It’s Halloween Eve, and we’re celebrating Halloween with an Oktoberfest!
My father was born in Germany, so growing up I ate traditional German food every holiday. As soon as the leaves start turning, I begin craving my favorite German dish, rouladen.
So for the first time EVER, I made it myself instead of calling my mom!
She let me borrow her German Bible, also known as The Cuisines of Germany by Horst Scharfenberg. She’s had this for at least 20 years.
And I’m blogging my first attempt, step by step. First, I went to the local butcher and ordered the meat. And I’m not talking about the grocery store butcher. We have a specialty butcher who knows what the hell you’re talking about when you say meat for “rouladen” or “braciole.”
Stuffed Beef Rolls. Rindsrouladen.

• However many you want to make, slices of bottom round
• a tsp each of grainy mustard
• 1 slice of bacon each
• a quarter of a gherkin pickle
• a quarter of a carrot slice
• flour, salt, butter, onion, beef stock, more carrots cornstarch.

I laid out all the the meat, and added a thin layer of the grainy mustard. Set bacon slice in the center length wise. Pickle and carrot lay together in the center.

And “roll”. Tie. Flour.

Saute in the pan. I trimmed all of the fat off of the bacon (I hate gooey meat bites), and I sauteed the rolls to brown on each side in the bacon.

In the roasting pan, I added the rolls, 2 sauteed onions, 2 whole carrots chopped, a quart of beef stock and that cooked bacon. I set them covered in the oven for almost 3 hrs. I changed the temp. I had them at 250, but upped it to 325 half way through. Save the stock for gravy.

Spaetzle.
3 cups flour
4 eggs
1 tsp salt
I added 2 tbsp fresh chive
1 qt cold water
Okay, so if you really want to make it, you might want to google it. My book spells it out step by step for 2 whole pages. It even says “Rule Number 2, be prepared to write off your first couple of attempts as pure research.” I think I was lucky, I’m familiar with different kinds of dough so I did fine. You seriously just mix the ingredients all to the bowl, but add the water in parts (I did 1/4 c at a time) and I didn’t use all of the water that they suggested.
Here’s my spaetzle maker from http://www.cookware.com/.

You pop the dough in the square part, and the little container forces the dough ball through the holes cutting them off each time you go left or right.

They take about a minute to cook. You can tell, they float.

Remove from boiling pot, and dump them into the ice water.

Then strain.

Home-Style Red Cabbage.
This is easy and tastes amazing.

• 1 head of cabbage, shredded
• 2 onions, shredded
• 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup red wine
• 2 tbsp beef stock.
• “as much ground clove as will fit on the tip of a knife”
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 large granny smith apple
• 3-5 tbsp red currant jelly

Melt some butter in a pot and then add onions. Cook till clear. Add the shredded cabbage. Add vinegar, red wine, clove, bay leaf and beef stock. I took the stock from the roasting pan, and I think I used 1/4 cup. I cooked that for 1 hour on low heat. After an hour, I stirred in the red currant jelly, and sliced the apples on top and let it simmer on the oven for about 30 more minutes.

Serve with booze, because that’s how Germans do it.

Happy Almost Halloween…and the end of October ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!!!