Every once in a while I have a nostalgic hankering for food from my past, usually childhood treats. Often I even have the recipe for those, but they include a difficult to impossible to get ingredient, so they remain cravings.
One of the recent cravings was Kirschenmichel, a sweet cherry-pudding type thing, baked in the oven, and consumed warm, topped with the all important, IMPORTED, cold vanilla sauce that is a thing of beauty all by itself. My Mom got me the vanilla sauce on her last trip to Germany, so I was a step closer to fulfilling my food fantasy.
Well, one good thing about having a cow is that I can make Quark, which is a German fresh cheese type thing, not yogurt, not sour cream, not mascarpone, not cream cheese, and so forth, but a little like all of those things. It is white, creamy, soft, mild, fluffy stuff, and can be made savory or sweet.
Of course Harold had to joke about quarks and ask about the neutrinos, but I told him not to worry, since they are faster than light (I TOLD YOU SO), they were gone before I even made the stuff, which takes about two days. One day you let the culture grow in the milk, another day you leave the curds to drain, and then, voila, it is Quark.
Now all I needed was Gries, which is farina (Cream of Wheat), and cherries, and I was good to go, since eggs, sugar, cream and butter are common enough. I even had my Mom’s handwritten recipe, which upon closer examination was rather suggestive. She doesn’t have to write down things like oven temperature and other details, since she KNOWS how to cook. But I guessed at the gaps, and the resulting dish was…
SUPERB!
Oh it was good. The dogs surrounded me and focused their mental beams on me so they got a taste, and then they were in the same happy sugar and cream induced vanilla flavored heaven that I occupied. Seriously, it was bliss.
