It's All About the Food

German tomato salad (that's not a typo)

German cooking is amazingly well-suited to picnics and barbeques.

Don't believe me? Let's start with the main course. What's the usual barbeque entree — hamburgers and hot dogs, aka, wieners or frankfurters. When grilling with Germans, you aren't limited to just wieners. In the red sausage category there is Bierwurst and Knackwurst (pronounce all the k's). For white sausage there's the familiar "brats," Bratwurst (those things you buy in the grocery store? I have no idea what they are, but they aren't true Bratwurst), along with Bockwurst and Müaut;nchener Weisswurst. Best of all, there's Leberkäse, a loaf sausage that can be sliced thickly and grilled, then served on a kaiser roll with German mustard. My mother is still astounded that I like the stuff, as she's hated it most of her life. Those are just a handful of wurst available at any good German butcher.

Everyone's familiar with potato salad and cole slaw. Most people think of German potato salad as having bacon, but that's only one region's version. In the southwest, potato salad is made with sliced potatoes, apple cider vinegar, salad oil, minced onions, chives, salt, pepper and a little sugar. The "cole" is a bastardization of one of two German worlds for cabbage, Kohl. (The other is Kraut, and yeah, that was Chancellor Cabbage.)

Now your barbecue has sausage, potato salad and cole slaw. You might think the Germans had contributed enough. But wait! There's more! And not just beer!

One of my favorite ways to eat vegetables in Germany is in a salad. Everything can be and is a salad, although not an American mixed salad: Radish salad, cucumber salad, lettuce salad, potato salad! I do love radish salad.

Most clearly I remember my grandmother's tomato salad, made from her own tomatoes. The recipe is scandalously easy, so easy that it's one of the few I do without written directions. It's also not shockingly different for Americans used to tomato-and-iceberg salads.

You'll want to use large, ripe tomatoes. For six people, I'll use four tomatoes, weighing three to four pounds. It's best to use tomatoes bought a few days or a week in advance, and left to ripen on the counter until needed. This recipe improves even super-firm, underripe tomatoes, but with perfectly ripe tomatoes, it's fantastic. Really, it's best to use tomatoes just picked from the garden, but if you don't have a quarter acre under cultivation ...

Peel the tomatoes if you want. (My grandmother peeled them because my grandfather liked them that way. Teenage feminist me swore I'd never peel tomatoes for any man. Turns out I don't like them unpeeled. It tastes wrong. Certainly part is the firmer texture of unpeeled tomatoes, but the tastes seems plain wrong too.) Drop each tomato in boiling water for 30 seconds, then into a bowl of cool water. When all the tomatoes have been boiled and cooled, cut a small X in the bottom, and peel. Sometimes the skins will crack and slip off, it depends on how long they boil, how cold the second water bath is, and probably the alignment of the moon. Congratulations, you now understand blanching and shocking.

Seeding the tomatoes produces a less soupy salad. Eh, there are worse things than soupy. Serve with a slotted spoon!

Cut the tomatoes into bite-sized pieces. If the tomatoes are peeled, be very careful, as the tomatoes are very slippery. Cutting the tomatoes in half, then in half again, and in half again (to make eight wedges), and cutting the wedges into pieces seems to be safest, with the fewest number of tomatoes slipping out from under the knife.

Sprinkle 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt on the pieces, using more for the less ripe tomatoes. I actually just grab two big pinches of kosher salt.

In a small bowl, whisk together a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar (Cider vinegar is just wonderful; it has real taste! You should really give up on white vinegar and substitute cider vinegar. If you bake regularly, a cup of whole milk plus a tablespoon of cider vinegar is a great substitute for buttermilk.), three tablespoons of canola oil (Not extra-virgin olive oil. This is German cooking, not Italian. Germans use neutral-flavored oils.), one-and-a-half to three teaspoons of sugar (again, more for less ripe tomatoes) and a few gratings of pepper. Pour the dressing over the tomatoes. Snip about a tablespoon of fresh chives over the tomatoes, and mix. Let sit for a few hours before serving.

(This is pretty much the same dressing for potato salad, but it uses more chives and some finely minced onion, and gets a tablespoon or two of water.)

(And notice that you can serve this to almost anyone, no matter what food restrictions they live with. Low-fat or low-carb? Kids with severe food allergies? Vegan raw foodie kosher friend? No problem! Well, leave out the sugar for the low-carb and diabetic eaters.)

At a barbeque, what do you drink? Beer, or course! To be properly German, choose a summer beer (beer has seasons, like fruit). The perfect summer beer is the Hefeweissen, a sweetish, unfiltered, high-alcohol beer sold in sixteen-ounce bottles. My favorite brand is Franziskaner, either the normal golden, or the dark. Least favorite is anything by an American brewer. I've had many over the years -- Brooklyn's on-tap version comes closest -- but the German brands are still leagues ahead. There is a trick to pouring a Hefe. First, you'll need a

For dessert, whatever fruit is in season, like dark cherries (pit-spitting contests), berries grown in your host's yard, or bizarre currant-gooseberry crosses (Jostaberries, pronounced yostaberries).