bavarian cabbage salad

Bavarian cabbage salad in a bowl

Something that everybody knows about Germany is that we like beer and we drink it in Beer gardens as well as on the Oktoberfest. This is one of the most notorious stereotypes that I encounter since living in Asia. Actually this is not so much of a stereotype then the reality, if all of Germany would be reduced to some parts of Bavaria - the beer gardens and the Oktoberfest to be more precise. When being in Munich, you will not miss out to go to either of the above and enjoy your fresh beer on a sunny summer day (as rare as those might occur in Germany).
Always coming alongside with the fresh, cool and tasty beer are the delicacies being served alongside with the beer. Typical Bavarian delicacies (Schmankerl) are dishes such as:

• Obadzder - Bavarian cheese cream
• Henderl - roasted chicken (whole or half)
• Radi - horseradish
• Weisswurst - white sausage with sweet mustard (will only be served fresh - before 11 am), after that you won't be able to order this dish any more if the beer garden is a traditional one
• Brezen - pretzel
• Krautsalat - cabbage salad

and so on. Today I will give a recipe of a Bavarian cabbage salad that I found on the German internet and that I was making because I kind of missed the beer garden atmosphere. Since then it is a welcome dish on our table as we find all of the ingredients fairly easy and the salad is easy to make and it's really a refreshing alternative to get your greens on the table.

Recipe:

• 700g white cabbage
• 200 ml meat stock
• 6 Table spoons red wine vinegar
• 1 Table spoon sugar
• 1 Table spoon lard (you can replace this by oil if you like)
• 50 g bacon bits
• crushed cumin or whole cumin seeds  salt and pepper to season

Clean and cut the cabbage, cut away the stem and hard bits. Wash the cabbage and cut it in thin stripes and put aside. Now heat up the stock with the vinegar and the sugar.
Heat the lard in a pan and quickly heat the cabbage in it. Before the cabbage will turn soft, add the stock to the pan and heat everything up quickly, then transfer it to a salad bowl. Season off with salt and pepper and the cumin and let everything rest for 15 minutes.
In the meantime you can fry the bacon bits crispy, drain of the fat and mix it under the salad. Try the salad and season a bit more if necessary, proceed to serve it.