James May: Oh Cook! (2020) s02e05 Episode Script
German
1
- [director] And action.
- Hello, viewers.
We're back in the Oh Cook! kitchen.
And let's be honest,
sometimes you simply can't
be bothered to cook,
so you will say to your mates
or your other half,
"Let's go out to eat tonight."
And then someone will say,
"What about an Italian?"
Someone will say, "No,
I quite fancy an Indian," or, in fact,
any other food you can think of,
but nobody ever says,
"Let's go for a German," and why not?
In this episode, we'll discover
- Oh, bollocks.
- that the land of automotive
excellence and precision
It won't come off my fingers.
It's a bit special this, isn't it?
is also a nation
Ach, ja.
whose cooking is wunderbar.
It's quite satisfying,
filling your plum up with sugar.
[laughs]
What does German cooking have to offer us?
It's time for us to find out,
and I can tell you this for starters,
it's not just about sausages.
♪
[cheering and applause]
If you are traveling
and eating in Germany,
it is very important
that you know your sausages,
or at least know your sausage basics.
Now, I've been travelling
to Germany regularly
since I was 13 years old,
and to be honest,
I still don't entirely get it,
because there are hundreds of sausages.
They're very regional.
The Germans are very chauvinistic
about which ones are theirs
and how you should eat them
and how you should prepare them,
a bit like the Italians are with pasta.
But I have here a tray of,
if you like, standards,
and-and I've still had to put
flags on them
to remind me which ones are which.
So, uh, let's start from here.
That's a bockwurst,
and that one you should boil.
That is a bratwurst.
That one you should grill or fry.
That's a frankfurter.
A frankfurter is like a classic
hot dog sausage, and you boil that one.
Thuringian bratwurst,
you can grill or fry that.
Wiener you can cook pretty much
however you like. That's a snack sausage.
This is a tricky one.
This is a weisswurst, and you cook this
in hot water, but it mustn't boil.
You also have to eat it before midday,
because traditionally
these were made with uncured,
unpreserved ingredients,
and if you didn't eat it
before midday, there was a chance
that it would have gone off,
and it would have given you
das diarrhea in the afternoon.
So, what we're going to do
is cook some of these
and we're going to eat them
with classic German accompaniments,
which are sauerkraut and curry.
[man] Have you got something
against the Polish sausage?
Did I not mention the Polish sausage?
- Where was the Polish?
- [woman] It's at the end of the table.
- [man] Far right.
- Oh, I didn't do the Krakauer.
- [laughter]
- What?
[man] Let's not say "far right"
when we're talking about
Far-right Polish sausage.
[James] Now, owing to
the theme of this episode,
there will be references
to wars and football
and some atrocious mangling
of the German language.
My German friends will be watching this.
And they will be on the phone
if I get any of this wrong.
Sausages are a very serious business
in Germany.
They even have an expression,
which I can't quite remember,
but Tom speaks German, so he'll remind me.
[Tom] Jetzt geht's um die Wurst.
"It's all about the sausage now."
We're at the important moment, and that's
usually said when people are doing things
such as, uh, playing football,
for example.
Um, if you're approaching the end
of the women's 2022 Euro final,
England versus Germany,
and we were in the second half
of extra time, a lot of Germans
would have shouted,
"It's all about the sausage now,"
but I'm afraid the sausage went to us.
Anyway, I won't mention that again.
So, I'm going to put our collection
of sausages over here,
so you can continue to admire them,
and talk about our first dish,
which is currywurst,
which isn't a type of sausage.
It's a sausage with curry sauce.
To make an authentic currywurst sauce
takes a lot of ingredients,
including one small onion,
one garlic clove,
one heaped tablespoon of curry powder,
along with a bunch of other spices,
one tablespoon of tomato puree,
half a teaspoon of English mustard powder,
225 grams of tomato ketchup,
75 milliliters of chicken stock,
one tablespoon of cider vinegar,
a few shakes of Worcester sauce
and one teaspoon of soft dark brown sugar.
We'll get out the famous chopper-upper-er.
Here it is.
After the original Oh Cook! Series,
there was a bit of a run on these,
and they were quite difficult to get,
so I bought two spare ones.
I'm like one of those people who goes out
at the beginning of a pandemic
and buys all the bog roll.
Utterly selfish.
But they're mine.
Soften the onions with a dash of oil
in a medium-hot pan.
Right, that's looking pretty good.
I'm going to add the garlic
and let that cook for a minute or so.
Next, add the mustard powder
and tomato puree
and cook until it turns a deep red.
Currywurst is often eaten as a snack
with a-a cocktail stick.
You have your sausage cut up
into convenient bite-size chunks,
and you get it on a little paper tray,
in you go, eat it.
Absolutely delicious.
Sustains the nation.
Right, I've had a quick look at the beers.
This is a well-known beer that's also
available in Britain and is quite popular.
It's the one with the bear on it.
[popping tongue]
Mm-mm-mm.
Gesundheit.
Right, let's get these babies in.
Along with the curry powder,
add the other spices.
Half a tablespoon of paprika,
a quarter of a teaspoon of ground cinnamon
and cayenne pepper,
a pinch of ground cloves.
Add the remaining ingredients,
stir and bring to the boil,
then lower the heat
and simmer for ten minutes,
- allowing the sauce to thicken.
- [sniffing]
Smell-a-vision still hasn't been invented,
despite the promise of my childhood.
That, I suspect,
is going to be pretty delicious.
I'm going to extract Nikki
from her luxury cupboard.
I know she's very excited about
today's sausage experience.
[knocking]
Would you like to come
and examine the curry sauce
in its not-quite-finished stages?
- Smells nice. Mmm.
- Does smell nice, doesn't it?
Do you think if I try and use
this stick blender in there,
I will simply end up with curry shirt?
- Yes. So
- Should we transfer it to a?
[Nikki] Let's just pour it into here
and give it a little blitz up,
and then you can leave it to cool.
[director] I don't think
you should say the word "blitz"
- in this program, to be honest.
- [laughter]
[Nikki] You can blend it.
"Blend" is the word I was looking for.
[James] That looks like it's
heated through pretty thoroughly to me.
Once I've bli bli blended it,
we can put it back in the pan
and warm it through, can't we?
- We can.
- For when we serve it up.
- Have you tasted it?
- No, actually.
I haven't.
[Nikki] Oh, it's nice.
Very, very nice.
Actually, now you've got that
in your mouth,
have a swig of the German beer as well,
and you can see why this is so popular.
Bit of curry tingle in your mouth,
then a bit of cold.
Oh, yeah.
Good, isn't it?
- Ooh, and
- [bell jingling]
Was ist das?
- Das bell.
- Das bell?
[laughing]
[James] Whilst Nikki opens
her Amazon parcel,
which I hope is
an English-German phrase book,
I blend the sauce
and put it aside to cool down.
Now we're going to move on to sauerkraut.
Sauerkraut is actually very simple.
It's basically fermented cabbage.
The Germans have been
eating it for centuries.
Quite popular in America, as well.
But it's recently been identified
as a superfood
because it contains,
uh, beneficial gut-reacting
something or other.
I don't know. Anyway,
the important thing is it's delicious.
It's an excellent accompaniment
to things like sausages,
because it's-it's quite bitter and acidic.
Um, it's made, believe it or not,
with a cabbage.
We slice it up very, very thinly,
and it goes in this bowl with salt,
which starts to extract
some of the moisture from the cabbage.
Now, you think of cabbage
as being quite a fairly dry affair,
but actually, it has a huge amount
of moisture in it.
It just needs to be liberated.
[laughter]
If you're German and you're watching this,
I apologize.
The British aren't obsessed with the war.
It's just that being obsessed with the war
has turned into a joke in its own right.
