Got Cod?

In Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, author Mark Kurlansky posits that the success that the Portuguese had as explorers was due in no small part to the cod fish. The ironic part of the story that few people know is that the Basques may have been even greater explorers. Their failure was that they didn’t tell anybody where they’d been. To them the value of a secret fishing hole was more important than the value of telling everyone they had discovered a great fishing hole. So before any other Europeans discovered North America, the Basques were pulling in codfish by the thousands off the coast of Eastern Canada.
What the Basques discovered was that codfish, which had almost no fat, dried beautifully when salted and left in the sun. And they would keep indefinitely. All one had to do is soak the hard planks of fish in fresh water to soften them up and to make them palatable again. So for many years the Basques made a mint by bringing back “bacalhau” to Europe to sell. And for many years nobody could discover the source of their bounty.

This was in the mid-1400s, before Christopher Columbus got all the publicity for finding Hispaniola. Who knows how long the Basques had been up to their little enterprise. The significance of this is that in those days, crews on ships would typically pack beef or pork in barrels of brine. As one would imagine, this would not keep for very long before turning rotten.

Then Henry Cabot (an Italian explorer sailing for English King Henry VII) “discovered” Newfoundland in 1497. As any fly fisherman can attest, once you divulge a secret fishing spot, it takes no time at all before you are elbow to elbow with fellow casters. Similarly, it didn’t take long for Portuguese fishermen to take advantage of both the Basque fishing hole called the Grand Banks and how the Basques made their bacalhau. Soon, Portuguese explorers were able to sail much farther than other explorers who didn’t have as stable a food supply.

“Why the history lesson, Eric?” you might well ask. Well, a couple of days ago, when I wandered into my local Cactus supermarket (one of three local chains here), I was only partly surprised to see a table piled higher than my head with planks of bacalhau, each plank the side of a whole fish. It is a staple for Portuguese wherever they call home, and a lot of Portuguese call Luxembourg home. They are the largest minority in Luxembourg today. These “Lusoburgues” make up 13% of the population, or nearly 60,000 people. For many years they have done the work that the increasingly finance-focused native Luxembourgers didn’t want to do. Things like construction and working for the world’s largest steel company, Luxembourg’s Arcelor Mittal. And along with their work ethic they brought their love of seafood and their recipes.

After picking out the two-foot-by-one-foot slab that I wanted, the aproned lady (my first literal “fishwife”?) slides it into a contraption that looks like a heavyduty paper cutter. After a few muscular downward slams of the blade, she hands me a bag of neat cod crosscuts.

Inspecting my fish at home, I leave a trail of salt crystals across the kitchen just by handling it. Since every bacalhao recipe begins with soaking the cod in a pan of cold fresh water (to leach out the excess salt and to soften it), I slide my booty into the pan of water-- wait, that sounds bad.... 

I slide my cod pieces--no, that sounds worse.... 

The fish goes into the dish and I leave the kitchen.

Eighteen hours and two changes of water later, the cod still tastes a little salty, and still flavored of fish. It is neither hard nor delicately flaky. It has a soft resilience that makes it easy to chew and easier to handle. After this it is only a matter of 20 minutes to assemble the traditional Portuguese recipe below, which I adapted from grouprecipes.com.

Bacalhau A Gomes De Sa
1 day 20 min prep. Yield: 4 to 6 servings.

1 1/2 pounds salted dried cod fish
1/2 cup olive oil, plus 1 teaspoon olive oil
2 cups thinly sliced yellow onions
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 pounds waxy potatoes, sliced 1/4-inch thick and cooked until tender
4 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
8 green manzanilla olives (or any green olives) , sliced
1 teaspoon paprika
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley

Soak the cod in cold water to cover for 24 to 36 hours, changing the water occasionally. The longer you soak the cod, the less salt it will have, but also the less flavor. Soak it too long and your fish may be bland. Take a small nibble after about 18 hours to check flavor and texture. Once it tastes the way you want, drain off the water.

Cut the cod away from the skin and bones. Flake the cod into small pieces, removing any bones. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

In a large sauté pan, over medium heat, add 1/4 cup of the oil. When the oil is hot, add the onions and the garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Sauté until slightly golden, about 6 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

Grease a medium oven proof casserole dish with 1 teaspoon of olive oil. Season the potatoes with salt and pepper.

Spread half of the potatoes over the bottom of the prepared dish. Sprinkle half of the salt cod over the potatoes. Place half of the onion mixture over the salt cod. Top the onion mixture with more salt cod. Place another layer of potatoes over the top of the cod and top with remaining onion mixture. Drizzle the entire pan with the remaining 1/4 cup of oil.

