OKTOBERFEST
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Nicholas Day
yesterday at 4:55pm |
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Entertaining
Moktoberfest!
CHOW loves holiday parties. But sometimes we feel “tradition” could use some help. Take Oktoberfest. We love drinking good beer and eating hearty grub with our friends when the weather turns cool. But we wanted to do something lighter and more complex than bratwursts and salty sides. So we created Moktoberfest: a feast with traditional ingredients, like pork and spätzle, but put together in more interesting ways.
To create the menu, we tweaked classic dishes and cooked up new ones inspired by cuisines of German-speaking Europe. Our onion tart with leeks and crème fraîche, for example, is a riff on flammenküche, a tart with cream, onions, and bacon, found in the area around Alsace. The butter lettuce and pumpkin-seed salad is a nod to the fact that the German-Austrian border produces the most pumpkin seeds of any European country. For dessert, we deconstructed traditional Black Forest cake into a creamy layered parfait with chocolate cookies. But rest assured: The spätzle, the side dish of comforting dumplings, is traditional. You don’t mess with spätzle.
We asked a beer sommelier for some interesting pairings: Phil Baxter of Four Points Sheraton Hotel LAX in Los Angeles, which boasts more than 75 bottled beers from all over the world. For each course, there are two suggested brews: One is a complement, containing flavors that marry with the dish; the other is a contrast, to offset and show off flavors. With the Black Forest “Strata,” for example, we pair the complementary Lindenmans Kriek Lambic, which we use to soak the dessert’s cherries. For the salad, we recommend Samuel Smith’s Imperial Stout, dark and malty, but more mellow than a traditional stout. The barley in the nose and good malt flavor offset the tartness of the salad dressing. You don’t have to choose one or the other: We got both for our photo shoot at Suppenküche, San Francisco’s modern yet homey German restaurant. Our friends-cum-models had fun sampling them all.
You’ll also find help on tools and decorations, including links to necessary objects like a spätzle maker (yes, it’s really worth it, and you will use it again) and fun stuff like jaunty German hats.
Party photographs by Joe Budd and Tom Sicurella. Product photographs by Kevin Twomey. Glassware provided by Toronado.
Complementary Beer:
Czechvar
Contrasting Beer:
Samuel Smith’s Imperial Stout
Complementary Beer:
Duvel
Contrasting Beer:
Stone Smoked Porter
Complementary Beer:
Lindemans Kriek Lambic
Contrasting Beer:
Old Rasputin Imperial Russian Stout
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I did something similar a few years ago:
- Smoked salmon with a squeeze of lemon and Paulaner Hefeweizen
- Tempura veggies with soy sauce and Anderson Valley IPA (note: used iced cold Anderson Valley to make tempura)
- Chicken with blue cheese mash and caramelized carrots with a Chimay gravy and Chimay Grande Reserve
- Chocolate biscuits with Framboise lambic.
My only problem was that I served an entire 12oz bottle with each course and my guests were well filled up by the time that the last course came out.
6oz per course max.
This looks like a lot of fun. I'll give it a try.
One point I need to vent though...How can you have a party that is based on Oktoberfest, but not list a single German beer to go with your pairings? I understand that a beer sommelier made the picks, but c'mon, they could have had a little nod to the original theme...
A nice marzen would have meant that they could only serve one beer, as it would work with every course...
I try not to nitpick here, but I hope you meant "Flammküchle" (pie out of the flames) , since "flammküche" translates to "kitchen in flames". Plus: spätzle may be traditional, but it is certainly not a bavarian tradition. In Munich they serve dumplings.
This is absolute blasphemy! Yes, I like the idea of making a gourmet version of Oktoberfest, but it missed the whole point of Oktoberfest. There are many celebrations around Europe, and each has its own purpose and charm. Oktoberfest is first and foremost about beer, which apparently the writer knew, but more importantly, it's about Münchener beer!
The real Oktoberfest includes only six brands of beer: Augustiner, Paulaner, Hacker-Pschorr, Spaten, Hofbräuhaus, and Löwenbräu. Among those, you have at least 3 beers that could easily rank in the top tier of world beers. They aren't that hard to come by in the U.S., either. That said, a few other delicious Bavarian beers wouldn't have been entirely inappropriate (Erdinger, Andechser, Weihenstephan). Beck's or Radeberger would. So this goes even beyond that to suggest that we forgo German beer altogether.
I realize that this was about mixing it up a bit with the food, but if this is going to be about Oktoberfest, you should start with the beer and find food to compliment that. As for the food choices, I'm not entirely opposed, but you should be aware that most of the food here is actually from the southwestern part of Germany (and the northeastern part of France). The reason I say that we could probably be forgiving there is mainly that Bavarian food isn't particularly flavorful. That said, I'd love to see someone do something clever to make the Bayerische Küche a little more exciting.
If you feel that I'm overreacting here, you may be right. Imagine yourself in Germany reading an article about improving Mardi Gras. Then they decide to serve New England clam chowder and fajitas and pair it with various types of Scotch. Does that, in any way, remind you of Mardi Gras?
Silly question....but anyone know where to get a print of that great Moktoberfest bird with the crown on his head?
If you would like the best version of Okoberfest I`ve found in the US, then check out the Hoff Brau Haus im Las Vegas NV !