Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #368003 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-23
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 328 pages

From Publishers Weekly
For the uninitiated, this collection of recipes makes an apt introduction to the cuisine of southwest Germany. Inflected with French, Swiss and Italian traditions, Black Forest cookery goes beyond the sauerkrauts, wursts and späetzles we associate with German food—though there's plenty of that here, too. In his introduction, the chef/owner of Philadelphia's historic City Tavern reveals that there are many similarities between the postwar eating habits of his native Black Forest and the 18th-century American dishes he now serves on a nightly basis (Germans began settling Pennsylvania around that time, Staib explains). Both emphasize fresh, local ingredients and hand-butchered meats. The book is divided not by courses but by styles of cooking associated with specific dining locations, be it a cafe, a gasthaus (a guesthouse that serves tavernlike food), a fashionable hotel or at your own table. Throughout, Staib shows equal affection for humble fare like Stuffed Tomatoes (filled with bologna and Swiss cheese) and his more sophisticated dishes, like Paupiettes of Brook Trout topped with salmon roe. Readers will come away with a taste of the indigenous foodstuffs of the region, from the asparagus in Smoked Trout Salad to the mirabelle plums in the Clafouti Tart. (Nov.)
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About the Author
Jennifer Lindner McGlinn is a trained pastry chef, food writer, and historian. She has worked as executive editor of Art Culinaire, a professional chefs’ magazine, as well as in the curatorial departments at Winterthur Museum, the Rosenbach Museum and Library, and Valley Forge National Park/National Center for the American Revolution. Ms. McGlinn is the co-author, along with Chef/Proprietor Walter Staib, of The City Tavern Baking & Dessert Cookbook, and worked as recipe editor, contributor, and consultant on Dining at Monticello. She contributes food and culture articles to Signature Brandywine Magazine, and prepares specialty desserts for her business, Goodwife Confections. Chef Walter Staib is the highly acclaimed chef and proprietor of Philadelphia’s celebrated City Tavern restaurant. He is the author of two other cookbooks: City Tavern Cookbook, and City Tavern Baking & Dessert Cookbook. He has been named the “Culinary Ambassador to the City of Philadelphia,” and has received numerous awards and recognition for his outstanding cuisine.

Customer Reviews

From Black Forest to City Tavern
This is a fascinating cookbook. Chef Walter Staib grew up in Germany, learned his cooking techniques there, and then became the honcho at Philadelphia's City Tavern (where you can eat recipes or drink beer crafted by Thomas Jefferson and George Washington!). As Staib notes (Page 15): "In 1994, when I took over the historic City Tavern in Philadelphia, I discovered that life in eighteenth-century America paralleled traditional Black Forest culture in more ways than I could have imagined." And (same page), "When I was growing up in the Black Forest, we were, in many ways, still practicing the traditional cookery our ancestors transplanted to America two hundred years earlier."

So, an interesting backdrop to this work (and I have just ordered Chef Staib's cookbook on City Tavern, which I am looking forward to a great deal, given my enjoyment of the cuisine there!).

But the bottom line, as always, is the recipes themselves. And these seem pretty straightforward and doable for those of us who enjoy trying out new dishes but are not gourmet chefs.

Examples: Chicken noodle soup (pages 114-115). Boy, does this make things simple! Butter, onions, celery, carrots, chicken stock, thyme, chicken (already cooked), egg noodles, pepper, and parsley. The instructions are to the point. I aim to make this for my family in the near future.

I have found some nice recipes for potato-leek soup in other cookbooks. This volume has a nice recipe for that tasty dish, too.

Salad? The recipe for creamy cucumber salad gets my juices going: cucumber, salt (which I normally do not use, given how much salt we end up consuming each day), sour cream, red onion, cider vinegar, paprika, chili powder (yes!), pepper, and chives (for garnish). Seems easy to make and looks delicious. Another dish that I want to try out!

And then some main dishes, such as poached salmon with tomatoes & dill cream sauce, pork medallions with lager & chanterelles, beef stroganov (with a very simple recipe for one of my favorite dishes), beef burgundy (one of my specialties for dinner parties, with a few wrinkles that I don't normally use). As a side dish? Riesling sauerkraut. Sounds yummy from the recipe.