Place in the oven and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until golden brown. Place on a serving platter. Garnish with the sliced eggs, sliced olives, paprika and chopped parsley.

This is only one of hundreds of recipes for bacalhau. The Portuguese reputedly have one for every day of the year. With my lifelong infatuation for Southeast Asian cooking, my next bacalhau project will be Bacalhau Fried Rice. Stay tuned.

In Praise of Shepherds and Goatherds

If necessity is the mother of invention, then loneliness and hunger must be the mothers of discovery. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 by a bored Bedouin goatherd named Mazra who was throwing rocks into a cave near Qumran, a dusty spot not far from the Dead Sea. The crash of shattering pottery led him to investigate the cave. Like Mayberry’s Opie Taylor throwing rocks into his fishing pond, Mazra was Palestine’s post-war Opie, doing the arid alternative.

Coffee was legendarily discovered by Kaldi, a goatherd who noticed his goats acting more frisky than usual after eating coffee cherries. Although scholars might consider the former discovery more critical to Civilization, the latter is more critical to my daily well-being.

Having covered boredom, let’s move on to loneliness. Roquefort cheese was discovered by a French shepherd who saw a pretty girl in the distance. Stashing his lunch of cheese and bread in a cave, he set out to follow her. The bad news is that he never caught up to her. The good news is that he eventually found his lunch again, which by this time had become covered in blue mold. In the “mold” of true adventurers through the ages, he took a bite, didn’t die, and actually kind of liked it. Thus an artisan cheese was born. Roquefort cheese, now one of the world’s best loved blues, is still made the same way, in the Combalou caves near Roquefort-Soulzon, just northwest of Montpellier on France’s Mediterranean coast. The only difference is that Lacaune sheep’s milk is purposely inoculated with Penicillium roqueforti and left to age naturally, and neither shepherds nor pretty peasant girls are involved in the process. As far as we know....

I adore blue cheese, yet I have only enjoyed them one at a time. As any professional taster will assert, the true measure of food or drink is how it measures up to its competition. In the spirit of trying to pick a favorite, I lined up Stilton, Roquefort, St. Agur and Gorgonzola. There are many more out there, but I chose four well-known, commonly available cheeses.

Stilton
I started with the most familiar, a wedge of Stilton. This English cheese from the villages of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire (and not Stilton, curiously enough), is recognizable for its tendrils of Penicillium roqueforti the color of spruce needles that weave their way through the parchment-colored cheese like lichen across granite. It has a pleasant, balanced saltiness and nice complexity. Its texture is very solid, a little crumbly and not particularly creamy.

Roquefort
Roquefort was one I had been looking forward to with anticipation. It is the cheese that baffled me when I was a child. Back in my salad days, the dressings I chose were fairly mundane, and my Grandpa Ted’s dousing of innocent iceberg lettuce with Roquefort was fairly-shudder inducing to my Thousand Island sensibilities. I’ve grown to love it since then. This sample didn’t disappoint. Creamy white with pockets, rather than veins of blue, it was the most intensely blue of the four. The texture was crumbly and slightly moist. The flavor was amazingly complex, with a sturdy saltiness and a slightly sweet fruitiness.

Saint Agur
Next up was the newcomer to my palate, Saint Agur. It is a pasteurized cow’s milk cheese from Monts du Velay, a village in the Auvergne region of France. It has a soft white base with blue-green veins of Penicillium roqueforti. Its 60% butterfat content makes it a double-cream cheese, beautifully spreadable. It is milder and less salty than Roquefort, with a subtle blue flavor.

Gorgonzola
Moving from Britain and France to Italy, the last cheese tasted was Gorgonzola. Made from cow’s milk, it comes from the village of Gorgonzola, near Milan in Lombardy region of Italy. Tradition says that the making of this cheese began in 879 A.D., in a process that uses the bacteria of Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus along with mold spores of Penicillium glaucum and Penicillium roqueforti. My sample was smooth and buttery, with a milder blue character than the others. It was also more delicate and less salty than the others.

All four cheeses were delicious, especially for a blue cheese fan. Overall, Roquefort was my favorite. Its intense yet complex flavor won me over. I put Saint Agur second, due to its wonderful creaminess and delicacy of flavor. Gorgonzola was a close third. Surprisingly to me, Stilton came in last, which might come as a shock to my companions in our Friday night dinner group that I have attended regularly for years. One of the merry men, John, has the crucial responsibility of bringing cheese every week. Invariably it is Stilton, his favorite. After this unofficial taste panel, Stilton may have to relinquish its champion’s belt to Roquefort.

