Hungry in Berlin

Alphonso mangos have arrived in Berlin.

If you’re from the United States, you may never have tasted an Alphonso mango. A pale yellow papaya color, the mango has a deep orange, pulpy flesh that you can tell will be more appetizing than those Brazilian greens you find in Plus and Aldi. In India it’s used in the mango products exported to Indian restaurants abroad—juice, ice cream, lassi base—that all taste mysteriously better than what you can buy at home. No wonder: there was a ban on all imports of this special variety to America until last year.

Alphonse mangos (in all their spelling variations) hit the markets in India from March through May. Yet a Pakistani variation has suddenly popped up in Berlin during June, under the trade name of Honigmango.

You won’t find them at your weekly local market, at least not the schmancy one I go to in Charlottenburg, but they’re all over the foreign food shops. The picture is from a Persian food store (also selling merguez!) on Kantstrasse just west of the Charlottenburg S-Bahn. I’ve noticed that some Thai shops in West Berlin have boxes at their checkout counters as well (see the Thai-Viet Markt on Wilmersdorferstrasse), almost as an afterthought.

You can spot the mangos easily: they’re the ones packaged like fragile Christmas tree balls, in tinsel and shredded paper. Don’t be discouraged by the high per-box price; I bargained my man at the Persian shop down to 1.50 last week for a perfectly ripe Alfonso clone and 1 euro for a smaller one.

The exotic flavor is worth the splurge. Try it with yogurt or quark: the juices get all over the place when you cut the thing, and you won’t want to let them go to waste.

You’d never expect a good micro-brewery and ersatz biergarten to be tucked away behind a few looming Neubauen in Wedding. But it’s there, the Eschenbräu, big brass tanks gleaming in an Innenhof window, and kegs of tasty wheat beer, dark and light on tap. Aimee and I visited earlier this week, and their seasonal Maibock was out, so we stuck with the regulars.

I’m not one of those beer guys who can talk brew for hours. But I have good friends who are, and a brother who is, and so I’ve picked up a pretty good beer palate. These were good, and fresh, something that’s hard to come by this far north, as good as much of the beer is.

The light, a pils style, was rich and live-tasting, creamier than most bottled beers here, though not quite like what you’d get in München. The dark was very nice, I think an amber ale style rather than a real German Dunkel, malt-heavy and a little sweet. Rich and complex, and like the light, fresh.

This Friday, they’re kicking off the new seasonal brew, a Bayerisch Hell, by offering Weißwürste und Brez´n, and beer in the traditional Ma­ß. Yum.  Find it at Triftstr. 67. And thanks to Gridskipper, and their plug for Wedding, for the tip.

To follow up a previous post (and a nice reminder by the Tagespiegel this morning), here’s a couple more links to berry pastures in and around the greater Berlin area.

A list of pick-it-yerself berry patches: Selbstpflücke Erdbeeren

And for those who want berries closer to home, here’s info for Berliner Beerengarten. Click on the links for the individual gardens to get per-kilo prices; the map is handy, too!

We’d been hearing about it for years: a huge Vietnamese market somewhere in the deep east, where the freshest herbs and vegetables you could want for your Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese cooking were available, and the space was dotted with lunch-stands serving many kinds of phô, the famous beef-and-noodle soup. The question was, where was it?

Which was exactly the question we found ourselves asking yesterday noon, as four of us, in two cars, in the wilds on the border of Lichtenberg and Marzahn, pored over cell-phones and GPS units, looking for this place one of us had scrupulously researched on the Internet. As it turned out, we’d found where it had been, but where was it now?

Eventually, an answer bubbled out of cyberspace: the word Herzbergstrasse appeared on a cell-phone, and buttons were pressed, speculation was tossed around, and eventually our caravan made its chaotic way towards the Dong Xuan Center, another planet in the Berlin cosmos.

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No, not the classic Homer & Jethro album, but a query from a reader:

I was wondering if you all at Hungry In Berlin know if there are any places
around Berlin to pick wild berries this summer. There are so many woods I was
hoping to get some good picking in. This applies also to wild fruit, veggies,
mushrooms, etc! Thanks in advance, any advice is appreciated.

We immediately forwarded this question to our Far South Berlin correspondent, for no better reason than she lives closer to the woods than any of the rest of us, and sure enough, she had an answer for us:

Spargelhof Kleistow is a good stop for picking strawberries and high bush blueberries (don’t know what else to call them). Thankfully not so much bending involved, although the inside of the berry is white, not blue. But generally very good, big flavorful berries.

You can buy all sorts of fresh local produce and bread in their store, they also have a restaurant and places to play for the kids. They have a lot of festivals, too, which certain short, underaged people in the family enjoy.

Any of our other readers know of pick-your-own places in the vicinity? Tomatoes near Werder? Apples in Brandenburg? And are there any laws regulating mushrooming or wild-berry picking on what might be private land? Because come fall, the woods are filled with mushroomers.

Now that we’re finally cruising in the 20-degree Celsius band and the parks are packed to overflowing on the weekends, summer wines are in order. I like that there’s a decent market in larger-sized wine bottles — and the wine’s often of a quality that’s definitely higher than the swill we guzzled during high school (bring on the Hearty Burgundy!) My idea of a good summer wine is one that’s got some good acidity (like lemonade; juicy and refreshes the palate), light in alcohol and if possible, under 5 Euro a bottle. Here’s two recent finds that we’re enjoying — if you’ve some recommendations, let us know in the comments below.