♪
At this point, I could introduce
Harj from Amazon,
who is here as usual but doing bugger all,
like executives
from large corporations tend to.
I thought he might like to come in
and do the pummeling.
- [director] Uh, quickly, James.
- [James] Yes?
You can put the salt in that one,
but then it has to rest
for 20 minutes
before you can do any pummeling.
Oh, that's a very good point.
Yes, it should rest for 20 minutes.
Sorry, I forgot to say, I may have
called you a little too soon, Harj.
I'm sorry about that.
But I can offer you a German beer.
Yeah, fine, I'll wash my hands.
And wash your hands, of course.
Guten Tag, fridge camera.
Diese Bier. That's the other one.
Cheers.
[James] After 20 minutes of lively
discussion on the German postal service,
Harj is more than ready
for the next stage.
It's time for Harj to do some pummeling.
And if you put an umlaut over the "U,"
that would be "pümmeling,"
which would sound like a small German town
on the outskirts of Leipzig.
Um, you-you bash down in here,
but not so hard that you break the bowl.
- That's it, really.
- I'm gonna break the bowl, aren't I?
Well, try not to, 'cause the glass
tends to affect the flavor quite badly.
And you should end up seeing quite a lot
of salty juice coming out of it.
Is juice coming out?
I'm probably not doing it
hard enough, am I?
Yeah, there's definitely some juice.
Great. Coming in for the top shot.
- Sorry.
- Oh.
[laughing]
[James] The great thing about this
is there's a distinct chance that Gary
will be hit in the face
with a rolling pin.
Although it does sometimes look
as if that's already happened.
[laughter]
Oh, that's just mean.
- Come on!
- [laughing]
[James] I think at this point,
because there's gonna be
a lot more pummeling,
we should we should cut now
to a convenient cutaway, as we say in TV,
and I think we'll have, um, a picture
of the Heinkel Blitz from the 1930s.
It may have been influential
in the design of the Spitfire.
[plane engine buzzing]
In fact, even the Oh Cook!
production dogs were more excited
about seeing a Spitfire-like plane
pass overhead,
rather than continue watching Harj.
Anyway, once enough cabbage water
has been bashed out,
add some caraway seeds to the mixture
and store in a sterilized, airtight jar.
Only fill the jar
to about three quarters full,
then continue "pümmeling."
It's all got to end up
under underwater,
or under unter brine.
Otherwise, the bit on the top will go
moldy, and that can ruin the whole thing.
If your Amazon executive has failed
to extract enough water from the cabbage,
then top up with salt water
so that it covers the cabbage mixture.
We now have to store it
for at least two weeks in a dark place.
And we will move on to sausages,
and by the magic of television,
two weeks will pass
whilst we're doing that.
Right, here once again is
our sausage selection.
I think we'll have some oil in this pan.
[Harj] How long will we cook
the sausages for?
They're all roughly ten minutes.
I think those we-we should do for
a bit longer 'cause they're big and fat.
I'm gonna have to leave before then
because I've got to do an Amazon call.
- With whom?
- Just, uh, one of my colleagues.
- Richard Hammond?
- No.
Somebody more important than us?
So, it's Jeff, isn't it?
- Jeff. [laughs]
- It's Jeff Bezos.
That's all right. I'll struggle on.
Let's make our initial selection.
I suspect we're going to end up
cooking quite a lot of these.
Well, when I say "we,"
you'll have gone by then.
Those are our two frying sausages.
Here is a weisswurst und frankfurter.
So, if you want to be
in charge of boiling
- Yeah?
- I'll be in charge of frying.
There's your grabbers.
- Thank you.
- Um,
so, not quite boiling, ten minutes.
You can't put them in
at the same time, though,
because, of course,
that one needs to be not quite boiling,
that one needs to be boiling.
So that's going to take 20 minutes, and
you've only got eight minutes left, so
- So, shall I put this one in first?
- I think
- I reckon you can put that one in, yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
[James] Bratwurst, here we go.
- [sizzling]
- Yes.
- It's a great sound, isn't it?
- That's a wonderful sound.
These can both go in at the same time.
The Krakauer and the bratwurst
- are in the pan.
- Oh.
[James] Is it twitching?
Do you pop the skins
when you fry sausages, or is that?
Oh, that's a good question. Hmm.
You definitely don't prick them
when you're when you're doing them
in the hot water. In the pan?
- [man] No.
- [James] No.
[man] You're not meant
to pop any sausages at all.
- Is that a myth, then?
- [Nikki] No.
[man] Lets all the good stuff out.
[Nikki] Years ago, the pressure
would build up, and they would explode.
Who here is going to want
some German sausages
and curry sauce for lunch?
One, two, three, four, five, so everybody.
So, for the purposes of TV,
we are cooking these
and putting them in the heiser Schrank,
the hot cupboard,
but off camera, I'll cook all of these,
yes, and we'll eat them.
We've also got a couple of dogs here,
who I'm sure will finish them off.
If we're going to have a sausage feast,
we may as well add as many sausages
as we can.
Thuringian bratwurst.
I picked it up with my fingers. Sorry.
That can go in the frying pan.
- Is bockwurst a boiler?
- [man] Yes.
So, if I add a bockwurst
to your pile of sausages
Should I put that in now?
- 'Cause it's a bit big.
- No. No, no, no.
- Because it needs to be boiling.
- Oh, right.
Sausages are more complicated
than you think.
You've got one minute to go
until your helicopter arrives
- [laughs]
- to take you to your meeting.
All right, James, I'm gonna have to go.
Um, yes, thanks for coming. [sighs]
Bloody Nikki's turned it up again.
Right, I think I'm ready to plate up,
except it's not going on a plate.
It's going in one of these cardboard
trays, which is what you get
in Germany at events, with a little fork,
you know, thingy, or a cocktail stick.
Here is the plate of sausages,
curry sauce that we made earlier on.
Here is our sauerkraut that has been
in a dark place for two weeks.
I'm going to open it. It may explode.
No, it didn't. Excellent.
[knocking]
Your German sausage
and accompaniment feast is ready, Nikki.
Oh, fantastic.
[James] Those are the little Nürnbergers,
which would typically
be served as a bit of a snack,
so they're going in that bowl
with some mustard.
That's the Krakauer.
The Krakauer has got a bit of spice in it
and large chunks of meat.
This is the classic.
This is the bratwurst, extra, extra large.
This is very exciting.
[James] Um, we're going to put
the weisswurst in.
Old-school frankfurter.
This is a lot of sausage
we've put in here.
A portion of chips,
which have been made off-camera,
because, I mean, they're just chips.
Sauerkraut. And I know it's gonna be good,
and extremely good for your guts, as well.
It's a superfood. And then finally,
we will drizzle the sausages
with the currywurst sauce.
I'm really looking forward to this.
[James] So, here it is
numerous currywurst
complete with homemade sauerkraut.
Here's your little
That's why the sausage
is cut up into chunks.
- I see.
- So you can eat it one-handed
whilst you're drinking your beer
with the other one.
I think, actually,
for when you eat the sauerkraut bit,
- you can also have a fork.
- Mmm. I'm liking the sauerkraut.
I'm going to pick up one of those,
the little Nürnberger ones.
Ach, ja. Oh!
Mm-mm.
With a swig of beer.
I've just eaten the Krakauer,
and it's cracking.
- What's that one? That's a
- That's a weisswurst.
That's weiss so I've got
weisswurst and curry sauce,
technically incorrect,
with chips and sauerkraut.
Mmm! Mmm!
- It's good, isn't it? Mm.
- Fantastic.
