Having grown up in San Diego, California, eating the traditional American food that his parents cooked and the traditional Mexican food that his grandmother cooked, and after helping to jump-start the Portland food scene in the 1990s with his Mediterranean restaurant Zefiro and then tackling the Far East with the Chinese restaurant Saucebox, chef Chris Israel sought a new frontier. And that frontier is Germany.
“People don’t have a positive concept of German food,” he tells me at Grüner, his Portland, Oregon, restaurant, which GQ magazine named one of the best new restaurants in the United States in 2011. “Even though so many American dishes have roots in Germany—hamburgers, hot dogs—Americans have a hard time with Germany.”
But peek into the Grüner kitchen for a moment, and you’ll start to wonder why: hot pretzels are carried steaming out of the oven; containers overflow with sauerkraut, spicy mustard, speck, and buckwheat spaetzle; strips of smoky bacon are cooked and ready to sit atop crème fraîche on tarte flambée (an Alsatian pizza).
“People think all German food is heavy,” Israel tells me as we proceed to a long wooden table to make our first dish, a radish salad. “But it doesn’t have to be.”
Israel brings all of his life experience, not just his travels through Germany, to the table when he cooks. Featuring radishes in a salad, for example, is as much a function of honoring Germany (radishes are big in Bavaria) as it is an homage to his time in San Francisco, where he ran the front of the house at the ingredient-driven Zuni Café.
The plating, too, taps into Israel’s background: he spent years as an art director for Vanity Fair. As he shaves the bright red radishes on a mandoline slicer he tells me: “You have to ask yourself, ‘How does each dish look and how does that relate to every other dish?’”
Flavor matters too. Over the radishes, he drizzles an esoteric ingredient from Austria: pumpkin seed oil. I put a bit on my finger to taste it and the flavor is toasty and nutty, a flavor echoed by the toasted pumpkin seeds that Israel sprinkles over the salad.
We continue on to a mushroom dish—chanterelles and creminis sautéed with caraway seeds (another signature German ingredient) and placed in a gratin topped with bread crumbs—and then we conclude with Swiss chard dumplings, made with ricotta and based on an Italian technique.
“Alpine cuisine includes food from France and Italy,” says Israel by way of explanation.
The blurry lines between the various food cultures melded here echo a time when Europe’s borders themselves were fluid. “Modern Europe is all about borders,” he says, “but it wasn’t always that way.”
It’s the blending in of German cuisine that’s won Israel so much attention and acclaim. Americans may be suspicious, but Israel is doing his part to remind us that great food in Europe doesn’t come exclusively from Italy, France, or Spain.
“Cooking is a journey; it’s a way to experience the world without leaving home.”
Serves 2 to 4
This is a very subtle salad and one that benefits from restraint. So go easy on the dressing, the salt, the pepper, and that one main specialty ingredient: the pumpkin seed oil. I’d like to tell you that you can leave it out, but then, really, what do you have: a plate of shaved radishes? The pumpkin seed oil is what makes this dish special (see Resources).
1 bunch of red radishes (or, if you can find them, black radishes or icicle radishes; any variety will do), rinsed and blotted very dry on a kitchen towel
¼ cup cider vinegar
¼ cup canola oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
A variety of herbs, finely chopped: any combination of dill, chives, parsley, savory, chervil (about ⅛ cup)
¼ cup pumpkin seeds, toasted*
Pumpkin seed oil
Microgreens, azuna, or any small green (about 2 cups)
Carefully slice the radishes on a mandoline to create an array of perfectly round and perfectly thin disks.
Make a quick dressing by whisking together the cider vinegar and the canola oil with salt and pepper to taste.
Dress the radishes in a mixing bowl very delicately. Arrange them artfully on a serving dish or on individual plates.
Top with the various herbs and toasted pumpkin seeds. Swizzle some pumpkin seed oil over the radishes.
Toss the microgreens with the remaining dressing and pile in the middle of the plate.
