525: You Really Don’t Know German Food, One of the World’s Great Cuisines with Luisa Weiss

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. To the average American, Bavarian food is German food. When Americans think of German foods, they think of Biagarten and Oktoberfest or a pretzel. Berliners eat pretzels, but they're terrible. We don't even celebrate Oktoberfest. That's a purely Bavarian thing.

0:54This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard. To many, German food is humble comfort food, the kind of food that may not win a beauty award, but more than makes up for it with its power to soothe, nourish, and cheer. In her latest book, Classic German Cooking, author Luisa Weiss has collected and mastered the essential everyday recipes of Germany and Austria. In this terrific conversation, Luisa shares her personal connection to German cooking while shattering some myths about one of the world's great cuisines. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:40Louisa Weiss, welcome to This is Taste. How are you? Thank you. I'm well. Thanks. It's great to meet you. I've known your work for a long time and just really admired you. And I have to say, I just think this book is so terrific. It's one of my favorite of the season. And I'll say a few things. First, it's so well researched. You've clearly done the work. You've traveled throughout Germany. You've interviewed historians and chefs and you really have a grasp of how history and recipe come together. But also the deep bench of recipes in this book is tremendous. I want to make many of them. I am puzzled by some of them.

2:17We'll get to that. But thank you for doing it. Oh, thank you so much. It's really kind. And yeah, I'm happy that it's having such residence. Before we get into German cooking and your terrific book, Classic German Cooking, I want to ask you about your career before that, your life as a literary scout. We have a ton of bibliophiles listening to this show, and I love to get into what is a literary scout and who were you're discovering? So literary scouts are basically spies. That's how I call them. They're literary spies. They're little agencies that operate on behalf of foreign publishers looking for books to translate and publish abroad.

3:01So for example, the agency that I worked for, which was Bettina Schrieve Literary Scouting, we had a number of different clients all over the world, one of which was Bertelsmann, Germany. And it was our job to sort of network with our agents and editor acquaintances here in New York to find new manuscripts and as yet unknown books to sort of read overnight and then write reports on and urge our foreign clients to publish. Oh, my gosh. I think that you probably could write a book about a literary scout in a mystery setting, too. But you talk about reading books in a day and processing it. How did that work?

3:40And how were you like, what was your instinct to say this is the next big, you know, thriller or next big romance, et cetera, et cetera? I always say that that job was my ideal job. And even at the time that I that I was doing it, I knew that nothing would really ever be better than that because I was basically being paid to read books that I would have been reading anyway. and as for how did we know whether a project was particularly well suited to a market. I mean, a little bit is an experience. Of course, we knew our clients' lists and we understood what kinds of books they were looking for, but also just like instinct, just like an editor has an instinct for a project, scouts have that same instinct and there's just something, it's not really tangible always, but something about a particularly amazing book, even if it's unedited and even if it's partial that just like lights your hair on fire and that feeling is what we we we chased all the time oh my gosh and it's probably it was a rare feeling were there any authors that this is time to name drop we're gonna do that like are there any authors they discovered who we might know i mean the kite runner is the one that is the book that is the most sort of lodged in my memory because i got it like secretly from some contact i can't even remember who and i I actually was told I was I was sent home early and I sat on my sofa and I read the entire manuscript in four hours.

5:08And at the time it had a different ending. The ending was was changed for publication, which I have always thought was sad. But that book just like grabbed me by the scruff of my neck. And that that's kind of the one that's but there are so many. I did it for five years. Oh, my gosh. What a job. I think we're all kind of a little jealous. We get to read so many manuscripts before they're known. Speaking of editing and your instinct as an editor, you were a cookbook editor as well, which you worked at Stuart, Tabori, and Chang, which is a terrific or was a terrific publisher. Talk about some of the work that you did there and some of the authors you worked with.

5:50So Stuart, Tabori, and Chang was an illustrated book imprint of Abrams. And we – the cookbooks that I worked on really ran the gamut. There was Alton Brown and Jacques Torres who were sort of more food world people and then also people like Liana Krissoff and Kim Boyce who were sort of – I don't know. Those are the books that I have just never – I've always loved so much. And it was such an amazing experience to get to work with both types of books, ones that were really well publicized. High profile. High profile, exactly. And others that were a passion project, but that I really think have stood the test of time.