And as someone who half-owns a pub,
the staff, chef and manager of which take
absolutely no notice of what I say, ever,
but if we put that on the menu,
especially if we put it
as a sort of bar snack
"With that beer would you like a couple of
German sausages and curry sauce?"
the answer, in case you turn up, is,
"Ja, bitte," 'cause it's fabulous.
- It is fabulous. That sauce is delicious.
- With a couple of chips.
So, the conclusion to that is,
as I said at the beginning,
nobody in England ever says,
"Let's go out for a German,"
but I don't know why not,
because it's great.
The Germans have an expression
"Alles hat ein Ende
nur die Wurst hat zwei."
"Everything has one end,
only the sausage has two."
We're going to make pretzels next.
A lot of people think
that pretzels were invented
in the U.S. by Steely Dan,
but that's not actually true.
It appears that they were
invented by the Germans.
The most important thing
to know about pretzels
and this is vital if you own
a German Bierkeller is
a pretzel makes you want a beer,
and a beer makes you want a pretzel.
So, if you own a Bierkeller
and you serve beer and pretzels,
you cannot fail to make a profit.
We're going to start
with making a dough, and, uh,
I'm going to use
this automatic dough mixer,
made by a very famous American company
who have been making machines
likes this for years,
so you don't really need me
to say who it is.
- [knocks]
- I'm also going to use the Nikki Morgan.
Hello. Would you like to come
and make pretzel dough?
- Oh, I'd love to come
and make pretzel dough.
- Um
- Does the bowl come off?
- Twist.
[James] Yep.
I just wanted to make sure you knew that.
- [Nikki] Okay.
- [James] Um, we put
the flour in the bowl.
[director] Are you gonna give us
the, um, measurements, by the way?
[whispers] 450.
That was 450 grams,
and then we add a teaspoonful of salt.
- One and a half.
- One and a half teaspoons of salt.
This is yeast. That's about a teaspoonful.
- One and a half.
- One and Or one and a half. One
One and a half, something like that.
- And that's about 25 grams.
- [whispering] 20 grams.
- 20 grams. 20 20 grams.
- You got it.
25 grams, something like that.
Put that on there.
Lower the tra-la.
- Not yet. Not yet.
- What speed do you reckon?
- Not yet? Ah.
- Not yet, no.
- We just need to warm this milk
a little bit and mix it in.
- Oh, okay.
I was about to do that incorrectly.
Apparently, we should put in the
warmed milk and the malt extract, warm.
Just doesn't need to be too hot,
because if you pour really hot liquid
on yeast, it kills the yeast,
- so it just needs to be warm, and
- Right.
Shall we have it on one
or two, do you think?
Put it on one to begin with
and just start
[chuckles] Start gently
pouring the milk in.
Do put about half of it in to begin with.
- Are you ready, Gary?
- Yes, sir.
[Nikki] You want it to come together
so the bowl is clean.
- [James] Okay. What?
- [Nikki] Turn it up a little bit now.
We need to need-need it
to give it a good old knead.
There's a big difference
between one and two, isn't there?
- What's it like on ten?
- Try it.
- Wow!
- [laughing]
Stop. If it was the beano, it would go,
"One, two, four, six, eight, ten, yikes!"
- at the end, wouldn't it?
- [Nikki] Yeah. That's looking nice.
[James] Dough mixed,
it's now time for a good knead.
Oh, yeah. Cleanly off.
Don't want to get flour all over
my nine pounds, 99 watch.
- [Nikki] Oh, no.
- So I'm going to take it off.
So we're stretching the-the the
The gluten in the flour.
That's an interesting technique.
- Is it wrong?
- No, it's not wrong.
It's just interesting.
You're dying to do it, aren't you?
I can tell.
Kind of, like, a bit faster.
Okay.
[laughter]
[James] Having been made
überflüssig, or redundant,
I watch Nikki knead the dough
into a smooth, shiny ball
for ten minutes, and then place it
in a covered, oiled bowl to beweisen.
An hour has passed, and this has proved.
Look at the size of it now.
It's filling the bowl and bursting out.
Okay. How the hell
do I get that out of there?
- So
- That is really proved.
Doesn't matter that you're
knocking it back. It will prove again.
[James] That's 'cause we don't believe it.
We have to prove it twice.
Now I've got sticky hands again.
- Look what I've got.
- What is it about my hands?
- That's a proved dough getter-outer-er.
- Hmm.
[James] Once out of the bowl, Nikki
divides the dough into small lumps
Nobody says pretzels
have to be all the same size.
Well, actually, the Germans probably do,
but the rest of us don't.
before rolling them out
into large sausages.
- That long enough?
- Nice. Uh, could be. Shall I try one?
So, the way you do this is
you hold it up in a thing like that,
and then you give
a little flick of the wrist.
Then you should get
it should wind round itself.
Oh, bollocks. I knew if I tried
to explain it, that would happen.
It should wind around itself, and then
you have to put it down immediately.
Otherwise, it will unwind again.
Hang on, let me think about it. You go
And then down. There you go, I did it.
- Look at that.
- Well done. Excellent.
And then, I've actually
got three turns in that one.
You push that up to there,
but it's a that is a pretzel.
- [Nikki] Very good.
- [James] What do you think?
Used at weddings, because
it represents tying the knot, obviously.
That hand back,
and a little flick, and there it is.
Form the loop at the top, fold those up,
stick it in there like that,
pick that up and
Okay, so I think
now the crew can take a bit of a break,
and we will make the other seven,
and then freeze them ready for blanching.
So, you've got about an hour off.
[Nikki] Yes.
Welcome back from the pub.
The, uh, pretzels have been
in the freezer, proving inside bags,
and now we blanche them in the water.
Ow. And the water has
We-we add bicarbonate of soda
to the water because that does
- It creates a chewy crust.
- Chewy crust.
And also, because you started
kind of boiling them in the water,
they've started to cook, so the insides
are soft, and the outside is quite chewy.
Excellent. And shiny,
'cause we want shiny pretzels.
- And shiny. So in
- We don't want matte pretzels.
So, all of that in there?
- Yeah.
- Isn't this going to explode?
Yeah, probably. I'm standing back.
- Oh.
- [James] Slightly uneventful.
They only need to go in
for what, ten, 15 seconds?
I think, 'cause they're frozen,
maybe 20 seconds.
Now, if you wanted to,
you could sprinkle sesame seeds on these,
poppy seeds, caraway seeds.
What about some salt so that
we definitely want a beer afterwards?
- Why don't you do a few
with some sea salt, then?
- Okay.
- Happy with that?
- [Nikki] Yeah.
That's a lot of salt.
We're gonna be drinking a lot of beer.
- [James] Oh, no.
- [Nikki laughs]
Okay.
Put the pretzels in an oven
preheated to 200 degrees
for around 12 minutes, until golden brown.
Just enough time
to make a cheese sauce, if we hurry.
- Shall we do the sauce?
- Panic.
- No panic.
- Panic. Cheese sauce.
- Right, we need the zizzer.
- The zizzer.
- And we need some cheese.
- Cheese is in the fridge.
Cheese is in the fridge.
That looks like cheese.
Oh, no, we didn't get
the extension lead out.
Stupid device.
- Shall I put the cheese in?
- Yep, cheese can go in.
- Salt, pepper.
- Uh-uh-uh.
Oh, I haven't taken the [laughs]
- So I haven't taken the
- [laughter]
- That's the
- That's the pushy-downy thing.
That's the pushy-downy thing.
Worcester sauce, crushed up garlic.
Now going to add English mustard.
And you need to add around 170 mil
of German beer.
German beer we have in the fridge,
which is
I think.
Ooh.
Oh, that is well cheesy. Ah!
- You can taste the beer.
- You can taste the beer,
and it makes you want a beer.
Beer makes you want beer.