Serves 4 (or more)
Mushrooms get the deluxe treatment here in this elegant side dish. First they’re sautéed with butter, a shallot, some onion, parsley, and caraway seeds (an ingredient you probably best know from rye bread). Once they release their liquid and start to brown, they get bathed with a generous addition of crème fraîche—which makes the whole thing creamy and tangy—and an extra hit of vinegar. Poured into a gratin dish (you can also use a glass pie plate) and topped with slightly toasted bread crumbs (they finish up in the oven), you have a dish that’s rich, satisfying, crunchy, and meaty—a great side for chicken or steak or just by itself with a salad and bread.
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon unsalted butter
½ to 1 cup fresh bread crumbs, ground relatively fine
1 shallot, minced
¼ yellow onion, chopped fine
¼ cup finely chopped parsley, plus 1 or 2 pinches for later
2 cups chanterelle* and cremini mushrooms, wiped clean with a damp paper towel and sliced thick
Kosher salt
½ to 1 teaspoon caraway seeds
½ cup crème fraîche
1 tablespoon champagne vinegar, plus more as needed
1 or 2 pinches of all-purpose flour
Preheat the oven to 400°F.
In a small sauté pan, melt the 1 teaspoon of butter. Add the bread crumbs and toast until they get just a little color (they’ll finish toasting in the oven). Set aside.
Melt the 2 tablespoons of butter in a large sauté pan on medium heat and then add the shallots and onions. Cook for a minute until slightly translucent, then add the parsley. Cook for an additional 30 seconds (the mixture should give off a sweet aroma).
Add the chanterelles and cremini. Season with salt and caraway seeds. Give everything a toss and then cover the pan, letting the mushrooms cook for about 10 minutes on low heat, stirring every now and then.
When the mushrooms are soft, add the crème fraîche, vinegar, and a pinch or two of flour (depending on how thick you want it). Cook until the mixture thickens, another minute or so. Taste and adjust with more salt and/or vinegar.
Pour the mushroom mixture into a gratin dish or a glass pie plate and top with the bread crumbs. Bake for 5 to 10 minutes, until the top is golden brown.
Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the final pinch or two of chopped parsley. Serve hot.
Serves 4 or more
Don’t let the Swiss chard fool you; there’s very little that’s healthy about this dish. But who cares about healthy? What you get if you make this is a bowlful of green-flecked, cheesy dumplings swimming in a pool of butter. It’s also a fun dish to make because so much of it is based on your own sense of touch. You want to add just enough flour so that you can easily roll the dough and cut it up into dumplings. Using a bench scraper to do that cutting is smart because then you can use the flat side of the scraper to scoop everything up straight into the pot of boiling water. Be sure to drain the ricotta cheese overnight before you start the dumplings (if you don’t, the dumplings will require more flour, and they’ll be heavier).
2 cups ricotta cheese, set over a strainer lined with cheesecloth and drained overnight in the refrigerator
1 cup blanched Swiss chard*, squeezed dry and chopped
2 cups grated Parmesan cheese
Kosher salt
A pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
2 eggs, plus 3 egg yolks
1 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
3 to 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
In a large bowl, combine the ricotta, chard, Parmesan, 2 tablespoons salt, the nutmeg, eggs, and yolks with a large rubber spatula. Mix as thoroughly as possible* before adding the flour: once you add the flour you want to mix it as little as possible or the dumplings will be tough and gluey.
Add the flour ¼ cup at a time and work it in gently with the rubber spatula. Study the dough as you go: is it very sticky? You don’t want it super dry but you want to be able to roll it later to form the dumplings. Stop adding flour when the dough reaches a rollable texture*.
Allow the dough to rest for 30 minutes at room temperature (during which time it will continue to stiffen).
When you’re ready to roll the dumplings, flour a board and your hands. Remove the dough to the board and sprinkle some flour on it. Roll the dough into a long rod, approximately ½ inch thick. Cut the rod into 1-inch-long dumplings.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil and season lightly with salt. Drop the dumplings in and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, until they float.
Melt the butter in a medium-size pan and lift the dumplings from the boiling water into the pan to finish, tossing them gently. Serve immediately.
