Celebrate Oktoberfest with These 5 German Recipes | Everyday Gourmet

I'm going to make a German-inspired salad using some knackwurst. Now, usually, when you use German sausages, you just put them in some bread with some sauerkraut, maybe some tomato sauce and mustard. But putting it in a salad like this is a really great alternative and it's a really filling salad. Now, before we poach the knackwurst, I need to get onto the pellcuscus. So into a pot, I'll add a splash of olive oil, about a tablespoon. And I like to toast the pellcuscus off first because it gives it a lovely nutty flavour. So I'll measure it out. We want one cup. Pellcuscus is just like couscous, but a larger size grain. So you just want to constantly toss that for a few minutes until it changes colour. Now, the knackwurst. I love these because they're flavoured with some European spices and they're naturally wood-smoked. And there's a few ways of preparing them. First of all, you could just eat them as is because they're completely cooked. You could grill them on the barbecue. Or you can do what I'm doing, which is just poaching them in some hot water. We're just warming them through. You don't want the water to be rapidly boiling because they will split. So make sure the water's just at a gentle simmer, just like this. And then we'll pop the sausages in. OK. Now, you can see how fast this toasts. Got a lovely golden colour on it. And in with our stock. This is just vegetable stock. Two cups of vegetable stock. Turn that down. Lid can go on. And this is going to cook for about 15 minutes or until all of the water has been absorbed. For a quick dressing to go with this, a German-inspired dressing, one onion. In fact, I'm actually going to use half of this onion. And I like to grate it to give this dressing a bit of a pungent flavour. So half of this onion is plenty. And we'll gather all of that onion into a bowl. And all of the onion juice in there too. Some seeded mustard, about a tablespoon or so. Some sour cream. Now, the sour cream is going to act like the oil to this. So we don't need to add any oil. And then for some zing, of course, a little vinegar. I'm using apple cider vinegar. So we'll mix that together. Done. For some sweetness, raisins. We'll add a small handful of the raisins. Roughly chopping it, running our knife through them. That's great. We can add that to the dressing. And some fresh herbs. Parsley. Two or three sprigs. And I always associate German food with dill too, so we can add some of that. Stalks off. And we'll finely chop. Done. Nice, generous, big handful of freshly chopped herbs can go in. We'll just finish cooking off the pearl couscous, poach the sausages, and then we'll be back in a jiffy. OK, let's check the pearl couscous. All of that water has been absorbed. I just want to check that it's completely cooked through. Mmm. Yum. I love pearl couscous. Fantastic. So we're going to take it off the heat and I'll add this pearl couscous to our sour cream dressing. The sausages, I've sliced them into rounds and we can add them now too. And the textural element to this is the walnuts. So we're just going to roughly chop these walnuts. A nice, generous handful. Roughly chop them. Ideally, toast them first too, so they become extra crunchy. OK, that is it for our salad. Now I'm just going to give it a really good toss to coat everything in that sour cream. This is a salad that's best served warm, but you could also have it cold too. And because we added that pearl couscous when it was warm, it's brought out the flavours in everything else. So I can smell that dill and the parsley. Just delicious. Alright, nice, generous bowl. This is definitely a hearty salad. It's going to keep you full for a while. And by all means, you can change up the ingredients. You could add potatoes instead of the pearl couscous if you like. But I kind of like how it absorbs all of that flavour. A little extra dill to make it look quite special. That is my German-inspired salad. Maybe one of those appropriate dishes to have closer to Oktoberfest, maybe? Why not? My uncle Colin used to work in a Swiss-German restaurant and he would love to make spätzle. Now, if you haven't heard of spätzle, it's a German-style noodle. And he swears by this recipe, so I'm going to share it with you today. Really easy measurements to remember. He likes to use a combination of two flours, so wholemeal flour and Tipo 00. Tipo 00 because it's superfine. And then a little of the wholemeal flour so we get that lovely nutty flavour. So 125 grams. And another 125 grams of that wholemeal flour, plain. We need to season this, so a good pinch of salt. And I love the addition of some nutmeg. OK, so that's the dry ingredients. We'll just give that a whisk to combine both of the flours. And then into another bowl, we'll add the wet ingredients. So some melted butter. You'll need three eggs. And just give that a whisk to break up the eggs and combine that with the butter. And constantly whisk this and then add some milk. So this is not like an Italian-style noodle. And that's what I like about it. It's very different. Now, usually, you would add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. But for this recipe, we're just going to slowly incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. And this will ensure we don't get too many lumps. So a little at a time, incorporate it. And then we'll add some more. Now, you do want to allow this to rest for one hour in the fridge. So a little cling film over the top. And this will go into the fridge for an hour. The spatuli has come out of the fridge. So