Thank goodness for shepherds and goatherds. These bored loners have been responsible for some of civilization’s greatest discoveries (and one of its most delicious). It just goes to show you what a pastoral setting and a lot of time on your hands can accomplish. So after all that dues-paying, getting the pale-pink-coated-little-girl in “The Sound of Music” is certainly their well-deserved earthly reward. And they no longer have to lose their lunch over her.

Chili Verde Loves You. Don't Play Hard To Get.

I get regular cravings for Mexican food. Especially for the kind that I can’t have. Having lived in Colorado and California, and having tooled around the rest of the Southwest over the years, there are Mexican/TexMex meals that I still remember. Chili rellenos in Santa Fe. Tamales in San Antonio. Street tacos in Tijuana. One place I keep returning to, both physically and in memory, is Santa Barbara. We have friends there whom we regularly visit. And when we visit, there are two pilgrimages I make.

The first is to the Rose Cafe, where I take communion of the house rice. It has a beautiful balance of tomato, spice and roasted garlic. Everything there is incredible, but I could live on the rice alone. The second is La Super Rica, an unassuming storefront that can be identified by the lines of people waiting to get in. Everything on the menu is just spectacular.

Both restaurants have this in common: delicious chili verde. There is something about chili verde that is so simple, so memorable, yet so hard to do well. It is basically pork, green chili peppers and spices. Getting it right is a culinary journey. By way of contrast, red chili has more ingredients and is easier to make--you can almost throw everything into a cast iron Dutch oven and let it go for half a day. Green chili is hands on, requiring more tinkering.

The first part of the chili verde journey is choosing the peppers. Ideally I make it with a variety of green peppers to add complexity of flavor and texture. The artistry is in the proportion of peppers and spices.

I like to use large, meaty Anaheim peppers, squat Poblano peppers, fiery Jalapeno peppers and mild bell peppers. Look for peppers that are large, fresh and juicy. You are going to be roasting these and removing the skin. Little skinny peppers won’t leave much after the seed pod and skin are removed. Leaving the skin on makes the stew a little acrid.

What follows is a starting point. Your mission is to run with it and make it your own. An idealist’s chili verde, this recipe assumes that you have access to authentic ingredients and an afternoon in which to work your magic. If you don’t, work with what you have. It will still be good. Chili verde loves you and is very forgiving of your sins.

Ingredients:
2lbs. Pork Loin, 3/4-inch cubes
1 cup chopped fresh Cilantro
1 large white Onion, diced
1 head of Garlic, chopped
6 Tomatillos (or green tomatoes)
Enough large meaty Green Peppers to make 2 cups of chopped pepper flesh after roasting, peeling and seeding (Anaheim peppers, Poblano peppers, Jalapeno peppers and Green Bell peppers)
1/4 cup Olive oil or Vegetable oil (enough to brown the pork)
2 cups Chicken broth
1/2 tsp. White pepper
1 tsp. Cumin
1/2 tsp. Coriander
1 tsp. Salt
Optional: Jalapeno powder, raw jalapeno peppers or pickled jalapeno peppers in a jar
Optional: Corn tortillas
Optional: Sour cream

Process:
Remove the husks and scrub the tomatillos until the slippery residue is gone. Set aside. Chop onion and set aside. Chop garlic and set aside. Chop cilantro, discarding the stems, and set aside.

Cube pork & then brown over high heat (until medium rare) in a little oil in your chili pan. Set aside meat and pan juices.

Meanwhile, roast peppers. A barbecue grill works easily for this. You can even hold each pepper with tongs and sear them one at a time over the flames of a gas rangetop. A regular oven and a cookie sheet will work for this, just place them on the top shelf and crank the heat to 400 or 450. Once roasted, toss peppers into a paper bag, close the bag and let it sit for about 10 minutes.

Roast tomatillos (or green tomatoes) until soft and slightly browned. Set aside.

In chili pan, saute white onions in olive oil until they start to become translucent. Then add the chopped garlic. When the garlic starts to soften, add back pork and juices. Set burner to low heat. Add spices and salt. Add 1 cup of chicken broth.

Pulse the tomatillos in a food processor until slightly chunky. It’s important to do these separately because they breakdown much easier than the remaining ingredients. Add to chili pan.

Peel skin off the roasted peppers and discard. Carefully remove the seed cores and discard. Chop the roasted pepper flesh.