We knew that, though, didn't we?
Right, pretzels are ready.
The one thing I was gonna say
about that cheese sauce,
which we've decanted
into this attractive bowl,
is that it looks slightly insipid.
I'm just going to add
I'm nicking a bit of your
That improves it, doesn't it?
We're not going to eat that,
but it just makes it look nicer.
[Nikki] These look wonderful.
Those do look extremely German.
- [Nikki] Salted, non-salted.
- [James] Mmm.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
Mmm. Do you know what I fancy?
I don't know. What do you fancy?
I think a pretzel.
- That one, I think.
- [Nikki] Okay.
- Oh, look at that.
- So, we should point out
this isn't like a packet pretzel.
- This is still a type of bread,
really, isn't it?
- [Nikki] Yes.
- I'm going to remove
your decorative leaf.
- Yes.
- Please.
- [Nikki] Straight in.
Mmm!
That's crazy cheesy.
You could go in a cheese coma
after eating that.
- Mmm.
- That's really, really cheesy.
The interesting thing is, I really
like that, but God, I'd like a beer.
- I'd love a beer.
- Let's have a beer.
- [Nikki] Cheers.
- Cheers.
Oh, that's a good bit of quality
German beer, but I tell you what.
- What?
- I could murder a pretzel.
[Nikki laughs]
[James] So, there you have it.
The perfect accompaniment
to beer, the pretzel,
with its perfect accompaniment,
the cheese dip,
all of which are a perfect accompaniment
to beer.
Right, we're nearly at the end
of our German feast,
and remarkably, we have enough room
left in us for some pudding,
so we're going to make something
that we've practiced pronouncing,
and it is Zwetschgenknödel.
- Zwetschgenknödel.
- Zwetschgenknödel.
- [laughing]
- Which is, um, a sort of plum dumpling.
Remarkably, it's made with potatoes.
This is quite complicated,
so I thought we'd divide it up.
- Okay.
- So, if you want to make the coating,
which is essentially bread crumbs,
and then I'll make
the case for the plums,
which is a sort of dough.
- [Nikki] Yes.
- And then it should all come
together beautifully at the end.
[James] For the dough filling,
you will need 250 grams of peeled,
cooked potatoes, put them through a ricer
and mix in 20 grams of butter.
You will also need 65 grams
of plain flour,
one egg, one tablespoon of caster sugar,
one teaspoon of ground cinnamon
and some destoned plums.
- Would you like a glass of Riesling?
- [Nikki] Ooh, that would be very nice.
- Thank you very much.
- There you are.
- [James] Cheers.
- [Nikki] Prost.
That's delicious. I like that.
[James] Oh, yes.
While I get on with making the dough,
Nikki prepares the coating.
So, you're melting butter, then you're
going to add two types of bread crumbs.
Yes, brioche bread crumbs
[James] And those are regular
toast-type bread crumbs.
[Nikki] Just regular type,
just ordinary dried bread crumbs.
I'm going to mix this with the butter,
and I'm going to kind of toasty fry them,
so they're crisp and golden.
Crisp and golden.
Those are chopped hazelnuts.
[Nikki] There's an egg, as well, remember.
Yeah, I'm gonna I was gonna
wait till the end for the egg.
- No, I'd do it now. Yeah.
- Would you?
- [James] Okay. So, half the egg.
- [Nikki] Yeah.
[quietly] There's too much egg.
I over-egged it.
[Nikki] Too much egg?
Maybe a little bit more.
[James] A bit late. I can't
I can't take it out.
- You keep keep mixing.
- [laughing]
[Nikki] It is normally quite a wet dough.
I don't get it.
Look how much it sticks to me.
- [Nikki] Um
- [James] Shall we swap?
- [Nikki] Yes. Let's swap.
- [James] How about?
I'm gonna take these bread crumbs off
'cause they're cooked, and let's swap.
It won't come off my fingers.
There we go.
- Oh, [bleep]. Whatever.
- [laughs softly]
- [James] Can you rescue it?
- [Nikki] Yes.
Still is a bit sticky, but it's fine.
I think you get your fingers too stuck in.
Are you saying I'm leaden-limbed,
clumsy and inept?
Slightly heavy-handed, maybe.
You can do some more, um, bread-crumbing.
You need to put in the sugar.
Just stir in the sugar and the cinnamon,
and then that's done.
It's off the heat now.
- [James] Okay, all of this sugar
- [Nikki] Yes.
Which is about, uh, 40 grams, I think.
Mm, yeah, something like that.
It's difficult because we keep
changing the proportions.
- So rhubarb, rhubarb
- That's
Okay. Three tablespoons.
Which is about 40, yeah.
- 40 grams, yeah.
- 40 grams, yeah.
Can I just chuck that all in together?
I can.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Little bit of cinnamon.
Don't overdo cinnamon.
Otherwise, everything will taste
of America rather than Germany.
- Okay, I reckon that's pretty good.
- [Nikki] Fine.
So, you put a little pinch
of the cinnamon sugar inside the plum.
- [James] Yes.
- [Nikki] And shut him up.
So, we've got some nice dough.
Still a little bit sticky,
so if you handle it lightly
You don't need that much, really.
These are quite small plums,
so we can make quite a few, I think.
Pat it out, and then,
like the Scotch egg
- [James] Yeah.
- mold it around it.
- Roll it about. Roll it, roll it.
- Roll it about, seal it up,
then we'll pop it on the plate.
It's quite satisfying,
filling your plum up with sugar.
[chuckling]
- I've taken slightly too much.
Sticky fingers.
- Roundy-roundy-roundy.
[James] There you are. That's not bad.
Once you have perfectly formed plums,
poach them in a deep pan of boiling water.
I think we
It's weird. That gets really hot
when it's been in the boiling water.
[Nikki] Oh. Funny, that.
So, these need to poach
for about ten to 12 minutes.
[birds chirping]
Mmm, fruit.
The Zwetschgenknödel are floating,
which is a sign that they're done,
and that took
pretty much exactly 12 minutes.
So we can fish those out.
- Oh, that Aah!
- [laughs]
[James] Before we plate up
our Zwetschgenknödel,
they have a quick roll
in the bread crumbs.
- In?
- Yeah.
- [Nikki] Too fluffy.
- [James] That would be slightly easier
with a spoon. There's a
- [director] You could just grab the pan
and roll it around.
- [James] All right.
[laughter]
- It's quite a good game, actually.
- [Nikki laughing]
Can you keep the Zwetschgenknödel
knö-knödel in the pan?
That looks very good. Right.
- Okay, here we go.
- [Nikki] Ooh.
- [gasps] Oh, look.
- [Nikki] Oh, wow.
- That's a thing of beauty.
- That looks great.
[James] And there it is, Zwetschgenknödel,
a fine mouthful if ever there was one.
Good luck.
[Nikki] Thank you.
Mmm! It's good.
- Is it blazing hot?
- No, no.
- I like it.
- It's quite wobbly.
Hey, not bad. It does have
a slightly potato-y quality to it.
- Yeah, it does actually, yeah.
- But it's
but it's nice because there's so much
sweetness in the middle from the sugar
- and the cinnamon
and the plum itself, that it all
- Mmm.
It has a little fight in your mouth,
a little conflict,
and then it's all resolved.
That-that was such an open goal then,
but I'm not gonna do it.
[chuckling]
Mmm.
We're very happy with that.
I mean, every we day we make this,
we cook furiously here, me and Nikki,
and then at about 1:30 p.m.,
the action is interrupted
by the arrival
of the crew's takeaway lunch.
Today is the only day
in the history of this series
when the crew ate our food for lunch.
Sausages, sauerkraut, whatever.
That can only mean Britain needs
more German restaurants.
