The German Recipe

By Leah Martindill

            One of my goals of studying in Germany is to go home recognizing every day, useful German words. I do not expect that I will be able to pronounce or spell them all correctly but if I can just know what is being written or said I will be satisfied. I figured a good way to learn a few household terms in one go would be to follow a German recipe. Not necessarily German food but a recipe in German. I decided I was going to do this and then the recipe was literally just handed to me.

            Over the weekend I went to the red-tape event in town. During it, there was a women standing on the sidewalk handing out samples of toast with a pesto spread on it. I tried it and it was absolutely delicious. They also told me that it was vegan and could be stored for up to half a year if refrigerated. It did cost nine euros, which is a bit over my budget so I did not buy it right away. I thought about it and decided it was a worthy investment. It was now two days later and I had to wander around a bit to find the store again. It was quite the walk and I arrived sweaty but excited. Then as I was checking out the women handed me a list of recipes to make with the spread. I was headed to the grocery store afterwards anyways and decided to see if I could find the ingredients I needed.

            I went to the Penny grocery store, which is near Bismarkplatz because it was on my way home. I tried to match up words for the ingredients with the words on the sign at the store because I did not really know what any of them meant. I did know that I was trying to make pesto mashed potatoes though. The recipe I was following is called “Barlauch-Kartoffelpuree-mit pilzragout.” Literally the only word I knew was kartoffelpuree, or mashed-potatoes. So I headed to the potatoes first. Then something interesting happened. This girl from Scotland was looking for lactose free yogurt and asked for my help. I, of course, had no idea where to look for that but I helped anyway. Then I had her helping me try to figure out the recipe. We never did find her yogurt but we were able to a lot of the stuff for me.

            I needed muskat which is nutmeg, shiitake pilze, or shiitake mushrooms, sojamilch, which is soymilk, and I did not figure that out at the store so I just ended up with regular milk, and sahne or cream.

            The recipe itself basically was to make mashed potatoes and add all this extra stuff into it so I didn’t have to translate too much to do it. I got the words for mix, stir, pour, boil, etc. so it was a pretty cool experience.

            The mashed potatoes turned out pretty good but I do not think I will often go through the effort to make them again, but maybe. I accomplished my goal of figuring words out and although I am sure I will not remember them all I hope I will be able to recognize a few of them here and there. This is definitely something I am going to try again.