Combine cilantro and 1/2 cup roasted pepper flesh in food processor until it is a bright green liquid. Add a little liquid (chicken stock) if needed. Add to chili pan. Add remaining roasted pepper chunks to chili pan.

Add remaining chicken broth. Let simmer for 30-45 minutes. Don’t cook it for too long or the pork will become dry. Adjust spices and salt as it simmers, to taste. If you need more cilantro freshness, add a little coriander, which is the seed from the same plant.

If not spicy enough, add jalapeno powder, diced fresh jalapeno (seeded), or diced pickled jalapeno to taste.

Serve with warm tortillas. Add a dollop of sour cream if you like.

Celery Root As Big As Your Head

You never forget your first geoduck. As a new transplant to Seattle in the mid-90s, I brought one home from the Pike Place Market, still alive and neatly rubber banded together. After getting all my other ingredients together--potatoes, celery, milk and so on--I started butchering the creature. The situation became a little unsettling very quickly.

First, the visuals of this clumsy looking bivalve are either funny or lasciviously evil. Maybe both. The comic part is the two shells that fit like tiny clown hats on that enormous fleshy body. Picture Jabba The Hutt wearing a yarmulke. The evil part is the the disturbingly ERECT foot that moves around the cutting board like an aardvark nosing around a termite hill. Wincing a little, I made the first cut. Almost immediately it became clear that I didn’t know which parts to throw away and which parts to keep.

Celery root, aka celeriac, is similarly awkward. Not because of any shlong-like appendages, but what to do with it. Celery stalks? Pretty straightforward. A humble and indispensable vegetable--where would turkey soup be without it? Bloody Marys crave celery. Even spread with cream cheese or peanut butter--a staple of my plaid lunch box in elementary school (yes, my friends all had Spiderman or The Hulk on their lunch boxes; I had an exuberant red tartan)--celery has long been ubiquitous in the American diet.

However, once in a while the curious shopper encounters a lump of celery root in their produce section, usually about the size of a softball. I’ve seen people hefting it in one hand, silently asking themselves, “I wonder what they do with this?” before putting it back. The intrepid few who bring one home are often faced with a woody, spongy and altogether unappetizing vegetable. And after cutting it open, they might remark, “Now what? Which parts do I keep?”
Things are different in Luxembourg. The celery stalk appears to be subservient to its root. Most of the celery stalks in the produce section are a couple of feet long, and a mature, deep green color. They don’t fit in a refrigerator, especially a European one, without drastic pruning. This dearth of celery stalks is balanced by a vast quantity of celery roots.

These are no spongy little softballs, either. The one I bought recently was actually larger than my head. The entire mass, upon being cut open, was as bright and crisp as a jicama root, though more firm than juicy.

After cutting away the rind, the “Now What” issue arose. At a restaurant in Bouillon, Belgium a few days before, I was served a yummy salad consisting of shredded celery root and carrots, served on a bed of frisee and dressed with a simple vinegar and oil. It took only minutes to recreate this dish to good effect.

Next, I julienned it into strips to munch on while exploring further options. The assertive celery flavor (much more than the stalks) tasted good dipped in either cream cheese or peanut butter. Whew! Passed the lunchbox test.

A common way of serving celery root in both Luxembourg and France shredding it and dressing it in a remoulade sauce, akin to coleslaw in the United States. The remoulade took a little longer, but turned out well. But enough of this raw stuff! Time to turn on the stove.

Luckily, I was making homemade chicken soup at the time. Cubes of celery root contributed nicely to the stock as well as being an interesting companion to the carrots and onions.

Still having plenty left, I made mashed celery root from the remainder. To follow along, chop the root into large chunks and simmer in salted water until soft. After draining, mash as you would boiled potatoes, adding butter and cream, and salt to taste. Whip until creamy and lump free, and serve hot. The final dish had a gentle non-celery “root” flavor that was quite delicious.
With the remaining celery root in my pantry, I have designs on a root vegetable gratin, featuring carrots, parsnips, beets and celery root. I may have to face my fear of turnips and rutabagas. Thankfully they’re not likely to nuzzle me on the cutting board.

The Laws of Breakfast Dynamics

(Or: On the Glory of Chicken Fried Steak)

I flew back to the U.S. last fall to attend the wedding of two friends--Damon and Laura. Although they live in Seattle, the wedding took place in Ithaca, New York. On a side note, if there is a prettier campus than Cornell, I don’t know of it. I spent a summer there taking some classes at Cornell, and I spent a lot of time exploring gorges and hiking trails that I should have spent studying. I’m sure that this is a common hazard among those who attend Cornell or Ithaca College.

