut and nougat cream, with a drop of tart cherries jam and cognac.
They. Are. Goooood.



We spent the afternoon in the Hohensalzburg Castle, that overlooks the city, an impressive view and tour.

At night we had dinner at Gablerbrau, where the 6yo found a cutie 7yo girl from Kentucky to relieve the bore of waiting for dinner.

At Gablerbrau they have their own beer, like it often happens around there.



They like it unfiltered and they're quite right!

It seemed appropriate to order something that had the word "Salzburg" in it, so I went for a Salzburger Bierbrauerpfandl, that is "Salzburg beer brewer pan with roasted pork, farmer sausage, black pudding, sauerkraut, dumpling".



If only I didn't know how they make black pudding I would have probably eaten that, too, but I did, so I was content with the rest of the dish, cooked to perfection and with the right aromas.

My men went with wieners and fries



Just a few days before all this, the reveal day for Daring Bakers Challenge's Strudel had occurred; having seen all kinds of strudels from around the world, it was a no brainer to have it here.
I must say I wasn't completely satisfied, I wish it was cooked longer and less "robust".




We couldn't leave Salzburg without bringing with us a certain amount of Mozartkugeln, Mozart's balls. Not that you are at risk of forgetting, they are literally everywhere, even at greengrocers' shops.
In a spherical shell of chocolate you find a mix of praline creme, marzipan and pistachios, with different proportions according to the manifacturer.

They were invented by Paul Fürst in 1890, that is way after Mozart was gone.



The konditorei is still run by the Fürst family, and the kugeln are still hand made.

As it often happens, there are other versions, good as well even if industrially produced, as is the case of Mirabell Mozartkugeln, which are the most easy to find, popular even out of Austria, or Victor Schmidt's ones.



From left to right: Fürst's kugel, delicate and with a hint of marzipan, Mirabell's kugel, with a harder chocolate shell and a good balance of all flavours, Victor Schmidt's one, where marzipan is dominant.

If you have issues with spheres, Mirabell made it flat, too:



And after all this meat and chocolate bliss, may I offer you some digestive drink?



Chocolate cream, cocoa infusion and white chocolate liquors.

To the next trip!