we can take this glad wrap off now. Just take the excess off. Great. And before we start cooking the spatuli, we want to make a quick sauce. I love this sauce. It's a butter and saffron sauce with some prawns. So into a large pan, just like this one. Just been preheating it. And I'll add a splash of olive oil. And in with the butter. And as that starts to melt, I want to add a pinch of saffron. These gorgeous little saffron strands are going to flavour our butter. And you really only need a small amount of it to make a difference. So we'll let that warm up together. Some capers for a pop of saltiness. Oh, it smells good. And some prawns. Now, I'm just using some green prawns here. And I've de-shelled them and deveined them. And I'm just going to finely chop them. I want this to almost look like popcorn pieces. OK, so we'll pop that in. And now I'm going to turn the heat off. And just let this sit here for a moment as we cook the spatuli. So into the big pot, we're going to add a good amount of salt. Just like any other noodle, you need to season the water generously with some salt. And there's two ways of making the spatuli. One way is through a strainer like this. And you can force through the batter. But I think that's a really messy way of doing it. Uncle Collie's way is much easier. So if you get yourself a small board and a palette knife, I'll add a generous amount of our spatuli dough. And if it's too thick, you can just dilute it with a little extra milk. We'll start with about a quarter to half of this mixture. See how sticky it is? That's just right. And we simply use this just to scrape little strands of noodles. And you'll see it just start to fall down into the water. When it comes to the surface, it's ready. Now, the first couple that you'll do, they'll probably be a little bit too chunky or too long. But once you get the hang of it and start doing this flicking motion, you get these gorgeous noodles, all different types of shapes. And that's the perfect spatuli. Pretty fun, too. Well, these have risen to the top, so you know that they're ready. Look at that. Little noodles. They look very organic, slightly gnarly, but they're going to taste so delicious. So I've just turned the heat back onto our prawns. You can see that they're still slightly raw there, which is the way I want it. We'll give it a quick toss and see how that saffron has coloured the butter there. It smells so good. We'll add our spatuli. And if some of the water goes in, even better, because that's going to help let that sauce stick to our noodles. And before I toss it, I want to add some herbs. I've got a combination of tarragon, dill and parsley. And we'll just finely chop a good handful of that together. Great. All of these soft herbs go quite nicely with seafood, so for our prawns, just right. Pop that in. And the last ingredient, slightly controversial, but a little parmesan. I know there is seafood in there, but the parmesan's not going to be cheesy in this because it is such a small amount. It's just going to help bind that sauce. OK, let's give this a toss. See how they hold their shape? Fantastic. OK, big spoon. And we'll serve this. And I love to finish it off just with some freshly cracked pepper over the top. There you go. That is Uncle Collie's spatuli with some prawns and saffron. Enjoy. Here's a great recipe for a pear and vanilla custard strudel. It's certainly not made in the traditional way, but this one is a real standout. Now, we start with our pears. I like to use burr bosk when I'm cooking with pears. So what I've done is peeled the burr bosk, cut them into bite-sized pieces. So before we put them in the pot, I'm going to add some butter and just some unsalted butter, some cornflour. Now, this is going to thicken up my mixture and we want that so it holds nicely in the pastry later on. So a little bit of cornflour, some sugar to really accentuate the sweetness of our pears and lots of lemon juice. So the juice of one juicy lemon. And I'm just going to use my nifty juicer here to extract as much as possible. Give that a really good squeeze. And the other half. And I'm not adding any extra liquid, no water whatsoever. The pears will give off a little bit of liquid too. So that's the base. We're going to add our pears. You need about three to four burr bosk pears. OK, turn the heat on. Just on a medium heat. Give that a bit of a stir. And the most important ingredient here is the vanilla bean paste. I love to use vanilla bean paste when I'm cooking with ingredients like pears. I love the little speckles of vanilla bean that you see throughout it. And all you need is about a teaspoon to really taste the flavour of the vanilla. Give that a stir. The lid can go on. And this will take about five to seven minutes to cook. We just want those pears to break down slightly but still hold their shape. Once they're cooked, we're going to take them out, pop them into a bowl and let them cool completely before we get onto the pastry. OK, the vanilla and pear mixture has completely cooled down. That is a really important part of this recipe. If this is still hot going into the pastry, it'll make our pastry soggy as it cooks in the oven. So cool it down. And this is where I'm cheating a little bit. I'm using a store-bought custard. You only need a small amount of it. So just combine that together. Now over to the pastry. I've got some butter puff pastry here. You want to work with it quite fast or make sure that it's super cold so it's easy to manage. A flat tray is highly recommended for this, and you'll see why in a moment. On with our pastry. Now, I