Although this beauty is undeniable in the summer and fall, I am glad I’m not there right now, a few days after Christmas. I picture a scene from the third circle of hell (courtesy of Dante), where people wander in a frigid slush of freezing rain, hail and black snow. Dante reserved this place for gluttons, and though there are probably a few gluttons in Ithaca, I’m sure the whole town doesn’t deserve to suffer for the sins of a few. If there are Ithacans out there who can vouch for your town’s charms during the bleak December, please chime in.

Turning from damnation back to the story, the wedding was really cool. Fun people, wonderful food, great music, decorations glorifying small woodland mammals--all the things you expect from a memorable wedding. But back to the point of this story: diner food. Not far from my hotel was a nondescript diner. I didn’t really notice it until I was casting around for a place to eat on the morning I had to drive back to Newark International Airport.

As far as diners go, it probably wasn’t exceptional, but for a guy living in a diner-free zone, namely all of Europe, it was pretty cool. I ordered the Chicken Fried Steak with gravy, hash browns, eggs overeasy, English muffins. The only thing missing was grits. During my breakfast, I discovered that I really miss grits. Something about that corn flavor with butter, salt and pepper. I could eat of tub of that for some reason. And decent coffee. But then I remembered the First Law of Breakfast Dynamics: the quality of diner coffee is inversely proportional to the quality of its food. 

The Second Law of Breakfast Dynamics also applied, which states that Chicken Fried Anything is mysteriously Delicious and Comforting for breakfast. I’m not sure what goes into the average Chicken Fried Anything, but there is something epiphanal about greasy meaty breading smothered in spicy gravy. When Martin Luther did his business on the Wittenberg Door, it was probably after a meal of Chicken Fried Mutton or something. (I know that sounds bad, but NO, it wasn’t THAT kind of business. Look it up.) There is a corollary to the Second Law that takes effect in the presence of Loco Moco--the Hawaiian breakfast mess that is equally delicious and comforting. This nascent area of study is starved for further investigation. 

The Third Law of Breakfast Dynamics is the Sweet Vs. Savory Breakfast Conflict. I refer to the instant regret that arrives with your plate of food. If you ordered the short stack of pancakes, it is assured that you will suddenly crave the bacon and eggs of your dining companions. If you get the farmers’ scramble you will covet your neighbor’s warm cinnamon roll. The only solution, of course, is to get both.

Regretfully, I didn’t remember the Third Law in time, a shortcoming that befalls most patrons of the breakfast arts from time to time. I could have and should have ordered that cinnamon roll. Fortunately, I hit upon the Fourth Law of Breakfast Dynamics almost by accident: Always make your last bite a flavor that you would like to keep tasting over and over until lunchtime. As it was, I was tasting chicken fried steak (in a good way!) all the way from Ithaca to Newark.

As I was blasting toward Newark at 90mph, I attributed the lack of speed traps to the Fifth Law of Breakfast Dynamics, which only applies to law enforcement officers: a body at rest in a booth tends to remain at rest in a booth. If you doubt the Scientific Method of this (being Observable, Measurable and Repeatable), my brother Randy (a Denver Police Sergeant) has been testing a proof of it every morning for twenty-two years. But he’s another story.

Part One of the Sausage Files: This Ain’t No Camp Northstar Weenie!

There’s a scene in the movie Meatballs where Larry “Fink” Finkelstein faces off against “The Stomach” from Camp Mohawk in a hotdog eating contest, with a pile of boiled hotdogs between them. Just before the contest begins, Bill Murray’s character, “Trip”, gives the chubby Fink a peptalk:

“That's right, Fink. Look at those steaming weenies. And you know what they're saying, Larry? They're saying, ‘This is the year that Fink beats The Stomach.’”

As the contest begins, the fans on the sidelines yell,
“Come on, Fink!”
“This is weenie war! Eat!”
“Stretch that stomach, Fink!”

Fink would go berserk in a Luxembourg deli section. It is an altar to the glory of the pig. There are cured sausages like salamis, cooked sausages that just need heating up (like hotdogs), and raw sausages. And that is to say nothing of all the other fascinating cured meat products.

I have always liked hotdogs, though their quality varies widely in the U.S. With a hotdog, you don’t worry about Upton Sinclair and The Jungle, with its tales of sawdust and fingers going into the grinders. That’s (pretty much) in the past, despite cringeworthy reporting from Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. You just need to grin, bite and enjoy.

