Croutons

Make plenty of butter croutons

I'm not going to lie to you, making Kartoffelklösse (dumplings) and all the trimmings is no simple task and an all day affair if you're working alone. Making Kartoffelklösse can be and should be a family affair. Working together with a clear written plan can make it a fun family gathering to enjoy a really great meal. There are many things that can be done in advance to move the process along.

Croutons! Slightly stale bread, bathed in butter and baked to golden perfection should be done at least the day before. There are two major drawbacks to making croutons in advance. One is that you might be tempted to sample them after baking them. It's a lot like Christmas cookies, if you don't keep them under lock and key until ready to use, they will be gone when you need them. As children we would search for them as soon as we arrived at grandma's house. She knew that and made plenty of them. Three croutons go into the center of each and every Kartoffelklösse. You'll also want enough croutons left to sprinkle on the flattened dumplings before adding the gravy.

Make plenty because they're great on salads too. Again there is no right or wrong recipe here. You want them to be golden in color with a buttery crunch.

Sunday Dinners

Floating Kartoffelklösse

Before I go on, a little history. When my grandparents grew up in Germany, Sunday meals were very important. Tradition was, if there was meat in the house, the men ate it first. The women were very creative with potatoes. Sunday was the day to make Kartoffelklösse

How many ways can you prepare a potato?

My grandfather and grandmother immigrated from Germany in the 1920's. They lived in a two bedroom, one bath apartment with a very tiny kitchen that was about 12'x 6'. The wooden porch adjacent to the back kitchen door made a great cooler in the cold Midwestern winter months. These cold winter months were considered Kartoffelklösse time. Her sink and countertop literally had no workspace. The kitchen table, a two top, was incredibly small but made a nice prep area. My grandma had an ingenious method of dealing with the massive pileup of dishes, glassware, pots and pans. The dirty ones were secreted behind the bathtub shower curtain to be dealt with later. The fact that she had arthritis made these dinners even more astonishing.

I later learned that my grandfather and grandmother would peel 20-24 pounds of potatoes the night before and keep them in cold water on the back porch until the next day. For the men in my family, as it was in my grandparents family, there was one job that only they could do. That job was to squeeze all of the water out of the grated potatoes in the cloth sugar sack. My cousins lived nearby and would often be there to help squeeze the potatoes dry. The potatoes had to be squeezed so hard that often your finger tip would poke through the cloth. Grandma would have to sew the rip in the sack, to save the dry pulp from falling back into the bowl of potato water. When every drop was squeezed out, the potatoes formed a dry pulp ball. It had to be so dry that your hands felt like they had flour on them.

Normally grandma would make enough Kartoffelklösse so that we could each have two, or three. This would generally leave about a half dozen to take home to slice and fry in butter for breakfast.

I just had to learn the art of making these dumplings before it was to late...   

So what is Kartoffelklösse?

The Things Grandma Used

To make my grandmothers "Kartoffelklösse" (potato dumplings) you're going to need some tools. A large canning pot is a necessity for boiling water. A potato peeler to peel the potatoes. A grater with a very fine grating surface to grate 2/3 of the potatoes, a potato masher to mash 1/3 of the potatoes, a very finely woven cloth flour sack to squeeze the water out of grated potatoes. Some buttered croutons for placing in the center of the dumpling (3 croutons per dumpling is the magic number) and many more for snacking on.

Once you have these tools together you're going to need some meat to serve with them. Generally you have only four choices; pork roast (best choice), sauerbraten, rouladen or turkey to make gravy for the Kartoffelklösse. No canned or jar gravies allowed here. There is no recipe here just 2/3 to 1/3rd.

I can assume that you don't have any heavy-duty flour sacks lying around the house, so you will need to find someone who can sew, go to a fabric store and buy some canvas. You make the bag out of the canvas that is about 1 foot wide by 1-1/2 feet deep. The seams must be triple stitched to withstand the pressure when squeezing the liquid out of the grated potatoes, leaving you with the dry potato pulp. In Germany you can buy a ready made Kloßsack or find a machine called a "Thüringer Kloßpresse"..