like to use butter puff pastry for this because I like the flaky texture. Certainly not traditional when it comes to a strudel, but it tastes so good with the vanilla pears. Now, using a knife, I'm going to cut 2cm-thick strips on each side. And this is just to make a beautiful pattern. You don't have to do this stage. In fact, you can just cover the pears in the pastry and pop it in the oven. But I kind of like that lattice look. So just working down the pastry vertically, I'm going to make those little strips. And we'll just flip that around and do it to the other side. And you want them to roughly align so they crisscross perfectly at the end. That looks pretty good. Now we'll grab our vanilla pears and we're just going to pop that straight down the centre of this big rectangular piece of puff pastry. Alright, now for the fun part. This is a bit of a rough braid, but you'll see how it takes shape. So we're going to take one of the strips and cross it over. And then we'll do it to the other side, cross it over. And you can see why you want them to sort of align so they meet together for that gorgeous little pattern on top of it. Now, there's two options for the topping here. What you can do is just get some demerara sugar and sprinkle it over the top. Or if you want some extra texture, which is what I want, I'm going to add some almond flakes for extra crunch. So that's what I'll be adding. And then once you finish the braid, if there's any excess pastry, not a problem. We'll just cut that off and tidy it up. And that is a beautiful-looking strudel. So a little bit of egg wash, one whole egg. I'll just give that a quick whisk. Combine the egg whites with the egg yolks quite evenly. And with a pastry brush, we're just going to very lightly brush this. This is going to be the glue for our almonds. Alright, now for our almond flakes. We'll sprinkle that over the top. Not too many. We don't want to cover that gorgeous plating that we've just done. Just a small amount. That's ready to go. Into the oven, 180 degrees. And I want to cook this for about 30 to 35 minutes or until it's puffed up, super flaky and golden brown. Vanilla and pear strudel is out of the oven. Do allow it to cool slightly because when you bring it out, it's going to be a little bit bubbly and piping hot. Now, this may be a little overkill, but I'm going to be serving this with custard and cream, dollop cream to be specific. My mother would not approve because she thinks you shouldn't have the two together. But that's OK. This is my strudel today. So a little bit of custard on the bottom of the plate. Then I'm going to dust this strudel with a little bit of icing sugar to make it pop. Not too much, just a small amount. And I'm going to cut a generous wedge. So listen to the crunch. Oh, this is the best. And I'm just going to cut a centre cut, like so. And I love how those flaked almonds have caramelised on the top there. Look at that filling, so good. Just in that little puddle of custard and some dollop cream on top. Just a little spoon. And that's my gorgeous pear and vanilla strudel. Not the traditional way of making it, but it works really well. This is a lovely winter dessert. And you know what? Don't worry about what my mum says. Definitely add the cream and the custard. Works a treat. Morgan Hipworth from Bistro Morgan Bakehouse is joining me today to make pretzels. Morgan, we've never made pretzels on the show, so I'm really excited to learn how to make this. It should be a really fun time. Pretzels is one of those things I feel like you can have so much fun. It's such a simple technique, but it creates an amazing end result. So we're going to start with our water. Yep, there it goes. Dried yeast, caster sugar, finely diced rosemary leaves, finely diced thyme leaves, butter, flour, and a pinch of sea salt. Wow, so is this traditional to put all these herbs in? It's quite a lot. It's not something that you would normally do in a dough, but it adds so much flavour. I feel like it just really helps heighten this dough to the next level. So believe it or not, the actual dough isn't too dissimilar from a normal bread roll or anything like that, because they're similar to a bagel in that they've got that sort of slightly chewy texture. Is boiling them in a bicarb soda bath before baking them. So it's sort of like twice cooked. It really helps create like a chewy texture layer on the outside and then baking them. And then they come out really, really beautifully golden brown, but chewy, crunchy all together at the same time. You're really selling this. And these ones are actually stuffed with cheese, so they're even better. Oh, stop it. I love it already. All right, I'm going to mix this until we've got a sticky dough. Yeah, so the dough should be sticky, but also able to be handled so it doesn't actually stick to your hands. So I'll show you what it looks like once it's kneaded. All right, Morgan, how is that looking? Looking pretty good to me. So what we, the main thing we want to check for when like all doughs of any form, you know, they're done when it forms a gluten window. Now gluten window is when you can grab a piece of the dough and you can actually pull it apart and it becomes transparent without tearing. Once we have that dough completed, we're going to transfer it to our oiled bowl. And then we're going to cover that and let it prove or double in size for about an hour. Yep, fantastic. All right, so we've got our proved dough here. So as you can see, it's like doubled, almost tripled in size. And what that is, it's the yeast doing its job. I don't know