6:31That's great. So what did you take away from editing cookbooks and what did you enjoy about that process? I mean, editing cookbooks is great because you get to see the entire process, like how the sausage is made. And as a complete cookbook obsessive, I mean, really just obsessive, I read them in bed, I follow them like other people follow sports teams. I mean, I just think cookbooks can be such an incredible gateway into cultures and people's minds and moments in time and things like that. It was just really great to see how they get made and to be sort of the integral person pushing them along, making them the best possible product they could be.

7:13I love that sentiment. I think I share that love of just the process and pushing it along. So many elements. We'll have one of our editors on the show in the next couple months. I'm planning on having somebody on. So we'll get more into that. So stay tuned for that. On to classic German cooking. You're right in the intro. Germans can be much more carefree and twinkly eyed than they are often given credit for. Really stuck with me. And for a culture that is legend for efficiency and some may say general coldness. How is this true and how does this sentiment relate to the food? The stereotype, right, is that Germans are these highly efficient, cold-blooded creatures.

7:57And of course, their history plays an outsized role in this. But the truth is, is that nowadays, German efficiency is a thing of the past. Ask any German desperately waiting for their train from the Deutsche Bahn if they still believe in German efficiency, and the answer is a resounding no. So the efficiency is largely a myth at this point. And Germans are – somebody explained it to me once. They said Germans are like a coconut. They're super hard on the outside and liquid on the inside. And when I heard that, I was like, yes, that's it. Because Germans are quite, you know, formal and cold at the beginning.

8:40But when a German lets you into their life, they will die for you. I mean, the level of loyalty and deep friendship that Germans feel once they've let someone in is really like lifelong. And I feel like that doesn't get a lot of attention. I think. And when it comes to food, it's just it's a funny place. Like when you go to a butcher in Germany to buy, you know, salami or meat or whatever. The butchers always give a child that's with you a sausage, just like a cold sausage. And it's just part of the culture. You don't go into a butcher shop without the butcher giving your kid a free sausage. or like at the at the doctor's office often the doctors will give the kids lollipops like it's just I don't know it's just it's a very sort of sweet gentle way of dealing with food and children and yeah well we'll talk more about some of the additional stereotypes around it and how you you smash them in this book and you know my grandmother was born in Munich and my whole family going back is from there.

9:49And I think thinking about what you just said made me think about Grandma Gerd a little bit and how, yes, a rigid person to many, very, very German, but certainly very loving and sweet in the inside. So I love that. You've really shown me a little bit more about my grandma. So I appreciate that. This nugget really stuck out. And really, your Your book is full of history and drawing parallels between ancient history, more modern history with foodways. And in the 18th century, Friedrich II co-signed on the cooking of potatoes. Potatoes were considered ornamental decorative plants. And you write that the culture had been cooking them wrong until this moment.

10:35Friedrich said it's OK to eat them. A couple of questions. First, how are they cooking them wrong and how did this change? They actually weren't cooking them at all. They were ornamental. They were planting them. And one of the defining aspects of German food culture I learned while I was writing this book was that hunger really like dominated the landscape for hundreds of years, unless you were a part of the sort of higher upper class. And so potatoes, well, first of all, they weren't part of the European landscape at all until the discovery of the New World. And then they were, in Germany, used as ornamental plantings at the royal palace.

11:14And Friedrich II is largely given the credit for having sort of not only introduced potatoes into the German diet but really forced Germans to start eating them. And I think this is just such a funny little anecdote, something that people associate potatoes so deeply with Germany. But actually, in the grand scheme of German history, potatoes have only been part of the German diet for the past 300 years, which isn't that long when you consider that the Germans have been eating similar foods to today, 2 ,000 years ago. Wow, that's a remarkable parallel. And now today, potatoes play a massive role in the diet.