Danke for watching.
♪
- [director] And action.
- Hello, viewers.
We're back in the Oh Cook! kitchen.
And let's be honest,
sometimes you simply can't
be bothered to cook,
so you will say to your mates
or your other half,
"Let's go out to eat tonight."
And then someone will say,
"What about an Italian?"
Someone will say, "No,
I quite fancy an Indian," or, in fact,
any other food you can think of,
but nobody ever says,
"Let's go for a German," and why not?
In this episode, we'll discover
- Oh, bollocks.
- that the land of automotive
excellence and precision
It won't come off my fingers.
It's a bit special this, isn't it?
is also a nation
Ach, ja.
whose cooking is wunderbar.
It's quite satisfying,
filling your plum up with sugar.
[laughs]
What does German cooking have to offer us?
It's time for us to find out,
and I can tell you this for starters,
it's not just about sausages.
♪
[cheering and applause]
If you are traveling
and eating in Germany,
it is very important
that you know your sausages,
or at least know your sausage basics.
Now, I've been travelling
to Germany regularly
since I was 13 years old,
and to be honest,
I still don't entirely get it,
because there are hundreds of sausages.
They're very regional.
The Germans are very chauvinistic
about which ones are theirs
and how you should eat them
and how you should prepare them,
a bit like the Italians are with pasta.
But I have here a tray of,
if you like, standards,
and-and I've still had to put
flags on them
to remind me which ones are which.
So, uh, let's start from here.
That's a bockwurst,
and that one you should boil.
That is a bratwurst.
That one you should grill or fry.
That's a frankfurter.
A frankfurter is like a classic
hot dog sausage, and you boil that one.
Thuringian bratwurst,
you can grill or fry that.
Wiener you can cook pretty much
however you like. That's a snack sausage.
This is a tricky one.
This is a weisswurst, and you cook this
in hot water, but it mustn't boil.
You also have to eat it before midday,
because traditionally
these were made with uncured,
unpreserved ingredients,
and if you didn't eat it
before midday, there was a chance
that it would have gone off,
and it would have given you
das diarrhea in the afternoon.
So, what we're going to do
is cook some of these
and we're going to eat them
with classic German accompaniments,
which are sauerkraut and curry.
[man] Have you got something
against the Polish sausage?
Did I not mention the Polish sausage?
- Where was the Polish?
- [woman] It's at the end of the table.
- [man] Far right.
- Oh, I didn't do the Krakauer.
- [laughter]
- What?
[man] Let's not say "far right"
when we're talking about
Far-right Polish sausage.
[James] Now, owing to
the theme of this episode,
there will be references
to wars and football
and some atrocious mangling
of the German language.
My German friends will be watching this.
And they will be on the phone
if I get any of this wrong.
Sausages are a very serious business
in Germany.
They even have an expression,
which I can't quite remember,
but Tom speaks German, so he'll remind me.
[Tom] Jetzt geht's um die Wurst.
"It's all about the sausage now."
We're at the important moment, and that's
usually said when people are doing things
such as, uh, playing football,
for example.
Um, if you're approaching the end
of the women's 2022 Euro final,
England versus Germany,
and we were in the second half
of extra time, a lot of Germans
would have shouted,
"It's all about the sausage now,"
but I'm afraid the sausage went to us.
Anyway, I won't mention that again.
So, I'm going to put our collection
of sausages over here,
so you can continue to admire them,
and talk about our first dish,
which is currywurst,
which isn't a type of sausage.
It's a sausage with curry sauce.
To make an authentic currywurst sauce
takes a lot of ingredients,
including one small onion,
one garlic clove,
one heaped tablespoon of curry powder,
along with a bunch of other spices,
one tablespoon of tomato puree,
half a teaspoon of English mustard powder,
225 grams of tomato ketchup,
75 milliliters of chicken stock,
one tablespoon of cider vinegar,
a few shakes of Worcester sauce
and one teaspoon of soft dark brown sugar.
We'll get out the famous chopper-upper-er.
Here it is.
After the original Oh Cook! Series,
there was a bit of a run on these,
and they were quite difficult to get,
so I bought two spare ones.
I'm like one of those people who goes out
at the beginning of a pandemic
and buys all the bog roll.
Utterly selfish.
But they're mine.
Soften the onions with a dash of oil
in a medium-hot pan.
Right, that's looking pretty good.
I'm going to add the garlic
and let that cook for a minute or so.
Next, add the mustard powder
and tomato puree
and cook until it turns a deep red.
Currywurst is often eaten as a snack
with a-a cocktail stick.
You have your sausage cut up
into convenient bite-size chunks,
and you get it on a little paper tray,
in you go, eat it.
Absolutely delicious.
Sustains the nation.
Right, I've had a quick look at the beers.
This is a well-known beer that's also
available in Britain and is quite popular.
It's the one with the bear on it.
[popping tongue]
Mm-mm-mm.
Gesundheit.
Right, let's get these babies in.
Along with the curry powder,
add the other spices.
Half a tablespoon of paprika,
a quarter of a teaspoon of ground cinnamon
and cayenne pepper,
a pinch of ground cloves.
Add the remaining ingredients,
stir and bring to the boil,
then lower the heat
and simmer for ten minutes,
- allowing the sauce to thicken.
- [sniffing]
Smell-a-vision still hasn't been invented,
despite the promise of my childhood.
That, I suspect,
is going to be pretty delicious.
I'm going to extract Nikki
from her luxury cupboard.
I know she's very excited about
today's sausage experience.
[knocking]
Would you like to come
and examine the curry sauce
in its not-quite-finished stages?
- Smells nice. Mmm.
- Does smell nice, doesn't it?
Do you think if I try and use
this stick blender in there,
I will simply end up with curry shirt?
- Yes. So
- Should we transfer it to a?
[Nikki] Let's just pour it into here
and give it a little blitz up,
and then you can leave it to cool.
[director] I don't think
you should say the word "blitz"
- in this program, to be honest.
- [laughter]
[Nikki] You can blend it.
"Blend" is the word I was looking for.
[James] That looks like it's
heated through pretty thoroughly to me.
Once I've bli bli blended it,
we can put it back in the pan
and warm it through, can't we?
- We can.
- For when we serve it up.
- Have you tasted it?
- No, actually.
I haven't.
[Nikki] Oh, it's nice.
Very, very nice.
Actually, now you've got that
in your mouth,
have a swig of the German beer as well,
and you can see why this is so popular.
Bit of curry tingle in your mouth,
then a bit of cold.
Oh, yeah.
Good, isn't it?
- Ooh, and
- [bell jingling]
Was ist das?
- Das bell.
- Das bell?
[laughing]
[James] Whilst Nikki opens
her Amazon parcel,
which I hope is
an English-German phrase book,
I blend the sauce
and put it aside to cool down.
Now we're going to move on to sauerkraut.
Sauerkraut is actually very simple.
It's basically fermented cabbage.
The Germans have been
eating it for centuries.
Quite popular in America, as well.
But it's recently been identified
as a superfood
because it contains,
uh, beneficial gut-reacting
something or other.
I don't know. Anyway,
the important thing is it's delicious.
It's an excellent accompaniment
to things like sausages,
because it's-it's quite bitter and acidic.
Um, it's made, believe it or not,
with a cabbage.
We slice it up very, very thinly,
and it goes in this bowl with salt,
which starts to extract
some of the moisture from the cabbage.
Now, you think of cabbage
as being quite a fairly dry affair,
but actually, it has a huge amount
of moisture in it.
It just needs to be liberated.
[laughter]
If you're German and you're watching this,
I apologize.
The British aren't obsessed with the war.
It's just that being obsessed with the war
has turned into a joke in its own right.
