Austria

STAPLE FOOD OF AUSTRIA

• Meat
• Cheese
• Vegetables(Cabbage)
• Eggs

Austria's main dish is the tafelspitz which is meat either boiled or broth.

Recipe

Ingredients:
about 2 kg (4 lbs. 3 oz.) silverside and 3 kg (6 lbs. 10 oz.) flank shank
1 ½ carrots
1 ½ yellow carrots and
½ celeriac (celery root), peeled and trimmed
1 onion with skin, halved
½ leek
10 black peppercorns
salt
a bit of lovage
6 slices of marrowbone
chives for garnishing

How to make it:
Brown the unskinned onion halves on their cut sides in a pan without oil until almost blackened. Set aside. Wash the marrowbone and meat with warm water and drain well. Bring about three litres of water to a boil in a pot, add the meat, peppercorns, onion halves and lovage and simmer gently for 3 – 4 hours. Keep skimming off the foam and cloudy substance. About 30 minutes before the end of the cooking time, add the root vegetables and leek.

Remove the meat from the soup, strain the broth and salt to taste. Add marrowbone and simmer for 5 more minutes. Cut the meat slices, place them in a suitably sized casserole with a portion of the soup, the marrowbone, the root vegetables and the leek and bring to a boil again. Sprinkle with chopped chives.

Suggested side dishes: Apple-horseradish or breadcrumb-horseradish sauce, a chive sauce and Vienna-style vegetables (creamy spinach, cabbage, French or green beans with dill, creamy pumpkin). If your are partial to potatoes, you can cook them, peeled, right in the soup. Fried potatoes are also very typical as an accompaniment.

The dessert of Austria of the punschkrapfen, it is a soft spongy like cake.

Ingredients and Method of Preparation according to the Punschkrapfen Recipe

Ingredients used in the preparation - 

• Sponge Cake -  Eggs, flour and icing sugar
• Filling - Rum, cherry or strawberry jam, grated chocolates.
• Topping - Icing sugar and red wine

The sponge cake is prepared by mixing flour, egg white and sugar till a homogenous batter is formed.  This is then placed in an oven to form the cake. Next step is to add the filling. The filling is comprised of rum, chopped cherry and strawberry jam. A nice thick paste is made from the mix and introduced after slicing the cake in half.  Finally a topping of red wine and sugar is added to complete the cake.