12:00and you have many recipes. Is it a matter of just the culture loves just doing amazing things with potatoes or is there a deeper meaning to that? Well, I think that potatoes were a cheap crop that quickly became a staple. As soon as people realized that they could nourish themselves, it was certainly a step up from the gruel that they were eating before, you know, the average German peasant, let's say. And potatoes are, you know, full of nutrition, full of vitamins, minerals, And so they, I think, took on a pretty important role in the German diet. And nowadays, it's interesting, the regions of Germany are quite different when it comes to like the things that they're really obsessed with.

12:43So, for example, potatoes are considered more of a staple of the German diet in the east and in the north, whereas in the south, bread reigns supreme. So there's bread dumplings and all the sort of side dishes that are based around stale bread and how to use up bread, whereas in the north and east, Prussian, König Friedrich II was king of Prussia, potatoes are much more important. Let's tap into that a little bit. I wanted to ask you about the regionality of Germany. And I think as a culture and many of our listeners, we know France. We really know Italy. We might even know Spain. We know the different regions.

13:25We know Tuscan cuisine versus Sicilian. We know how Provence has a certain culture with olive oil. And of course, Paris in the north is not. So I want to ask you and paint the picture briefly, how does geography play a role with the cuisine? What is northern food? Is there a west-east? I mean, I'm really, really ignorant about the geography of Germany. I haven't been there. I haven't visited. So maybe that's a reason. But for our listeners, give us a little overview of how regions play. So Germany, united Germany, let's say, the Germany of today, right, is a country that spans from Western Europe all the way well into Eastern Europe.

14:06I mean, Berlin is 80 kilometers from the Polish border, just to give you a sense of how wide it is. And the regions are quite different from one another. One of the things I really wanted to achieve in the book was to have a collection of recipes that Germans all over the country would recognize as being classics. And yet there are a lot of regional differences. So the potatoes play a role, the bread, the meats. And I would say that what ends up happening is that the influences from the north through the spice roots, and we're talking hundreds and hundreds of years ago, right? The spice roots brought cinnamon and saffron and all of these spices that end up becoming really important in the German diet.

14:51From the east come the pickles and cabbage and these kinds of sort of, yeah, the foods that a Jewish American would recognize as Jewish food, but it's actually Eastern European and German food. From the southeast comes the massive, massive influence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which really cannot be overstated because it has had, I think, the most influence on German cuisine. And then from Italy and France come the braises, the noodles, the long-cooked meats. So all of those influences sort of create the canon of German food today. But it is a pretty wide, you know, potatoes are just one small aspect, just like sausages also are just a small aspect of this larger cuisine.

15:41But of course, in America, we think of German food in a very narrow lens. I feel Bavarian cuisine is probably how most Americans recognize. How do you address these misperceptions? That is a very good point. So I would say that to the average American, Bavarian food is German food. When Americans think of German foods, they think of Biagarten and Oktoberfest and a big pork knuckle or a pretzel. And it's really important to point out that, for example, Berliners eat pretzels, but they're terrible. They're nothing like the pretzels in Bavaria or in Swabia. We don't even celebrate Oktoberfest. That's a purely Bavarian thing.

16:23What are the cities of Bavaria so we know? Because we know these names and maybe we don't know the geography. Munich is the most famous. And that's where I think I think I've read somewhere recently that Oktoberfest in Munich is the most traveled to European event. I mean, have you checked out Munich TikTok right now? My algorithm has been hitting the Munich TikTok hard where there's this like mad dash to get a table. Oh, yeah. It's crazy. No, no. Oktoberfest is next level. Is it worth going to? I confess I have never been. OK, enough said. I'm a Berliner. And so Berliners tend to look at all of this stuff with a bit of a gimlet eye.

17:05You know, we should get into your own personal history because you're obviously living in Berlin. You spent time in the States. What is your own personal background? So I was born in Berlin. My mother's Italian from Rome and my father's American from Philadelphia. And they moved to Berlin kind of on a lark for a year. And that year turned into two, three. And eventually I was born. And when my parents split up, they made the unorthodox decision. My mother stayed in Berlin and my father and I moved to Boston. And so I grew up in Boston, but I would travel back and forth to see my mother all the time.