if you know, but yeast is actually alive. It's like a bacteria. So yeast eats up the sugar in the dough and then its by-product is the carbon dioxide. So you can see here, if I punch that down, pretty aggressive. So all these little bubbles have helped to make that really, really light and fluffy dough. So there you go, see that really, really light and fluffy dough. I love how you describe why things are the way they are. I think baking is almost slightly scientific too. It's very much of a science. I feel like because I've had so much experience with bread, obviously, like brioche, making the doughnuts and things like that. It's one of those things that you really have to understand and there is a science behind it. May I just mention, Morgan is only 20, has his own bake house and you've started creating your new book and this is going to be in it, I hope. Yeah, I have. So it's definitely one of my favourites. So what we need to do is we'll grab a little bit off. This makes 10 pretzels, this recipe. And then we'll roll it into a ball. This is something that people can either do or they can't do. How's that? That looks great to me. Perfect. So what we're gonna try and do is we don't wanna put too much flour because otherwise that's gonna actually go into the dough and make the dough dry than it should be. So we'll just put a little sprinkle so it doesn't actually stick on the chopping board. And then a little bit on top. Now, it's one of those old sort of techniques, just like rolling a sausage out of the ball of dough. We really wanna push down with both of our hands and then push out at the same time. And basically we're just gonna flatten it out to create like almost a scroll-like version to stuff the cheese in. So this is rolling out the pretzel dough so we can actually make some room for that mozzarella on the inside. I don't want you to go overboard, Justine. I know you get excited. I don't want you to go overboard. We want a really nice thin line down the middle for me. Okay. I'll grab this end. You can start on the other end. Lovely. We need room either side of the cheese to actually roll it up. So you can see here, we're just rolling the dough over the cheese. Okay. And that's gonna create our rope once again, because obviously we want that rope so we can roll them into the pretzel shape. It's quite a sturdy dough for it to be able to stretch, wrap it around it, and the cheese is not going to melt out as much. Definitely. And that goes back to that gluten structure that we were showing before with the gluten window. Okay, there's our rope. So here is our rope. So we finished off rolling our cheese into the pretzel. So now it's time to roll it. So rolling the pretzel is actually pretty simple. I feel like so many people look at it and go, oh my God, that looks so hard. You wanna pull one side into the corner and then pull the other side into the corner. And then we wanna push the two corners in so they don't come apart. Now we're gonna put it into our bicarb soda. So we've got our boiling pot of water here. Yep. We've got our bicarb and we'll put that in. Ooh, bubbles. Fizz, fizz. So that's what makes it that nice chewy consistency on the outside. And then that'll blanch for about 30 seconds. So we've preheated the oven to 180 degrees. We've got a tray lined with some baking paper. So we'll bring that out and we really just wanna let that drain. Put that onto our baking tray. There we go. And then we've got our egg wash. Wanna cover this whole pretzel because the thing about the egg wash is that's what actually caramelizes in the oven and makes it brown. Well, Morgan, we're gonna make a few more of these and then get them in the oven. How long do we cook our pretzels for? We'll cook them for about 20, 25 minutes or until they're that nice deep golden brown color. Fantastic. All right, Justine, so we're gonna chop up some herbs and this is gonna be for the topping as soon as they come out of the oven. So it's just a mix of garlic powder, rosemary, thyme and some parmesan. Wow, Morgan, these look so good. You can tell which ones are mine and which ones are yours. You can see our amazing cheese goodness. So we'll just put them onto a wire rack and this is when we're then gonna brush them with our melted butter and then with the topping to create that amazingly delicious flavor combo. That looks so good. Smell amazing. Apparently there's like smelly business. Yeah, exactly. So we've got our melted butter here. If you wanna get the topping ready for me, you can follow me with the butter. So we'll start here. Nice, glossy finish on them. And then generously sprinkle that over for me. All right, generously. That's the way. I'm gonna try that one. Taste test time. I kind of wanna do a bit of a pull to see that gooey cheese inside. Oh, look at that. Yum. You can see the cheese. I can see the cheese. Tasty? Now the fastest dinners you can prepare is sauerkraut and Kransky's. Continental sausages are fantastic to have in the fridge for very quick dinners just like this. Now in a pot, some white wine. Bring it to the boil along with some water. We'll now add the sauerkraut. And it's as simple as warming it up and then adding the Kransky's. And by adding the Kransky's to the sauerkraut, we're going to introduce some more flavor. That smoky flavor that we know so well with Kransky's. So in they go. And now no salt required because there's enough salt in the Kransky's. Lid goes on and just cook that for about five minutes essentially to warm everything up. Like I said, that is the fastest dinner you can ever do and it tastes super delicious.