♪
At this point, I could introduce
Harj from Amazon,
who is here as usual but doing bugger all,
like executives
from large corporations tend to.
I thought he might like to come in
and do the pummeling.
- [director] Uh, quickly, James.
- [James] Yes?
You can put the salt in that one,
but then it has to rest
for 20 minutes
before you can do any pummeling.
Oh, that's a very good point.
Yes, it should rest for 20 minutes.
Sorry, I forgot to say, I may have
called you a little too soon, Harj.
I'm sorry about that.
But I can offer you a German beer.
Yeah, fine, I'll wash my hands.
And wash your hands, of course.
Guten Tag, fridge camera.
Diese Bier. That's the other one.
Cheers.
[James] After 20 minutes of lively
discussion on the German postal service,
Harj is more than ready
for the next stage.
It's time for Harj to do some pummeling.
And if you put an umlaut over the "U,"
that would be "pümmeling,"
which would sound like a small German town
on the outskirts of Leipzig.
Um, you-you bash down in here,
but not so hard that you break the bowl.
- That's it, really.
- I'm gonna break the bowl, aren't I?
Well, try not to, 'cause the glass
tends to affect the flavor quite badly.
And you should end up seeing quite a lot
of salty juice coming out of it.
Is juice coming out?
I'm probably not doing it
hard enough, am I?
Yeah, there's definitely some juice.
Great. Coming in for the top shot.
- Sorry.
- Oh.
[laughing]
[James] The great thing about this
is there's a distinct chance that Gary
will be hit in the face
with a rolling pin.
Although it does sometimes look
as if that's already happened.
[laughter]
Oh, that's just mean.
- Come on!
- [laughing]
[James] I think at this point,
because there's gonna be
a lot more pummeling,
we should we should cut now
to a convenient cutaway, as we say in TV,
and I think we'll have, um, a picture
of the Heinkel Blitz from the 1930s.
It may have been influential
in the design of the Spitfire.
[plane engine buzzing]
In fact, even the Oh Cook!
production dogs were more excited
about seeing a Spitfire-like plane
pass overhead,
rather than continue watching Harj.
Anyway, once enough cabbage water
has been bashed out,
add some caraway seeds to the mixture
and store in a sterilized, airtight jar.
Only fill the jar
to about three quarters full,
then continue "pümmeling."
It's all got to end up
under underwater,
or under unter brine.
Otherwise, the bit on the top will go
moldy, and that can ruin the whole thing.
If your Amazon executive has failed
to extract enough water from the cabbage,
then top up with salt water
so that it covers the cabbage mixture.
We now have to store it
for at least two weeks in a dark place.
And we will move on to sausages,
and by the magic of television,
two weeks will pass
whilst we're doing that.
Right, here once again is
our sausage selection.
I think we'll have some oil in this pan.
[Harj] How long will we cook
the sausages for?
They're all roughly ten minutes.
I think those we-we should do for
a bit longer 'cause they're big and fat.
I'm gonna have to leave before then
because I've got to do an Amazon call.
- With whom?
- Just, uh, one of my colleagues.
- Richard Hammond?
- No.
Somebody more important than us?
So, it's Jeff, isn't it?
- Jeff. [laughs]
- It's Jeff Bezos.
That's all right. I'll struggle on.
Let's make our initial selection.
I suspect we're going to end up
cooking quite a lot of these.
Well, when I say "we,"
you'll have gone by then.
Those are our two frying sausages.
Here is a weisswurst und frankfurter.
So, if you want to be
in charge of boiling
- Yeah?
- I'll be in charge of frying.
There's your grabbers.
- Thank you.
- Um,
so, not quite boiling, ten minutes.
You can't put them in
at the same time, though,
because, of course,
that one needs to be not quite boiling,
that one needs to be boiling.
So that's going to take 20 minutes, and
you've only got eight minutes left, so
- So, shall I put this one in first?
- I think
- I reckon you can put that one in, yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
[James] Bratwurst, here we go.
- [sizzling]
- Yes.
- It's a great sound, isn't it?
- That's a wonderful sound.
These can both go in at the same time.
The Krakauer and the bratwurst
- are in the pan.
- Oh.
[James] Is it twitching?
Do you pop the skins
when you fry sausages, or is that?
Oh, that's a good question. Hmm.
You definitely don't prick them
when you're when you're doing them
in the hot water. In the pan?
- [man] No.
- [James] No.
[man] You're not meant
to pop any sausages at all.
- Is that a myth, then?
- [Nikki] No.
[man] Lets all the good stuff out.
[Nikki] Years ago, the pressure
would build up, and they would explode.
Who here is going to want
some German sausages
and curry sauce for lunch?
One, two, three, four, five, so everybody.
So, for the purposes of TV,
we are cooking these
and putting them in the heiser Schrank,
the hot cupboard,
but off camera, I'll cook all of these,
yes, and we'll eat them.
We've also got a couple of dogs here,
who I'm sure will finish them off.
If we're going to have a sausage feast,
we may as well add as many sausages
as we can.
Thuringian bratwurst.
I picked it up with my fingers. Sorry.
That can go in the frying pan.
- Is bockwurst a boiler?
- [man] Yes.
So, if I add a bockwurst
to your pile of sausages
Should I put that in now?
- 'Cause it's a bit big.
- No. No, no, no.
- Because it needs to be boiling.
- Oh, right.
Sausages are more complicated
than you think.
You've got one minute to go
until your helicopter arrives
- [laughs]
- to take you to your meeting.
All right, James, I'm gonna have to go.
Um, yes, thanks for coming. [sighs]
Bloody Nikki's turned it up again.
Right, I think I'm ready to plate up,
except it's not going on a plate.
It's going in one of these cardboard
trays, which is what you get
in Germany at events, with a little fork,
you know, thingy, or a cocktail stick.
Here is the plate of sausages,
curry sauce that we made earlier on.
Here is our sauerkraut that has been
in a dark place for two weeks.
I'm going to open it. It may explode.
No, it didn't. Excellent.
[knocking]
Your German sausage
and accompaniment feast is ready, Nikki.
Oh, fantastic.
[James] Those are the little Nürnbergers,
which would typically
be served as a bit of a snack,
so they're going in that bowl
with some mustard.
That's the Krakauer.
The Krakauer has got a bit of spice in it
and large chunks of meat.
This is the classic.
This is the bratwurst, extra, extra large.
This is very exciting.
[James] Um, we're going to put
the weisswurst in.
Old-school frankfurter.
This is a lot of sausage
we've put in here.
A portion of chips,
which have been made off-camera,
because, I mean, they're just chips.
Sauerkraut. And I know it's gonna be good,
and extremely good for your guts, as well.
It's a superfood. And then finally,
we will drizzle the sausages
with the currywurst sauce.
I'm really looking forward to this.
[James] So, here it is
numerous currywurst
complete with homemade sauerkraut.
Here's your little
That's why the sausage
is cut up into chunks.
- I see.
- So you can eat it one-handed
whilst you're drinking your beer
with the other one.
I think, actually,
for when you eat the sauerkraut bit,
- you can also have a fork.
- Mmm. I'm liking the sauerkraut.
I'm going to pick up one of those,
the little Nürnberger ones.
Ach, ja. Oh!
Mm-mm.
With a swig of beer.
I've just eaten the Krakauer,
and it's cracking.
- What's that one? That's a
- That's a weisswurst.
That's weiss so I've got
weisswurst and curry sauce,
technically incorrect,
with chips and sauerkraut.
Mmm! Mmm!
- It's good, isn't it? Mm.
- Fantastic.
