Smoke Pork Chops with Spiced Red Cabbage, Spatzle, and Black Forest Cherry Cake

So based on the title of this post, you can tell I was a little ambitious with this meal. This was our second German meal for the week but it should have been our third. My husband, James, prepared the first meal and will be posting about it someday and I was too tired the second day to cook. Our oldest came home early from school with a fever, which required a doctor's appointment, and after doing all that I was beat. I can't even remember what we ate that night.. For this meal, we had dinner guests so I kinda went a little crazy with the cooking.

What I learned from this meal and throughout the rest of the week is that German food isn't as labor intensive as the others. The food looks a lot more complicated than it actually is. That's not to say I still didn't mess up, I totally did, but it still worked out well.

I also didn't take many pics. The oldest kiddo was home because she still had a slight fever from the day before and like a good mother, I put her to work in the kitchen. What's that saying? Feed a cold, make your slightly feverish three year old work in the kitchen since it's better than allowing her brain to turn to mush by watching cartoons all day? I think I saw that on a t-shirt once.

Ingredients for Smoked Pork Chops. For this recipe I used All Along the Danube: Recipes from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. I've had this book for years but the recipes I tried out last week were all new ventures.

6 thick smoked pork chops (1 1/2 - 2 inches thick)

1 large onion, sliced

1 chopped tomato

2 cups boiling water

1 tbsp butter

2 tbsps flour

1/2 cup sour cream

Salt and pepper to taste

There's also a stuffing

1 cup finely chopped apples

4 tbsps bread crumbs

1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts. I thought I had walnuts but when I got my ingredients together, I realized I didn't, so my stuffing didn't have walnuts.

2 tbsps melted butter

1/4 cup seedless raisins

1/4 tsp allspice

Mix all the ingredients together.

Preheat the oven to 375. Make a deep incision in each chop and fill with with the stuffing. Secure with a toothpick. In a baking pan, spread the onion and tomato and place the chops over them. Cover and bake for a half hour. Uncover, add 1 cup boiling water and bake an additional 40-50 minutes. Add more water as needed. Strain the liquid from the pan and puree it in a blender. In a pan, melt the butter, add flour, and cook for 1 minute. Add the puree, sour cream, and S&P to taste. Pour over the chops.

Oh hey, what do you know? My husband did take a pic of the chops before they went into the oven. Teamwork!

Spiced Red Cabbage. For the remaining recipes, I used Russian, Polish, and German Cooking

The recipe says to cook this a day in advance. I just saw that. I really should learn how to read things more thoroughly.

3 thick rindless bacon rashers, diced. What are rashers? Strips of bacon. Now you have a new word when you want to sound fancy and educated.

1 large onion, chopped

1 large red cabbage, shredded

3 garlic cloves, crushed

1 1/2 tbsp caraway seeds

1/2 cup water

2 firm, ripe pears, cored and chopped

juice of 1 lemon

2 cups red wine

3 tbsp red wine vinegar

3/4 cup honey

S & P

Fry the bacon until brown and stir in the onions. Cook for five minutes. Stir in the cabbage, garlic, caraway seed, and the water. Cover and cook for 8-10 minutes. Season with S&P then add the pears, lemon juice, red wine, and vinegar. Cover and cook for 10-15 minutes. Stir in honey.

The Spatzle

3 cups plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 eggs beaten

1 cup water and milk combined

1 tbsp sunflower oil. I used sesame because, as usual, I thought I had something but it turned out to be something else.

2 tbsp melted butter

Serve with bacon (I didn't)

Sift the flour and salt in a bowl and make a well in the center. Add the eggs and enough of the milk/water to make a very soft dough. Beat the dough until it develops bubbles (this was hard for me since I have zero upper body strength. I got tired) and then stir in oil and beat again. Bring a large pan of salted water to boil.

So, you can do the next part two ways: the book way or the easy way. The book way requires wetting a chopping board, placing the dough on it, and shaving strips of the dough into the water. The easy way requires using a spatzle maker. My husband's grandmother let me borrow hers when I mentioned I was making spatzle and it was awesome! You just pour the dough into the little box and slide it. Easy peasy! Either way, you boil the spatzle for three minutes and then remove to a warm plate. Drizzle melted butter on top.

The Black Forest Cherry Cake

7 oz plain chocolate, broken into squares

1/2 cup unsalted butter

3 eggs separated

1/2 cup soft dark brown sugar

3 tbsp Kirsch. Kirsch is a kind of brandy, which I did not want to buy or look for, so instead I found a substitute: apple juice. Yay!

2/3 self raising flour, sifted

1/2 cup ground almonds

For the filling and topping

2 1/2 oz plain chocolate

2 1/2 oz plain chocolate flavored cake covering. I think they mean frosting...

3 tbsp Kirsch

15 oz can stoned black cherries, drained and juice reserved

2 1/2 cups double cream, lightly whipped. To make whipped cream, just pour the cream in a bowl, add a few spoonfuls of sugar, and beat that thing with a mixer. Or buy it. Whatever, I don't know your life.

12 fresh cherries with stalks

Preheat the oven to 350 and grease a deep 8 inch round cake pan. Melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over simmering water. Funny story: as I put the batter into the oven, my daughter said "What this Momma?" and held up the stick of butter. I read over the recipe and realized I hadn't mixed the butter with the chocolate. I quickly grabbed the pan out of the oven, poured out the batter, melted the butter, mixed it with the batter, poured the batter back in, and put it in the oven. Don't do that...Remove the melted chocolate from the heat and leave until barely warm.

Whisk the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl until very thick and then fold in the chocolate and the Kirsch. Fold in the flour with the ground almonds. Whisk the eggs whites in a bowl until stiff and then fold into the mixture. Pour the mixture into the greased pan and bake for forty minutes.

Allow the cake to cool for 5 minutes and then turn out on a wire rack. Use a long serrated knife to cut the cake into 3 even layers.

Meanwhile, make the chocolate curls. Melt the chocolate and cake covering (frosting) in a heatproof bowl over simmering water. Cool for 5 minutes and then pour on a board to set. Using a potato peeler, shave off thin curls.

Mix the Kirsch with the reserved cherry juice. Place the bottom layer of the cake on a serving plate and sprinkle with 3 tablespoons of the Kirsch syrup. Spread one-third of the whipped cream over one layer and scatter half of the cherries. Place the second layer on top and repeat with another third of the Kirsch syrup, cream, and cherries. Place the final layer on top and sprinkle the remaining cream and syrup on top. Top with fresh cherries and chocolate curls.

So this is what my cake looked like in the oven

I was like "It'll be fine, it'll be fine!" It was not fine. You see that hump? Well, when I turned it out, it turned out it was concave. Yep, I had a chocolate cake bowl. So I did what any normal person would do: I filled it with cherries and whipped cream. Success! I am not good at baking, obviously.

Aside from that pretty big hiccup, the meal was fantastic! The spaztle had a nutty taste, due to the sesame oil, and I think I'll continue making it that way. The pork chops and sauce were super yummy! The sauce thickened a little too much but I still enjoyed it. The cabbage was also really good and I just remembered that I had some the next day and it was even better then. Maybe that's why you should let it sit a day...my cake turned into one big brownie and that's never a bad thing.