Pimento loaf is a baked deli meat usually made with beef and pork and flavored with bell pepper and pickles. I was told that the one I had in my sandwich was made with veal. It had a mild flavor, I could taste the vegetables, and I opened up the sandwich because pimento loaf is a pretty meat to eat. I had it on German rye bread with just butter because I wanted the pimento loaf to shine. My sandwich was served with a pickle spear.
Location: George's Market, 1023 Calimesa Blvd, Calimesa, California. Date: April 29, 2023.
0 Comments
This large head cheese is known in German as zungenwurst, which means tongue sausage, and it's made with pigs blood and pickled cow tongue. When I came across it at my local German deli (George's in Calimesa), I couldn't resist. I love cow tongue in many forms, including in tacos and sandwiches, and I've had two really good blood sausages, one in Spain and one in Panama. Here, these two ingredients are combined and flecked with fat, and it looks beautiful. Taste and texture wise, this is not one of my favorite cold cuts, but my sister loved it. I tasted a hint of clove in the mild spices.
Location: My Home, Desert Hot Springs, California. Date: May 24, 2022. This is a German pastry with a lot of stiff whipped cream sweetened with honey, and honey is also present in the slivered almond topping. The version I had at this German deli was one of the best I've had because I detected lemon flavor in the two thin cake slices and because it wasn't too sweet. This cake is creamy and dreamy, and it was one of my late father's favorites. The almond topping lends some crunch to the creaminess as well as some nutty flavor which enhances the honey. While it won't sting you, we must thank the bees (and the cows) for this one.
Location: George's Market, 1023 Calimesa Blvd., Calimesa, California. Date: April 29, 2021. This is a German dessert where the main ingredient comes from the same plant used to produce opium. The seeds themselves are not the part of the plant used for production of the infamous drug, and they are actually extremely nutritious. They are a good source of protein, as well as potassium and B vitamins. While the pastry I had was a bit sweet for my liking, there was some nutty flavor, and just a hint of bitterness, from the poppy seeds, as well as some almond flavor that may have come from marzipan (almond paste) in the poppy seed filling. The pastry was crisp and the poppy seed has an interesting texture, not unlike fish roe popping in your mouth. No matter where you get it, poppy seed pastry that has as much poppy seed in the filling as mine did, is noteworthy.
Location: George's Market, 1023 Calimesa Blvd., Calimesa, California. Date: September 5, 2020. In Europe, Black Forest ham must come from the Black Forest in Germany; however, in the United States it can be produced by anyone and the quality can vary. Having said this, I did really enjoy the version of this ham at the German deli I frequent in Calimesa. This mild smoked ham is sliced really thin, and I always have it on rye bread. It's served with cucumber pickles, and you can choose your combo of mustard, mayo, and cheese. This time I decided to go with mustard only. You can also have the sandwich hot or cold, and I chose hot. There was a pronounced caraway flavor from the bread, the sandwich was tangy from the mustard and the pickles, and the pickles also provided some crunch. This was some good German style meat in some good German style bread, and it made for a good lunch with a bottle of tasty and refreshing wheat beer from the holy mountain of Andechs outside of Munich.
Location: The Beer Garden at George's Market, 1023 Calimesa Blvd., Calimesa, California. Date: August 21, 2020. For this comfy vegetarian dish, homemade little German noodles were tossed with shiitake and portobello mushroom slices and roasted onions and then baked with Gruyere cheese. The spätzle got toasty on top, there was lots of melted cheese, and I thought I could taste some garlic, but maybe it was the grilled onion. The dish was accompanied by German style sweet and sour red cabbage, this one with a pronounced clove flavor that I really enjoyed. When the plate first arrived, I didn't think I could possibly eat it all, but then suddenly it was all gone.
Location: Bontá, 68510 E Palm Canyon Drive 140, Cathedral City, California. Date: December 20, 2019. This is a German sausage covered in curry flavored ketchup and sprinkled with curry powder. It was invented in Berlin in 1949 when a lady by the name of Herta Heuwer obtained both ketchup and curry powder from British soldiers. It was traditionally made with pork sausage, but I was told it was available with either beef or pork, but my waitress recommended pork. Curry was wafting in the air as the plate arrived. Wow! It came with hot potato salad and hot sauerkraut, but the wurst stole the show, as it should! This German restaurant in the Arizona desert sported knotted hardwood floors, old style wood furniture, and beer steins on wall racks. I decided to pair my sausage dish with Schlenkerla Rauchbier, a dark smoky beer from Bamburg. It tasted like campfire smoked meat, but in a good way!
Location: Das Bratwurst Haus, 204 S Madison Avenue, Yuma, Arizona. Date: September 17, 2017. This dish, along with a Kloster Andechs beer, was a trip down memory lane. The dish consisted of hot German potato salad, hot sauerkraut, sausage of choice, German restaurant rye bread with butter and a slice of cheese, and dill pickles. I chose weisswurst (soft white sausage), a Bavarian specialty, which was served with the traditional sweet mustard as well as some sour mustard. Weisswurst is a favorite of mine, and it comes with a story. When I was seven years old, I stayed with my aunt in Germany for the summer holiday, and one nice day we walked together into town, along with the neighbor's dog Ari (a large poodle, if memory serves me right). We went to the metzgerai, one of those fragrant and spotless German butcher shops. On the way home, my aunt handed me a piece of white sausage. A while later my aunt asked me if I had given the sausage to Ari. I answered truthfully, “No, I ate it myself.” My aunt burst out laughing, and I ended up wondering why the butcher would give my aunt a piece of such delicious sausage for the dog! Many years later, around the time I turned thirty, I was back in Germany, and my cousin took me to Kloster Andechs, a holy mountain in Bavaria that sported a brewery. The mountain was actually just a hill, and I remember that there was liquid running down the hill as we walked up. I remarked that it must be beer running down the holy mountain. It may have been! That experience made me take note of the Andechs beer on offer at this German store and restaurant in California, and so their weissbier dunkel (dark wheat beer), with its nice balance of malt and hops, is what I chose to pair with the white sausage German Hot Plate that I enjoyed outdoors in the beer garden. Location: George's Market, 1023 Calimesa Blvd., Calimesa, California. Date: May 9, 2017. |
AuthorChef Roland has been a legal resident of seven countries and has travelled in over thirty, documenting food along the way. He currently resides in the desert in Southern California. Categories
All
|