And as someone who half-owns a pub,
the staff, chef and manager of which take
absolutely no notice of what I say, ever,
but if we put that on the menu,
especially if we put it
as a sort of bar snack
"With that beer would you like a couple of
German sausages and curry sauce?"
the answer, in case you turn up, is,
"Ja, bitte," 'cause it's fabulous.
- It is fabulous. That sauce is delicious.
- With a couple of chips.
So, the conclusion to that is,
as I said at the beginning,
nobody in England ever says,
"Let's go out for a German,"
but I don't know why not,
because it's great.
The Germans have an expression
"Alles hat ein Ende
nur die Wurst hat zwei."
"Everything has one end,
only the sausage has two."
We're going to make pretzels next.
A lot of people think
that pretzels were invented
in the U.S. by Steely Dan,
but that's not actually true.
It appears that they were
invented by the Germans.
The most important thing
to know about pretzels
and this is vital if you own
a German Bierkeller is
a pretzel makes you want a beer,
and a beer makes you want a pretzel.
So, if you own a Bierkeller
and you serve beer and pretzels,
you cannot fail to make a profit.
We're going to start
with making a dough, and, uh,
I'm going to use
this automatic dough mixer,
made by a very famous American company
who have been making machines
likes this for years,
so you don't really need me
to say who it is.
- [knocks]
- I'm also going to use the Nikki Morgan.
Hello. Would you like to come
and make pretzel dough?
- Oh, I'd love to come
and make pretzel dough.
- Um
- Does the bowl come off?
- Twist.
[James] Yep.
I just wanted to make sure you knew that.
- [Nikki] Okay.
- [James] Um, we put
the flour in the bowl.
[director] Are you gonna give us
the, um, measurements, by the way?
[whispers] 450.
That was 450 grams,
and then we add a teaspoonful of salt.
- One and a half.
- One and a half teaspoons of salt.
This is yeast. That's about a teaspoonful.
- One and a half.
- One and Or one and a half. One
One and a half, something like that.
- And that's about 25 grams.
- [whispering] 20 grams.
- 20 grams. 20 20 grams.
- You got it.
25 grams, something like that.
Put that on there.
Lower the tra-la.
- Not yet. Not yet.
- What speed do you reckon?
- Not yet? Ah.
- Not yet, no.
- We just need to warm this milk
a little bit and mix it in.
- Oh, okay.
I was about to do that incorrectly.
Apparently, we should put in the
warmed milk and the malt extract, warm.
Just doesn't need to be too hot,
because if you pour really hot liquid
on yeast, it kills the yeast,
- so it just needs to be warm, and
- Right.
Shall we have it on one
or two, do you think?
Put it on one to begin with
and just start
[chuckles] Start gently
pouring the milk in.
Do put about half of it in to begin with.
- Are you ready, Gary?
- Yes, sir.
[Nikki] You want it to come together
so the bowl is clean.
- [James] Okay. What?
- [Nikki] Turn it up a little bit now.
We need to need-need it
to give it a good old knead.
There's a big difference
between one and two, isn't there?
- What's it like on ten?
- Try it.
- Wow!
- [laughing]
Stop. If it was the beano, it would go,
"One, two, four, six, eight, ten, yikes!"
- at the end, wouldn't it?
- [Nikki] Yeah. That's looking nice.
[James] Dough mixed,
it's now time for a good knead.
Oh, yeah. Cleanly off.
Don't want to get flour all over
my nine pounds, 99 watch.
- [Nikki] Oh, no.
- So I'm going to take it off.
So we're stretching the-the the
The gluten in the flour.
That's an interesting technique.
- Is it wrong?
- No, it's not wrong.
It's just interesting.
You're dying to do it, aren't you?
I can tell.
Kind of, like, a bit faster.
Okay.
[laughter]
[James] Having been made
überflüssig, or redundant,
I watch Nikki knead the dough
into a smooth, shiny ball
for ten minutes, and then place it
in a covered, oiled bowl to beweisen.
An hour has passed, and this has proved.
Look at the size of it now.
It's filling the bowl and bursting out.
Okay. How the hell
do I get that out of there?
- So
- That is really proved.
Doesn't matter that you're
knocking it back. It will prove again.
[James] That's 'cause we don't believe it.
We have to prove it twice.
Now I've got sticky hands again.
- Look what I've got.
- What is it about my hands?
- That's a proved dough getter-outer-er.
- Hmm.
[James] Once out of the bowl, Nikki
divides the dough into small lumps
Nobody says pretzels
have to be all the same size.
Well, actually, the Germans probably do,
but the rest of us don't.
before rolling them out
into large sausages.
- That long enough?
- Nice. Uh, could be. Shall I try one?
So, the way you do this is
you hold it up in a thing like that,
and then you give
a little flick of the wrist.
Then you should get
it should wind round itself.
Oh, bollocks. I knew if I tried
to explain it, that would happen.
It should wind around itself, and then
you have to put it down immediately.
Otherwise, it will unwind again.
Hang on, let me think about it. You go
And then down. There you go, I did it.
- Look at that.
- Well done. Excellent.
And then, I've actually
got three turns in that one.
You push that up to there,
but it's a that is a pretzel.
- [Nikki] Very good.
- [James] What do you think?
Used at weddings, because
it represents tying the knot, obviously.
That hand back,
and a little flick, and there it is.
Form the loop at the top, fold those up,
stick it in there like that,
pick that up and
Okay, so I think
now the crew can take a bit of a break,
and we will make the other seven,
and then freeze them ready for blanching.
So, you've got about an hour off.
[Nikki] Yes.
Welcome back from the pub.
The, uh, pretzels have been
in the freezer, proving inside bags,
and now we blanche them in the water.
Ow. And the water has
We-we add bicarbonate of soda
to the water because that does
- It creates a chewy crust.
- Chewy crust.
And also, because you started
kind of boiling them in the water,
they've started to cook, so the insides
are soft, and the outside is quite chewy.
Excellent. And shiny,
'cause we want shiny pretzels.
- And shiny. So in
- We don't want matte pretzels.
So, all of that in there?
- Yeah.
- Isn't this going to explode?
Yeah, probably. I'm standing back.
- Oh.
- [James] Slightly uneventful.
They only need to go in
for what, ten, 15 seconds?
I think, 'cause they're frozen,
maybe 20 seconds.
Now, if you wanted to,
you could sprinkle sesame seeds on these,
poppy seeds, caraway seeds.
What about some salt so that
we definitely want a beer afterwards?
- Why don't you do a few
with some sea salt, then?
- Okay.
- Happy with that?
- [Nikki] Yeah.
That's a lot of salt.
We're gonna be drinking a lot of beer.
- [James] Oh, no.
- [Nikki laughs]
Okay.
Put the pretzels in an oven
preheated to 200 degrees
for around 12 minutes, until golden brown.
Just enough time
to make a cheese sauce, if we hurry.
- Shall we do the sauce?
- Panic.
- No panic.
- Panic. Cheese sauce.
- Right, we need the zizzer.
- The zizzer.
- And we need some cheese.
- Cheese is in the fridge.
Cheese is in the fridge.
That looks like cheese.
Oh, no, we didn't get
the extension lead out.
Stupid device.
- Shall I put the cheese in?
- Yep, cheese can go in.
- Salt, pepper.
- Uh-uh-uh.
Oh, I haven't taken the [laughs]
- So I haven't taken the
- [laughter]
- That's the
- That's the pushy-downy thing.
That's the pushy-downy thing.
Worcester sauce, crushed up garlic.
Now going to add English mustard.
And you need to add around 170 mil
of German beer.
German beer we have in the fridge,
which is
I think.
Ooh.
Oh, that is well cheesy. Ah!
- You can taste the beer.
- You can taste the beer,
and it makes you want a beer.
Beer makes you want beer.
We knew that, though, didn't we?
