I get a call from work the other day and my wife tells me to be sure and get right home because we are going out for German food. German food? In Ashton?
As it turns out the Lutheran church in town was having its first annual German food fund raiser. At first I didn’t know what to think. What do Germans eat? Sauerkraut and beer, right? Germans drink a lot of beer to wash the sour taste from their mouth. Right?
We walk into the church’s dinning area and much to my surprise they had all kinds of tasty looking stuff and no beer in sight. They had German potato salad, sausages and sauerkraut, German meatballs in a nice rich red gravy, mashed potatoes and these delicious looking deep fried meat pies and a variety of homemade German breads and rolls and pies. Lots of pies.
I was more than pleasantly surprised. Who knew that Germans ate so well?
Anyhow I especially enjoyed the meat balls in the red sauce and the meat pies. I loaded up my plate with the meat pies and meatballs and poured that red gravy over everything. It was delicious.
The meat balls and the meat pies were special recipes of Cheryl Hogan who is Dan, the pastor’s wife. They were really nice people and Cheryl was nice enough to share her recipes with us. I only have room for one recipe. Maybe I’ll pass along the other ones another time.
Fleisch Kuechla (meat pies)
Dough:
1 cup cream,
2 cups milk,
1 Tbsp salt,
6 cups flour
Mix ingredients and knead until smooth. Divide into balls, approximately 18 equal portions. Cover and let rest for about 15 minutes. While dough rests mix meat mixture and divide into equal number of balls as the dough. Use about 1/3 cup of meat mixture for each ball.
Meat Mixture:
3 lbs ground beef,
1 medium chopped onion,
1 tsp salt,
2 tsp pepper.
Brown mixture and set to one side to cool somewhat.
Roll dough into 7 inch circles on a floured surface. Spread meat mixture onto one half of the rolled out dough surface. Cover the meat with the remaining half of the dough and seal and trim edges. Deep fry at 350 until golden brown and then turn over and brown the other side. Drain well.
I was talking with one of the other ladies at the dinner and she said they she likes to shred a little cabbage in with meat for her meat pies. So you might experiment a little bit I don’t think Cheryl will mind.
As soon as I can get around to it I’m going to fire up the deep fryer and start experimenting with this wonderful recipe for meat pies. Like I said earlier the red gravy that the meat balls were cooked in made an outstanding sauce to serve over the meat pies. You have to make the meatballs to get the sauce to turn out right so you’re gonna have to wait on that one unless you would like to e-mail me. I’ll send you a copy. In fact I think that might work out even better since it is a pretty long recipe.