17:41So I was a frequent flyer at the age of three. And Berlin always remained home. And when I was in sixth grade, then I moved back to live with my mother full time. So I've spent elementary school in Brookline, Massachusetts, and middle school and high school in Berlin. Wow. And your language skills really must be an added just like it's almost like a superpower because you can probably float between between these these cultures. What's that like for you mentally? I use the word code switch, which has a negative connotation, but I think it's accurate. Like, what's that like to like be I mean, you present as an American.

18:20I mean, you really do. And your accent is obviously very much American. But clearly, when you're in Germany, you're very you present German. What's that like mentally for you? you? That's such a good and emotional question for me. I think that it's complicated. I mean, I've read somewhere recently that people who are multilingual have a slightly different personality in every single language. And I think that there's something true to that. I mean, I can't imagine my life without these languages. I also speak French. I studied French and I lived in Paris. And my family, half of my maternal family lives in Belgium.

18:55When I read the book third culture kids, that was the first time that anybody put in words what it felt like to be me. And I think it's, I mean, obviously a very privileged thing, but it's a kind of lonely thing to be so fluent in different languages and have the people sitting across from you who aren't like you not really understand that there are all these other aspects of you or other sides to you that they will never be able to access, which is why I think I love living in Berlin so much, because Berlin is full of people like me and always has been. It's sort of a strange place. It's really unique.

19:35It's kind of like a lot of people say New York isn't like the rest of the United States. Berlin isn't like the rest of Germany. It's its own special place, certainly because of its history and the division and the occupation by the Allied soldiers and the wall. But yeah. Wow. Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that. I think that's really powerful. And that book is meaningful. It's a really terrific book. I'm glad you referenced that. How does this kind of multicultural, multilingual worldview for you, how does it help your journalism and the writing that you do? Well, I think that one, especially in the food world, you know, Italians, for example, are such chauvinists about their food, right?

20:22Nothing is as good as an Italian meal. And I mean, that's what Italians think. And I think that because of my background, I'm able to look at different foods and their cultures with a much more discerning eye because, I mean, yes, Italian food's amazing. But even after all of those delicious meals, eventually you're going to be hungry for some fish sauce or for some, you know, Thai curry or something a little bit different than all that basil and olive oil. And my hope with this book, and I think with all of my books, but particularly these two German ones, is to give some attention and some respect back to a cuisine that I think is hugely influential.

21:09I think that German cooking and baking actually is the backbone for a lot more of American food and a lot more European foods than previously understood. I mean, think of the immigration between 1900 and 1945. I mean, from Germany to America and many different Germans moved to the United States for different reasons. And it clearly informs American cuisine in a deep way. And I'd love to read a longer work about German food in America. I'm just leading the witness a little bit there. But I want to zoom out a little bit and tap into that Bavaria topic because I think let's go over some just general misperceptions about German food that we will follow through in this book.

21:52Okay. The number one biggest misperception, I would say, or maybe it's a misunderstanding even more, is that German food is all about meat. Certainly meat plays a large role. But actually, Germans traditionally ate largely meatless because of the massive influence of the church and because of poverty and hunger. And so there are a lot of vegetarian meals, not only in the book, but widely eaten throughout Germany.

22:27Another related misperception is because of people think that Germans eat these heavy, big, heavy hot meals all the time. But the Germans are actually quite strict about eating only a hot meal at lunch, which is when you would eat at a canteen, whether it's in your school or your place of work. And at night, you eat Abendbrot, which is a concept that outside of Germany, nobody really knows. And within Germany, Germans can't comprehend that people outside don't know about it. So Ambrot just means dinner bread. And it's when you eat bread for dinner, open-faced sandwiches spread with butter, with some usually local salami or meat, whether it's liverwurst or ham or whatever, or cheese or fish if it's in the north.

23:13And then a light salad, cut up cucumbers, really light sort of. And this is how you dine. Yes, everybody eats like this. I mean, I think that the percentage, there's some statistic, like 60 % of Germans still eat Abendbrot at night. Abendbrot? Abendbrot. Abendbrot. Now, I guess in modern Berlin, is there like a restaurant at night culture there, given that there's this deeply rooted tradition of eating lighter at dinnertime? How does that play? Yeah. No, I mean, there's amazing restaurants, incredible cooks and restauranteurs. Berlin's become such an exciting place for dining. No, I would say that the average person at home is eating food, but if you go out, then you eat a proper meal.