Right, pretzels are ready.
The one thing I was gonna say
about that cheese sauce,
which we've decanted
into this attractive bowl,
is that it looks slightly insipid.
I'm just going to add
I'm nicking a bit of your
That improves it, doesn't it?
We're not going to eat that,
but it just makes it look nicer.
[Nikki] These look wonderful.
Those do look extremely German.
- [Nikki] Salted, non-salted.
- [James] Mmm.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
Mmm. Do you know what I fancy?
I don't know. What do you fancy?
I think a pretzel.
- That one, I think.
- [Nikki] Okay.
- Oh, look at that.
- So, we should point out
this isn't like a packet pretzel.
- This is still a type of bread,
really, isn't it?
- [Nikki] Yes.
- I'm going to remove
your decorative leaf.
- Yes.
- Please.
- [Nikki] Straight in.
Mmm!
That's crazy cheesy.
You could go in a cheese coma
after eating that.
- Mmm.
- That's really, really cheesy.
The interesting thing is, I really
like that, but God, I'd like a beer.
- I'd love a beer.
- Let's have a beer.
- [Nikki] Cheers.
- Cheers.
Oh, that's a good bit of quality
German beer, but I tell you what.
- What?
- I could murder a pretzel.
[Nikki laughs]
[James] So, there you have it.
The perfect accompaniment
to beer, the pretzel,
with its perfect accompaniment,
the cheese dip,
all of which are a perfect accompaniment
to beer.
Right, we're nearly at the end
of our German feast,
and remarkably, we have enough room
left in us for some pudding,
so we're going to make something
that we've practiced pronouncing,
and it is Zwetschgenknödel.
- Zwetschgenknödel.
- Zwetschgenknödel.
- [laughing]
- Which is, um, a sort of plum dumpling.
Remarkably, it's made with potatoes.
This is quite complicated,
so I thought we'd divide it up.
- Okay.
- So, if you want to make the coating,
which is essentially bread crumbs,
and then I'll make
the case for the plums,
which is a sort of dough.
- [Nikki] Yes.
- And then it should all come
together beautifully at the end.
[James] For the dough filling,
you will need 250 grams of peeled,
cooked potatoes, put them through a ricer
and mix in 20 grams of butter.
You will also need 65 grams
of plain flour,
one egg, one tablespoon of caster sugar,
one teaspoon of ground cinnamon
and some destoned plums.
- Would you like a glass of Riesling?
- [Nikki] Ooh, that would be very nice.
- Thank you very much.
- There you are.
- [James] Cheers.
- [Nikki] Prost.
That's delicious. I like that.
[James] Oh, yes.
While I get on with making the dough,
Nikki prepares the coating.
So, you're melting butter, then you're
going to add two types of bread crumbs.
Yes, brioche bread crumbs
[James] And those are regular
toast-type bread crumbs.
[Nikki] Just regular type,
just ordinary dried bread crumbs.
I'm going to mix this with the butter,
and I'm going to kind of toasty fry them,
so they're crisp and golden.
Crisp and golden.
Those are chopped hazelnuts.
[Nikki] There's an egg, as well, remember.
Yeah, I'm gonna I was gonna
wait till the end for the egg.
- No, I'd do it now. Yeah.
- Would you?
- [James] Okay. So, half the egg.
- [Nikki] Yeah.
[quietly] There's too much egg.
I over-egged it.
[Nikki] Too much egg?
Maybe a little bit more.
[James] A bit late. I can't
I can't take it out.
- You keep keep mixing.
- [laughing]
[Nikki] It is normally quite a wet dough.
I don't get it.
Look how much it sticks to me.
- [Nikki] Um
- [James] Shall we swap?
- [Nikki] Yes. Let's swap.
- [James] How about?
I'm gonna take these bread crumbs off
'cause they're cooked, and let's swap.
It won't come off my fingers.
There we go.
- Oh, [bleep]. Whatever.
- [laughs softly]
- [James] Can you rescue it?
- [Nikki] Yes.
Still is a bit sticky, but it's fine.
I think you get your fingers too stuck in.
Are you saying I'm leaden-limbed,
clumsy and inept?
Slightly heavy-handed, maybe.
You can do some more, um, bread-crumbing.
You need to put in the sugar.
Just stir in the sugar and the cinnamon,
and then that's done.
It's off the heat now.
- [James] Okay, all of this sugar
- [Nikki] Yes.
Which is about, uh, 40 grams, I think.
Mm, yeah, something like that.
It's difficult because we keep
changing the proportions.
- So rhubarb, rhubarb
- That's
Okay. Three tablespoons.
Which is about 40, yeah.
- 40 grams, yeah.
- 40 grams, yeah.
Can I just chuck that all in together?
I can.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Little bit of cinnamon.
Don't overdo cinnamon.
Otherwise, everything will taste
of America rather than Germany.
- Okay, I reckon that's pretty good.
- [Nikki] Fine.
So, you put a little pinch
of the cinnamon sugar inside the plum.
- [James] Yes.
- [Nikki] And shut him up.
So, we've got some nice dough.
Still a little bit sticky,
so if you handle it lightly
You don't need that much, really.
These are quite small plums,
so we can make quite a few, I think.
Pat it out, and then,
like the Scotch egg
- [James] Yeah.
- mold it around it.
- Roll it about. Roll it, roll it.
- Roll it about, seal it up,
then we'll pop it on the plate.
It's quite satisfying,
filling your plum up with sugar.
[chuckling]
- I've taken slightly too much.
Sticky fingers.
- Roundy-roundy-roundy.
[James] There you are. That's not bad.
Once you have perfectly formed plums,
poach them in a deep pan of boiling water.
I think we
It's weird. That gets really hot
when it's been in the boiling water.
[Nikki] Oh. Funny, that.
So, these need to poach
for about ten to 12 minutes.
[birds chirping]
Mmm, fruit.
The Zwetschgenknödel are floating,
which is a sign that they're done,
and that took
pretty much exactly 12 minutes.
So we can fish those out.
- Oh, that Aah!
- [laughs]
[James] Before we plate up
our Zwetschgenknödel,
they have a quick roll
in the bread crumbs.
- In?
- Yeah.
- [Nikki] Too fluffy.
- [James] That would be slightly easier
with a spoon. There's a
- [director] You could just grab the pan
and roll it around.
- [James] All right.
[laughter]
- It's quite a good game, actually.
- [Nikki laughing]
Can you keep the Zwetschgenknödel
knö-knödel in the pan?
That looks very good. Right.
- Okay, here we go.
- [Nikki] Ooh.
- [gasps] Oh, look.
- [Nikki] Oh, wow.
- That's a thing of beauty.
- That looks great.
[James] And there it is, Zwetschgenknödel,
a fine mouthful if ever there was one.
Good luck.
[Nikki] Thank you.
Mmm! It's good.
- Is it blazing hot?
- No, no.
- I like it.
- It's quite wobbly.
Hey, not bad. It does have
a slightly potato-y quality to it.
- Yeah, it does actually, yeah.
- But it's
but it's nice because there's so much
sweetness in the middle from the sugar
- and the cinnamon
and the plum itself, that it all
- Mmm.
It has a little fight in your mouth,
a little conflict,
and then it's all resolved.
That-that was such an open goal then,
but I'm not gonna do it.
[chuckling]
Mmm.
We're very happy with that.
I mean, every we day we make this,
we cook furiously here, me and Nikki,
and then at about 1:30 p.m.,
the action is interrupted
by the arrival
of the crew's takeaway lunch.
Today is the only day
in the history of this series
when the crew ate our food for lunch.
Sausages, sauerkraut, whatever.
That can only mean Britain needs
more German restaurants.
Danke for watching.
♪