Ode to Humble Handkäse

Can you hear the music? Forget onions and vinegar: this Franken co-ferment hits harmonies as only Handkäse can do.
Can you hear the music? Forget onions and vinegar: this Franken co-ferment hits harmonies as only Handkäse can do.
Ursula Heinzelmann is an independent scholar and food historian born, bred and based in Berlin, Germany. A trained chef, sommelier and ex-restaurateur, she works as a freelance wine and food writer, specializing in cheese. She has published a number of cookbooks, a food history of Germany, Beyond Bratwurst, as well as several books on cheese, and acted as area editor for the Oxford Companion to Cheese. She is the trustee director of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery as well as curator of the Cheese Berlin festival.
Riesling is admired for its complexity, longevity, and ability to reflect its terroir. The same is slowly becoming true in the sparkling wine sector, where bubble enthusiasts are discovering what aged Rieslingsekt can offer. In the world of German wines, Riesling is the undisputed star. Still wines gained their historical reputation as early as the 15th century, while the 18th and 19th centuries witnessed the rise of traditional method sekt. Over time, large companies monopolized the production of cheap, tank-fermented sparkling wine, until smaller, individual wineries were finally allowed to produce and sell their sparkling wines in the early 1980s. This…...
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“Germans are particularly nostalgic about the food of their grandmothers,” writes Luisa Weiss, furnishing a sturdy thesis for her handsome, welcoming new cookbook. Weiss, whom you may — should — know, is a food writer. She was born, partly raised, and now lives full-time in Berlin. She blogged about food for more than a decade from New York as The Wednesday Chef, then moved to Germany. There she wrote her way deeper into the German culinary world: the food-driven memoir My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story with Recipes (2012) and Classic German Baking (2016). She now writes a Substack organized…...
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