Oktoberfest: German Potato Salad

Even though the temperatures are still fairly warm here in Richmond, the autumn equinox is officially behind us. While we've begrudgingly moved on from tanlines and sandals, the world has already started celebrating its favorite fall festival: Oktoberfest. Even if you aren't one of the millions celebrating in Munich, you can still join in the fun with people all over the world who partake in this annual sausage fest.

Brian and I went to the recently-opened Metzger Bar and Butchery and picked up sausages for the occasion. Here's what we chose for our wurst platter:

• Traditional Bratwurst (Metzger) - sausage made from pork in a natural casing
• Nuremberg Sausage (Metzger) - smaller and thinner bratwurst, traditionally from the city of Nuremberg, with ground lamb added to increase fat content
• Saturday Night (SausageCraft)- fine-ground pork flavored with garlic, local Hardywood Park beer, and lots of Siracha sauce
• Kasekrainer (SausageCraft) - Austrian style sausage with pork, beef, Gruyere cheese and bacon

While I would have loved to have found authentic knockwurst or frankfurters, each sausage we had was different and equally delicious. Topped with Metzger's housemade red cabbage sauerkraut, the meat was perfection!

Meats aside, a good wurst platter wouldn't be complete without authentic German Potato Salad. This recipe comes from my Oma, the most German person I know. Potatoes are boiled, sliced thin, and mixed with mayonnaise, sour cream, and warm water - allowing it to maintain both the cider vinegar and sugar taste - ultimately making it an absolutely delicious pairing to the wurst.

Stay tuned for another Oktoberfest post this week!

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German Potato Salad

• 3 pounds small new potatoes
• ½ cup onion, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
• 2-3 tablespoons Heinz cider vinegar
• ½ cup water, warmed
• 2 tablespoons Duke’s Mayonnaise
• ¼ cup parsley, chopped
• ½ cup sour cream (optional)

1. Place potatoes in a large pot of water. Bring potatoes to a boil for about 25 minutes or until fork can easily pierce the center.

2. Allow potatoes to cool, then cut into thin slices while still warm. Place slices in in a large bowl. Add onion, salt, pepper, sugar, oil, cider vinegar, and warm water. Toss gently.

3. Taste and add more cider vinegar if necessary. Add mayonnaise and sour cream, mix, and refrigerate.

4. Sprinkle with parsley, mix, and serve.

Tomato & Goat Cheese Tart

Is baking "bready" sweets at home intimidating to you? I'll bake a few things here and there, but I'm certainly a novice when it comes to making things like muffins, scones, tarts, and pastries from scratch. I usually like to leave those up to the professionals.

However, I recently look a cooking class at Sur La Table on the basics of French cooking. One of the things we made was a Tomato & Goat Cheese Tart - a savory treat made of layered onions, tomatoes, an egg mixture, topped with goat cheese and baked in the oven.

So why am I not calling this Tomato & Goat Cheese Quiche, you ask? Quiches are actually in the "savory tart" food family (and what a lucky family to be in, might I add). But since this is made in a tart pan, and no one really cares about the overlap between "quiche" and "tart," let's just keep calling it tart.

The only slightly difficult part about the tart was the dough - either you have make your own (see above: not for me!) or use frozen pie dough. I used some from Trader Joe's that started to crack as it thawed. We had to roll with it - literally - and balled up the dough (which was supposed to thaw perfect and uncracked) and re-rolled it out on our own.

The onions, chopped and sauteed with lemon zest and fresh thyme, make the bottom layer. Then, thinly sliced Roma tomatoes are next. An egg/milk/sour cream mixture is poured over top and seeps into the nooks and crannies of the tart.

Then, the crumbled goat cheese brings it all together. I've made this with regular goat cheese and herbed goat cheese; both are delicious, but I recommend hand-crumbling the cheese (breaking if off a log) over buying packaged crumbled cheese.

This unassuming dish seems ordinary yet event worthy and is wonderful for any meal of the day. Serve with breakfast potatoes and a simple green salad for brunch or lunch. Serve alongside grilled chicken and asparagus for a simple dinner.

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Tomato & Goat Cheese Tart

Special equipment: a 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom

• 1 frozen pastry/pie crust, or homemade 
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 small yellow onion, peeled and finely chopped
• 1 medium garlic clove, peeled and minced
• 2 teaspoon fresh thyme, minced
• 2 teaspoons lemon zest
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 4 large eggs
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup whole milk
• 3 tablespoons minced basil, divided
• 4 firm-ripe plum tomatoes (Roma tomatoes)
• 3 ounces soft goat cheese

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees and position an oven rack in the bottom third of the oven. Lightly butter a 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom and set aside.

2. Place a large skillet on the stove over medium heat and add the oil. When the oil is shimmering, add the onions and cook until tender and almost caramelized, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in the thyme and lemon zest, taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Set aside to cool.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk to combine the eggs, sour cream, milk, 2 tablespoons basil, salt and pepper.