Before I go on with this story you will need some history. My grandfather and grandmother immigrated from Germany in the 1920's. They lived in a two bedroom, one bath apartment with a very tiny kitchen that was about 12'x5'. The wooden porch adjacent to he back kitchen door made a great cooler in the winter months. In our family these cold winter months were considered Kartoffelklösse time. Grandma's sink and countertop literally had no workspace. The kitchen table, a two top, was incredibly small but made a nice prep area. My grandma had an ingenious method of dealing with the massive pileup of dishes, glassware, pots and pans. The dirty ones were secreted behind the bathtub shower curtain to be dealt with later. The fact that she had arthritis made these dinners even more astonishing. Normally grandma would make enough Kartoffelklösse so that we could each have two, or three. This would generally leave about a half dozen to take home to slice and fry in butter for breakfast.

For the men there was one job that only they could do. That job was to squeeze all of the water out of the grated potatoes in the sack. When finished the potatoes formed a dry pulp ball. It had to be so dry that your hands felt like they had flour on them.   

Still interested? Stay tuned.

I'm not really a cook

Lobster Benedict

I am also not a writer so bear with me if I start to ramble on, misspell a word or two, forget to spell check, or repeat someting in a different post. I am here to learn...


One of my first jobs in life was as a short order cook for a snack shop at a major retailers store.From there I became a breakfast cook. Over the years I learned to cook breakfast and lunch like a pro.

      

From this humble beginning I soon learned that with my cooking background, finding a job anywhere in the country was not that difficult. During my early life I just couldn't stay put for a very long time. My backup was four years of printing experience under my belt. With these two skill sets I was able to travel and find work almost anywhere.

Later in life I found myself working in the hospitality industry, evaluating food at a whole new level. Not really a food critic, I was immersed in the world of fine dining from the consumer side. I was able to travel extensively throughout the country and places like Alaska, Aruba, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, Grand Cayman's, and Mexico. Being on the road is not as fun as it would seem, often I couldn't wait to get back home and enjoy some comfort food. Not may restaurants serve meatloaf and real mashed potatoes. 

From there using my printing and marketing experience I again found myself back in the restaurant, banquet, and food manufacturing business. I soon discovered that I am a foodie!    

In the beginning...

Pork Roast, Kartoffelklösse, Beans

It was all about my mom and her recipes. Then it was aunts, uncles, bothers sisters, family and friends. When does it end? So when researching old recipes many stories about the "good old days" were told. This lead to more research and experimenting with recipes, taking photographs, editing and printing the recipes.

At this time the digital camera revolution was taking hold. No more buying expensive film only to pay for processing when I was done. Desktop publishing was now affordable. Digital cameras with a whopping 2 megapixels, built in flash,  and auto focus were hitting the market. This was great in the beginning and then I realized that if I ever wanted to print the pictures I would need a much higher resolution camera. So I got a better camera. Then I realized that I would have to re-shoot the photographs taken with the previous camera. As each new camera came out I had to make a decision to buy it, or accept the current photograph quality. Not a chance! So now I'm at a whopping 10 megapixels. When will it end?

I kept making more and more recipes which were not always accurate, and some didn't really taste very good.

The Kartoffelklösse Project

Kartoffelklösse (Potato Dumplings)

I came from a background of German and Irish immigrants but most of the recipes in my mom's collection were from the German side of her family. My father's side of the family was 100% German, so my heritage is 1/3 Irish and 2/3 German. When my family gathered for dinner at my grandfather and grandmother's apartment, our meals consisted of food like pork roast, sauerbraten, rouladen, spaetzle, spinach, red cabbage, mashed potatoes, and  "Kartoffelklösse". Let's not forget gravy, and plenty of it. My family was fascinated with a potato dumpling. Not just any potato dumpling mind you, it was called "Kartoffelklösse" (car tough a klaza). As a child these dumplings took second place to nothing else that was served.

I know what you're thinking, what's a Kartoffelklösse? The Kartoffelklösse is a dumpling made from 1/3 mashed potatoes and 2/3 grated potatoes, or as I like to call it "the rule of the thirds." Hey I'm 1/3 Irish and 2/3 German. A coincidence? I think not!