23:57Good to draw that line there. Speaking of salad, I mean, a German chef once told me when I was reporting a story about how salad plays such a big role and you have a great salad section. How does that work? Is it more of like a farmer's market, leafy green salads? You think about Italy and the way salads play out, and I think that's quite regional. But how does the German salad play out on the plate? Germans are obsessed with the concept of Rohkost, which means raw food, really. And it's considered to be a really important element of your digestive life to have Rohkost every day. And Rohkost can be anything, fruit or vegetable, eaten raw, but it largely means vegetables.

24:47And so salads, you know, are really integral. People are eating them at lunch. There's always like my husband, he works at a German company where there's a canteen and they'll all sit down together and eat there. Oh, what a beautiful thing. Like literally we'll have a lunch break. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And that's the culture. Absolutely. And you go to the canteen and there's hot meals there. And then everybody will get like a little dish of either shredded cabbage salad that's quite pungent or a beet salad or green bean salad. And that's like, you know, it's absolutely important to have that alongside whatever hot meal you're having.

25:27Is this canteen good? Yes. Yes. Canteen food is wonderful. I grew up with the school that I went to, the public school I went to, had a canteen like many other schools. And the food was absolutely delicious. It was really traditional German food and it was amazing. It's, you know, Bertelsmann is our parent company here at Penguin Random House. So I've met Germans here working at the company, lovely people. And, you know, it seems like the culture of work is very different in Germany. And we feel a little bit of that. One example is we get our holidays off and we shut down. And talk a little bit about how the holiday time plays out in Germany.

26:06Maybe how work and life kind of work comes to a halt and life kind of takes over a little bit. Yeah, I would say that there still really is a very sharp demarcation between when you're at work and when you're not at work. It's very untypical. In fact, I don't know anyone who is checking their emails after hours or working on weekends. It's just not done. Also, because unions are quite powerful and it's just literally not allowed. It's illegal. And with regards to vacation, I mean, yeah, the Germans really insist and demand and I think are entitled to their however many weeks a year it is. It kind of depends.

26:49But somewhere between five and six weeks a year. And Germans spend the most money on travel than any other European nation. They travel. They love to get on planes and go somewhere. And they love to come to New York. Yep. You hear German spoken in any corridor, any tourist destination. And wow, it's really pronounced. And, you know, what a culture. What a great facet baked into culture with travel being at the center of it. Yeah. Well, it's funny because I used to scout for Random House Germany. And I visited them at their offices in Munich a couple of times. And I've eaten in their canteen. Why don't you guys have one?

27:28We actually did have one. We had a cafeteria here for years and it was not what you described. We didn't have hot lunches like that. But I think there is something to be said about Bertelsmann kind of having German elements baked into our culture. And I can't say it's a bad thing. It's pretty great actually. A couple recipes I want to cover. The chicken fricassee, I'm saying it in the 100 % American way and you can say the German word too. What are the German roots? You really say this is one of your favorite recipes in the book, and I love it. It's a great technique. You've got really solid recipe development skills in this book.

28:06These recipes are extremely cookable and approachable. I love that about them. But tell us a little bit more about this recipe. So chicken fricassee, which in German is called Hühnerfricassee, is basically a way of using up cooked chicken. Or, of course, you can start it from scratch. But you basically extend the quantity of a chicken by bulking it out with a creamy white sauce and peas and carrots. And you can also add in seasonal vegetables, asparagus in spring or mushrooms, morsels in the fall. And it's just one of these crowd-pleasing recipes that everybody loves. Children love it. Grownups love it.

28:49Old people, young people. And, yeah, I don't know. It's one of the meals that I ate frequently at school. And the canteen at my school did a particularly good one. And I have a real soft spot for it. I really like it. And I was at a dinner a couple years ago when I was working on this book already. And I was talking to a woman across the table from me. And at that point, I was really talking to everyone. Like, tell me about your favorite food. I want to know what your favorite German recipe was. And I had just finished testing chicken fricassee. And I told her about it. And she said, oh, we always ate in my family.