Cooking in Germany

I’ve had some interesting trials in adapting my cooking to the German lifestyle and grocery stores. The biggest change, of course, is the conversion to metric measurements and temperatures. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind when packing in Athens to include my US measuring cups and spoons: dry, liquid, and tea/tablespoons. I also brought several of my favorite US cookbooks.

atk_family_cookbookii_250By far the best all-around general purpose cookbook I’ve found is the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook from Cook’s Illustrated. This cookbook contains over 1,200 recipes, as well as substitution and conversion charts, equipment recommendations, short articles recommending the best ingredients (such as best olive oil brands, or canned tomatoes) and “how to”s (such as preparing meats for freezing, or storing fresh vegetables).

I was a long-time subscriber to Cook’s Illustrated monthly journal while in the US, and I always read it cover to cover! Each month contains lots of tips and recipe comparisons. You see, America’s Test Kitchen is just that—a huge commercial kitchen where they try out different recipes, tweaking them until a panel of expert chefs agree on the best version. In the journal articles they discuss how they worked on the recipe until they found the version that works best, and they make sure to keep the recipes accessible to the home cook.

Besides this cookbook, I rely on the internet to find great recipes as well. I usually look at two or three recipes for a particular dish and then go from there. I subscribe to the RSS feeds of several great cooking blogs (such as Pinch My Salt and Appetite for China) and frequent other recipe sites.

In the future I’ll be posting old and new recipes that have become household favorites, as well as Euro-versions of American standards. I’ve added the “Recipe” category to collect all these in one place.

Bon Appetit!

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