Schweinshaxen

Gueten Abig Dear Reader

In a desperate attempt not to let my blog turn into an episode of German themed Masterchef, I have been trying to starve off the urge to write another foodie blog until something else had come along and could be served up instead. As you will be able to tell, I lasted just two days before deciding that a truthful capturing of my year abroad would be incomplete without sufficient reference to Haxe "satt" Mondays at Joh Albrecht (for those that are worried about my purse strings and that I might be getting set in my ways, I have now attended all of their special offer days and once otherwise, so I feel I now have had my fair share, at least for now - next step will be cooking the Germanesque food myself...)

Schweinshaxen are pig's knuckles and they are somewhat of a delicacy around here, with a lot of meat covering them and plenty of delicious crackling. They taste simply marvellous, and the first arrived at the table, filling the entire plate as the picture shows:

Served alongside the Haxe was a Kartoffelklößen, which is a potato dumpling ball, and Sauerkraut, pickled cabbage - both adding to the proper (and quite stereotypical, I'll accept) ambiance that was provided by having this meal in a working brewery. I only discovered that they brewed the beer themselves on this, my third visit, as I went down into the cellar to discover all the beer brewing vats, much to my surprise.

Now the entire feast does not stop at just one plateful: one of the translations of "satt" into English is 'enough' or 'full up'. Sorry vegetarians, this was a meat fest affair to test the carnivorous manliness of each that accepted the challenge. No sooner had one finished the first mountain, sorry plateful, of Schweinshaxe, than a smiley waitress would appear asking whether you would like another Haxe with all the trimmings. Thankfully the second (and third...) are substantially smaller than the original portion; despite this I managed only the original and half of a smaller Haxe, unlike my beer-loving American friend, who made his way through an impressive three, before finally declaring defeat in a sea of meat sweats!

I'm not sure I'm cut out to be a hearty beer wench quite yet...