Veit Gruner Veltliner 2007, Austria: This 1-liter bottle was shoved in John’s hands last weekend, with the insistence from our very favorite wine dude that “It’s the perfect summer wine!” Well, for 4.50 Euro, it was hard to argue. This Qualitatswein offers a good combo of green apple and lychee flavors, and isn’t too heavy (12.5% alcohol). Although the wine’s label claims it’s good with “Wiener Schnitzel” (props to the home team there), I’m pretty sure it will do the job with lighter dishes quite nicely. Find it at Sonnenreich at Arnimplatz, Seelowerstr. 6.

Le Pavot Rosé 2007, Vin de Pays de l’Aude, France: This kills a couple birds with one bottle — it’s crisp and refreshing, it’s cheap (4.95 Euro) and it’s bio. The Aude is a river that runs west-east through the western Languedoc; the vineyards have been organically certified Ecocert (no mean feat in France) since 2002. It’s a gorgeous deep pink and tastes and smells like super-ripe strawberries (blend of Grenache and Mourvédre methinks). Uncomplicated and easy to sip. At the bioladen Kiepert & Kutzner at Schönhauser Allee 65 (in the wine section, very lower shelf.)

I’ll just start off by saying: Aimee’s carnitas are good. There’s maybe nothing I miss more than a basic hot fried pork burrito in San Francisco. It’s terrible for you. But so delicious; and these channeled that loveliness surprisingly well.

But you can’t have carnitas without a little spice, and good tortillas. It is possible to buy salsa here in Berlin, but it tends to fall more into the category of what my mother used to call “taco sauce.” Red, vaguely tomato-based sauce, with a little spice, but no real flavor.

Once summer rolls around, making a raw tomato salsa might be more feasible. And if anyone finds tomatillos, well, let me know and I’ll buy you all the beer you can drink. But for now, since most of the tomatoes we get here aren’t spectacular (even mid-summer), I recommend a roasted tomato-chipotle salsa. Brings out the flavor nicely, even if there’s barely any to start with.

Here’s one good recipe, with a tip of the hat to Heidi Swanson and her 101 Cookbooks site.
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As a native Californian, I speak culinary Spanish (with an emphasis on the Mexican dialect). Four years of college in San Diego proved that a person can gladly and happily live on rice and beans (and salsa and tortillas) alone. And although my Heimstadt gave birth what has come to be known as the “San Francisco burrito” (see Dolores in Mitte for an up-market, but not totally authentic, version), nothing beats a homemade feast of carnitas, frijoles refritos, handmade tortillas and smoky, spicy salsa. Us gringos celebrate Cinco de Mayo (Mexican military victory over the French, 1862; gradually morphed into a “hooray for all things Mexican” celebration in the U.S., sponsored by Corona) with food. I’m going to focus on the proteins in this post — how to make carnitas, or boiled-then-fried pork shoulder, and refried beans. See “part dos” for a how-to on flour tortillas and chipotle salsa — with ingredients that can be found all here in Berlin. Read the rest of this entry »

For a very short time, it’s asparagus season in Germany. No matter that asparagus fields will continue to produce into the early summer: local tradition decrees that it is over on June 1. Only clueless foreign vegetable stands (ie, those run by Turks or Vietnamese, which is where I prefer to buy my vegetables anyway) will continue to offer any.

And now let me introduce some heresy: I just don’t like white asparagus, which is what you mostly find in the markets here. It’s flavorless, has no discernable vitamins, and is usually masked by some ultra-rich sauce to distract you from its blandness. Nope, I grew up with green asparagus, and that’s what you’ll find on my table.

There are some advantages to having this preference: for one thing, the elevated cost of thick white spears is outrageous, as is the fetishistic insistence on all-white (as opposed to “purple,” which has the tips in the process of turning green — horrors!). Green asparagus — when you can find it — is cheaper. Plus, the best green asparagus is thin, and, thanks to our overlords in Brussels, listed as Class III. The best, cheapest asparagus I’ve ever found in Berlin was courtesy of a couple of ladies who’d set up in the Winterfeldtplatz market to dump this “trash” at about a Euro a kilo.

You can find green asparagus for €1.50 to €2 a 500-gram bundle all over the place at the moment, coming in from Greece and Spain, so make the most of it. I like it steamed and covered with a garlicky balsamic vinaigrette, or garlic butter, but I also make a killer pasta dish out of it.

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No, not the squirt-from-a-can kind. (Don’t tell me you didn’t at least once in your life use your tongue as a cracker for a can of this? OK, maybe it was just me.) We’ve spied large blocks of paneer, the creamy, protein-rich Indian white cheese, at our local Asiamarkt (Kopenhagnerstr. at Schonhauser Allee). A half-kilo block will set you back 3.99 Euro — and combined with a large pack of frozen spinach will make enough sag paneer to last about a week and a half.

Now HIB cohort John tells me that the cheese has been hiding in the refrigerated section for some time (he does keep tabs on the tofu better than I) but I’m convinced it’s been recently added to the mix. Nevertheless, it’s a nice discovery timed with (hopefully) nicer weather — at home we’re moving gradually away from heavy foods to lighter fare as the days get longer and warmer. Paneer (or panir) is unsalted, completely vegetarian (not made with rennet) and can be used for both savory and sweet foods. I’m going to wrap a couple of blocks in store-bought puff pastry (with a chutney dip, an easy appetizer); once the sun’s out for real, a couple of slabs on the grill might be a good vegi barbecue option.

Now, true paneer fans out there are probably grumbling — this is a cheese that’s easily made at home. Do you make your own paneer? Tell us about it below (or check out this link for a step-by-step how-to) and share some recipes, too.