Anyhow, if interested in German cuisine, this looks like a winner.

Follow the breadcrumbs to Black Forest Cuisine
I share a kind of kinship with celebrity chef Walter Staib, though I am no kitchen witch. Like most Americans of German descent, my knowledge of the German culinary arts is limited to sausages, sauerkraut, and, with a little luck, Black Forest Cake laced with cherry liqueur. In my family, Oktoberfest conjures up frothy mugs of home-brewed beer and baskets brimming with warm, yeasty pretzels.

We don't know what we're missing, says Staib, author with Jennifer Lindner McGlinn of Black Forest Cuisine: The Classic Blending of European Flavors (Running Press, 2006) and chef-proprietor of Philadelphia's historic City Tavern restaurant. And though these dishes come from Munich, and not his beloved Black Forest, chef Staib makes sure the better-known Bavarian fare is served in elegant style. Among the many lunch and dinner offerings is fleischkäse, a pan-seared beef and pork terrine with sautéed onions and fried egg, served with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut; classic weiner schnitzel; and flavorful Hungarian goulash.

But if you want to experience the real magic of the Black Forest cuisine, you will have to step inside the pages of chef Staib's lavishly illustrated cookbook. Forewords by Dr. Tim Ryan, president of the Culinary Institute of America, and Franz Mitterer, publisher and founder of Art Culinaire, lead like a trail of well-seasoned breadcrumbs to the introduction by chef Staib. It is here that you will learn that the third-generation restaurateur began peeling garlic in his aunt and uncle's gasthaus at the age of four, and that he could de-bone a leg of veal by the time he was 12. No wonder he was accepted into an apprenticeship program at the renowned Hotel Post in Nagold. He clearly knew an onion from a shallot.

If the cuisine of the Black Forest is infused with flavors from France, Alsace-Lorraine, Hungary, Switzerland and even parts of Italy, it's because the region was at one time "one, big happy family," says Staib. Browse recipes like pork roast a la dijonaise or steak tartar and you'll feel like you're in a Parisian brasserie. The traditions and hospitality of the Black Forest, which evolved after Protestant Huguenots fled France in the 1600s, know no boundaries.

Staib's passion for food, and for telling the stories that go with it, make his Black Forest cookbook all the more delicious. Readers will travel with the author from his mother's green garden and orchards to fabulous hotels around the world. They will learn about Spargelzeit, the annual spring asparagus festival, and how to make chicken-wrapped shrimp with creamy saffron-herb sauce.

Ironically, it took a Nicaraguan to bring the worldly Walter Staib to the United States. That's where he met his wife, Gloria, who insisted on making Philadelphia their home. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, the former mayor of Philadelphia, is so glad they did, he named chef Walter Staib culinary ambassador for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, home of the German Society of Pennsylvania, the oldest German social organization in the nation.

In April 2007, German President Horst Köhler came to Philadelphia to present chef Staib with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the highest tribute the Federal Republic can pay to individuals for service to the nation. "When I received the letter from the President announcing the award, I almost fell out of my tree," said Staib of the honor normally reserved for statesmen, scientists and Nobel Prize winners. "We had a big party to celebrate."

The effervescent Walter Staib cooks up a storm wherever he goes. His hospitality consulting firm, Concepts by Staib, is responsible for developing 450 restaurants worldwide. When I interviewed him by phone, he had just returned to the City Tavern from the three-day grand opening of the Mediterranean Village At Sandals Grande Antigua Resort & Spa in St. John's, Antigua.

A few days later, he left for the International Food and Wine Festival in Epcot, preparing his favorite recipes and signing cookbooks at a luncheon reception for 10,000 people in Orlando, Fla.

And where does the Governor's globe-trotting ambassador indulge his own culinary cravings when he returns to his adopted city of Philadelphia? "We have a dynamite Chinatown here," says Staib, "I love Asian food of all kinds. My idea of a relaxing meal is to get Chinese food and take it home."

Love this book
It is an interesting read,most of the recipes are'nt too complex but to be honest,I take a recipe I read and kinda play with it so it's not an exact replica of what is written.The recipes do show influences from other countries,and I really like the way the little stories are written.This book is definately a favorite.