I’ve begun to come home early from school to cook with Regina and Udo. They are very good chefs in the same way my mother is a good chef. Recipes are merely a guideline. All three halve sugar, double garlic, and seemingly haphazardly manipulate the recipe, yet the final product is near perfection. I hope to gain that skill someday. When I told Udo that, he told me that it wasn’t a skill—just overconfidence.
Here’s a list of some of the various things I’ve baked and cooked with Regina and Udo:
Apfulkuchen mit Marzipan. This was in the earlier days of me arriving in Germany. The recipe was pure gibberish. I had no clue what was happening until Regina laid everything on the counter. I would tell her, “we need something called a Springform?” and she would disappear into the cellar and bring back a circular baking tin. “Backpulver.” She’d reach around me and pull baking powder from the cabinet. We need to “verteil” the almonds? She’d distribute them evenly over the top of the cake. It was much easier than our normal Dinglish conversation because instead of having to look up every word, she could just point to what we needed. She halved the sugar and doubled the almonds. Udo joked that for Regina, the recipe is just a suggestion. In the end, the pie was delicious. Regina put two hefty slices on my plate and I gladly devoured them.
Apfelkuchen mit Vanila pudding. The morning we baked this, Regina asked me what I wanted to eat for lunch. It was a Saturday, just after we had cleared the table for breakfast. I responded, “I don’t mind what we eat, but can we bake something?” Her response was an immediate “Natürlich!” Regina is a very very fast baker, and this isn’t just because she’s a native German speaker and can read the recipes much faster than me. I’m not this fast in English when I"m trying to bake! She also knows all the shortcuts to doing small cooking tasks. We need Mandel-Blättchen (almond shavings)? Just blend them instead, no one will know the difference. She can peel five apples flawlessly and rapidly with a knife. She cleans up along the way so that by the end, the kitchen is spotless–much like how my mother does it.
Lasagna (but Vegetarian!). I asked Udo if I could cook with him, so he told me when I should be ready. I came to the kitchen long before to study, so when he said Guten Morgen to me, I was ready right away. First, I peeled carrots. I learned the verb “to peel” not because Udo defined it for me, but because he held the peeler out to me while saying. Cooking in German is like solving a four-dimensional puzzle. I have to be very aware of everything around me. Sometimes Udo will say something while I’m concentrating on a task and I have to ask him to repeat it. German isn’t a language that I can passively understand just yet. However, the recipes are getting so much easier to read! I was able to follow along so much more closely than I could the first week, when we made the Apfel Kuchen.
Kohlrabi Schnitzel. The fun part was dipping the kohlrabi in the flour first, then the egg, then the Mandel-mischung (almond mixture). It felt so much like cooking at home because even though the language was different, we ran into such similar problems. The Mandel-mischung wouldn’t stick to the Kohlrabi properly, so we added another egg. The Kohlrabi was too hard, so we fried it for longer. Cooking is universal! Then, we put it in the pan. Eventually, Udo took a phone call, so he let me do everything myself. It felt a lot like home. We served dinner and it was satisfying to be a part of it. The recipes aren’t that hard either! I hope to recreate them in Maryland for my family.
Last modified on 2024-08-24