One problem I have with American hotdogs is the “hotdog water” flavor. You know when you boil a hotdog, there is a strangely chemical scent to the water? What is that, nitrates? Something else? Though that is part of the hotdog, it is a part I don’t like.

Here in Luxembourg, there are several sausages that fit the description of “hotdog,” though they taste markedly different. Two of these I tried recently are the wiener wurstchen and the edamerwurst. Either of these could easily be the best tasting hotdog in America. I am blessed that on any given night, either one (or both!) could be draped across my plate, vying for my attention and flirting with my affection. Both taste natural, without any artificial hotdoggyness.

Wiener wurstchen is the most hotdoggy of the two. It has a creamy smooth texture and a delicious fatty texture. I haven’t tried boiling it, because hotdogs need grilling. In Luxembourg all the sausages are grilled; boiling a sausage is an offense akin to waterboarding. I'm sure it happens somewhere, but nobody wants to know about the details.

Edamerwurst is manna in a casing. Lightly grilled, it is heavenly and like manna, won’t stay around for long. It is the most luxurious sausage I have ever eaten. The inside is bursting with little pockets of indescribably rich flavor. The secret? Tiny pockets of Dutch edam cheese spread throughout the sausage. Once heated, they melt into a beautifully creamy and juicy texture, like that of a triple cream French cheese such as Explorateur. Like any good sausage, I want to eat more of them than I possibly can.  

These two sausages can be eaten plain with no regrets. A touch of stone ground mustard makes them come alive, however. The Luxembourgers slip them into a toasted baguette roll, crispy on the outside and soft inside. The spices that make each what they are are still a mystery to me. I will update this if I ever discover a viable recipe.

If you visit us in Luxembourg, we can sit on the balcony with our “wursts” and a local beer. With our feet propped up on the railing and the sun setting, we could reminisce about the American hotdog and other staples of the American diet. We might even sing the Meatballs camp counselors song:

“We are the CITs
So pity us
The kids are brats
The food is hideous
We're gonna smoke and drink
And fool around
‘Cause we’re Northstar CITs.”

But not for long. The sausages might get cold.

Hot Potato Fritters On A Cold, Cold Night

The last Saturday in November the Chastain family strolled into Luxembourg City’s old town center for the Christmas Fair. The night was clear and very cold, which seemed to accentuate the clarity of the Christmas lights strewn everywhere. Along with handmade decorations, Christmas gear of all kinds, and a live children’s brass band, were food booths. Asian noodles, mulled wines, grilled sausages, fresh oysters that seem to do very well in the below freezing air, and a tent with three dozen wineries pouring cremant samples. The longest lines, however, were for gromperekichelcher (aka Luxembourgish potato fritters). 

I wondered what the big deal was, since I had seen the same long lines during Schueberfouer (Sheep’s Fair), but hadn’t wanted to stand in them. This is a fair that has taken place every fall since 1340, when John the Blind, Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia, started it with the goal of establishing Luxembourg as an international trading center. 668 years later, it seems to have worked. 

So I finally stepped up to the (paper) plate and gave it a try. Boy howdy! Or as they say in Letzebuergish, “Yowzah!”. (Just kidding). The fritter was crispy like a hash brown on the outside, with an exterior of golden brown shredded potato. Inside, it was creamy and tender in texture, with delectable potato flavor. But there was also something else going on. Leeks? Parsley? Nobody was talking. 

Fortunately, I found a couple of Luxembourgish cookbooks, one of which had a recipe for gromperekichelcher. Culinary Luxembourg is a wonderful resource for those interested in exploring traditional Luxembourg cookery. Written by Georges Hausemer and Guy Hoffman, and published by Editions Guy Binsfield, it is full of beautiful photography, background about the people and country of Luxembourg, and most importantly, delicious recipes. It’s a worthwhile investment, and can be purchased at www.editionsguybinsfeld.lu.  

Gromperekichelcher

1 kg yellow or red potatoes

3 onions

2 shallots

Parsley (to taste)

4 to 6 eggs

2 tablespoons flour

Salt

Pepper

Oil for frying

Wash, peel and coarsely grate the potatoes. Put into a cloth and press out the liquid. Add to a mixing bowl. Chop the parsley, shallots and onions, and add to the potatoes. Add the beaten eggs. Salt and pepper to taste. Form into flat patties about 1/2 inch thick, and dust them with flour. Heat the oil in a pan until very hot. Fry the patties until golden brown on both sides. Serve hot.