4. Spread the onion mixture over the bottom of the tart. Arrange the tomatoes in a single layer on the top of the onion mixture. Pour the filling over the top, sprinkle with goat cheese and transfer to the oven to bake until the edges are golden brown and the filling is set, 30-40 minutes. If the filling might appear watery around the tomatoes, check for doneness in another area.

5. Transfer the tart from the oven to a wire rack and allow to cool slightly. Remove the side of the tart pan by placing the pan on a can or a bowl and allowing the side to drop. Move the tart to a flat surface and slice into wedges. Garnish with remaining basil.

Chicken Scarpariello

If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you may have seen a photo I posted last week looking similar to this:

If you don't follow me, 1) you should, but 2) no big deal - I'm getting ready to tell you about it.

I know I sound like a broken record when I say that I love eating and making Italian food. But sometimes the same old meatballs, meat sauce, or - dare I say it? - alfredo sauce can become somewhat insipid. I find myself watching episodes of The Soprano's (final season heyyy) and rewinding scenes to hear what exactly Carmella plans to make Sunday dinner. That New Jersey accent is just so thick...

So I went hunting through old magazines and websites trying to find easy, delicious Italian/Italian-American cooking trying to think outside the pasta box. This scrumptious chicken with sweet peppers in a buttery wine sauce, also known as Chicken Scarpariello, drew me in.

"Scarpariello" means "shoemaker style" which can mean two things: that the dish is so meager it could be made by poor shoemaker families, or that the dish contains a handful ordinary ingredients which it can easily be thrown together. In this case, the name is fitting: the ingredients are foods easily found or already in the kitchen (rosemary/garlic/wine/etc.)

Speaking of ingredients, there are many variations of this recipe, but most, including this one, call for the chicken to be topped with jarred sweet cherry peppers. I can find these in Kroger but would also suggest Peppadew peppers, found online or at Whole Foods. Both Peppadew and sweet cherry give a nice "sweet and sour" flavor.

I used boneless skinless chicken thighs for this recipe just because dark meat, in my opinion, is more flavorful and juicy than white meat. I also included about a half a pound of sweet Italian sausage - totally optional, but it pairs wonderfully with those sweet peppers.

Serve with warm, crusty bread to lop up the sauce.

So, shoemaker style or gourmet cooking? You tell me!

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Chicken Scarpariello
4 servings

• 8 small boneless, skinless chicken thighs (2 pounds)
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• All-purpose flour, for dusting
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 8 garlic cloves, halved lengthwise and lightly smashed
• 4 large rosemary sprigs, broken into 2-inch pieces
• 1 3/4 cup chicken stock or low-sodium broth
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 cup sweet cherry peppers, sliced
• optional: 1/2 pound cooked and sliced sweet Italian sausage, (2 large links)

1. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and dust with flour. In a large skillet, heat the oil until shimmering. The pan should be hot enough so that the chicken sizzles immediately when it is added. Add the chicken and cook over high heat, turning once, until browned and crusty on both sides. This should take about 10 minutes, depending on how crowded the pan is.

2. Add the garlic and rosemary and cook for 3 minutes until the garlic is lightly browned. Transfer the chicken to a platter or cutting board, leaving the garlic and rosemary in the skillet.

3. Add the stock and wine to the skillet and cook over high heat, until reduced by half, about 5 minutes. Add the lemon juice and butter and swirl until combined.

4. Return the chicken (and add sliced sausage if using) back to the skillet. Add the peppers and cook, turning the chicken so it's fully coated in the sauce, about 3 minutes. Plate the chicken, spooning sauce on top, and serve with crusty bread.

Tailgate Dip

With Labor Day behind us, days filled with sunscreen and tanlines are out; tailgating (also known to me as football season) is officially in. Back in college, decent food (as in, better than Tostitos or Cheez-Its) rarely made an appearance at the tailgates I attended - beer and liquor were always the guests of honor. I always ended up overpaying for bleh stadium food or leaving the football game early because I was famished. But when the parents (my own or my friends') arrived for a game, you knew there was gonna be good eats.

Between dips and wings and cheese plates and veggie trays, tailgates are definitely foodie heaven. I love to enjoy hot dips and appetizers as much as the next person, but sometimes they aren't the most practical tailgating food, unless portable ovens are now a thing.

I suppose people in the South figured out a solution to this problem a long time ago when they created a simple type of "caviar" comprised of beans, corn, tomatoes, and other things. My sister-in-law Allison who lives in Georgia has been creating her own version of this "Cowboy Caviar" dip for several years and is letting me share it with you!

This Tailgate Dip requires minimal preparation - canned black beans, corn, veggies, and feta cheese. It gets better the longer it's refrigerated, so make it the night before the tailgate for a real crowd-pleasing dip. 

Allison's Tailgate Dip

• 2 (15 ounce) cans black beans, drained
• 2 (15 ounce) cans corn, partially drained
• 1 (10 ounce) can Hot Rotel Tomatoes, partially drained
• 1 (4 ounce) container crumbled Feta
• 1 small sweet onion, diced
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• ¼ cup distilled white vinegar
• ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 large or 2 small avocados, diced

1. Mix all ingredients together and serve with tortilla chips or other chips.