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E A RT H Y T R E AS U R E S A N D B USY B E E S , T H E A RT O F THE GA ME AND THE FRE SHNE SS OF FISH. LA MBOROUS ADVENTURE S, THE CROSS ON THE BREA D AND A Y E A R O F BA D W E AT H E R Y E T W O N D E R F U L TAS T E S .

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INTENTIONS

EDIT O RIA L S Magazin, Issue

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Every so often it’s good to stop for a moment and to reflect. Life passes by so quickly that we run the risk of overlooking small miracles and special things, or just taking them for granted.

The S Magazin presents us with the chance to take the time to look back, to work through what has happened, to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to carry the fruits into the next season.

The chef and host stands at the last stop of a long line that started off way back in the past. He is grounded in the work and creativity of many others before him. It was those people who crossed borders of type and race in order to achieve a result with greater taste, who wanted to know how fermentation can change taste and texture, and who developed new techniques because the old ones were no longer good enough.

It is their discoveries and experiences that provide the foundation for the business of today’s gastronomer, and that commits the latter to respectful treatment and further up-to-date development.

Modern Austrian food culture is the result of cooperation of countless people crossing borders for generations. This culture creates connections – to our families, our homes, our culture.

Although this connection may not be so obvious in our global, speeded-up world, it still exists. It is the reason why nobody bakes pastries as good as those of our grandmother, why certain aromas can carry us to another time and another place, why even mediocre food tastes good in good company, and finally, why it is important to become involved in the issue of how we eat, now and in the future.

The S Magazin is setting out on a culinary journey and presents different perspectives: those of our producers in their own environment, those of our chefs with their ideas of flavours and tastes, always on the lookout for that unique aroma, and of course our guests’ viewpoints. All these people are connected to each other, depend on each other, and in the end inspire each other.

Accompany us into the Steiereck world, share our passions and together let us shed the most enjoyable light on our country’s harvest.

BIRGIT AND HEINZ REITBAUER

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CONTENTS

CO NT ENT S 8 T H E

CHEF ISN’T HERE Shouldn’t the head of the kitchen be at the stove too? Good question...

2 6 M A S T E R S

OF THE GAME When it comes to deer and the like, Austria is on the cutting edge.

By Christian Grünwald

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ByAnna Burghardt

Who & why

3 2 H A U L

OF THE WILD A wild catch from the Hallstättersee – and a plate of sustainability.

By Achim Schneyder

4 2 L

AMBOROUS The stables at the Pogusch, where the lamb adds its own spices.

By Achim Schneyder

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T H E A R T I S T S I N T H E F I E L D Waltraud and Michael Bauer work in a field of their own: pulling the forgotten out of the earth.

5 0 T H E

MUSHROOM IS THE BLOSSOM OF THE FUNGUS The wild guys beneath the earth, and how humans are taming and cultivating them.

By Ute Woltron

By Ute Woltron 6 0 C H E E R F U L

C O S M O P O L I TA N A declaration of love to the lemon in 26 short chapters.

By Katharina Seiser

6 6 A

LETTER TO FRANK NICHOL AS MEYER (1875–1918) A letter of thanks from a self-confessed lemon lover.

By Katharina Seiser

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L O R D O F T H E B E E S A visit to Johannes Gruber and his fantastic honey.

By Nina Wessely

How & for whom

6 8 T H E

STA RT E R B E F O R E T H E STA RT E R S Bread plays an important part at the Steirereck – as does its “driver”.

By Achim Schneyder

7 6 J O Y F U L

MOUTHFULS Spring, summer, autumn and winter on a plate.

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CONTENTS/IMPRESSUM

9 8 T H E

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R E D S H AV E I T 2014 was not easy for wine. Nevertheless, some great red wines came out in Austria that year.

Impressum

By Achim Schneyder

MANAGERS: Mag. Alexandra Seyer-Gmeinbauer, Reinhold Gmeinbauer Stubenring 24/3/9, 1010 Wien, www.albacommunications.at

Which ones & how many

1 0 6 I T ’ S

FOREVER BLOWING BUBBLES You could describe it as microbacterial changes in airless surroundings.

Or the taste of the future. Thoughts on fermentation.

By Anna Burghardt

1 1 2 T H E

BERRY IS A HERB And if that weren’t magic enough, just see what magic it can do for food!

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There & back

MEDIA OWNER: ALBA Communications GmbH

PUBLISHER: Birgit und Heinz Reitbauer CHIEF EDITOR: Achim Schneyder – ALBA Communications SENIOR EDITOR: Achim Schneyder AUTHORS: Anna Burghardt Serverin Corti Christian Grünwald Achim Schneyder Katharina Seiser Nina Wessely Ute Woltron PHOTOGRAPHERS: Georges Desrues Klaus Fritsch Albert Handler Philipp Horak Thomas Schauer Mirco Taliercio ILLUSTRATION: Deborah Sengl STYLING: Sammy Zayed – Tatendrang DESIGN: brand unit – network for branding, design and content, brand-unit.com CREATIVE AND ART DIRECTION: Albert Handler GRAPHIC DESIGN: Vanessa Buchschacher Laura Büssenschütt Ula Krzyzak Alexandra Ludwig

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T H E C H E F S , T H E S U C K L I N G PIG AND THE AROMA OF FOREST ANTS How the small village in Upper Austria’s Mühlviertel became the world’s culinary centre.

By Severin Corti

1 2 6 S N E E Z I N G

FITS AND THE CALL OF HOME A pair of actors on food as a life-long stage partner.

By Achim Schneyder

1 2 8 B O O K I N G

ELSEWHERE Birgit and Heinz Reitbauer reveal their favourite restaurants.

ADVERTISEMENTS: Reinhold Gmeinbauer and Angela Kindermann – ALBA Communications PRODUCTION: Andreas Oberkanins – brand unit TRANSLATION: Amanda Riddick LITHOGRAPHY: Mario Rott PRINT: Grasl FairPrint DISTRIBUTION: Morawa

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VIEWPOINT

THE CHEF ISN’T HERE With countless digital images of chefs but far less analogue, real-life contact, is celebrity status becoming overvalued?

TEXT: CHRISTIAN GRÜNWALD

The core of the chef society is an international clique. About 250 top chefs have a significant media presence around the world, whether restaurant rankings, print media or TV shows. They have the status of culinary healers. They no longer appear like gods dressed in white, wearing a starched chef ’s jacket and a high toque blanche, but increasingly also in a black outfit together with a full beard and rolledup sleeves bringing out the tattoos beneath. They’re the pop stars of our age, polyglots on the search for new taste kicks whose origin is clearly spelled out.

These have to be regional, and preferably as rare as

possible, so that just that in itself meets with countless “ooh”s and “aah”s.

It is complicated and far-reaching enough to identify the best restaurants of just one country. In the end what really counts is the sum of all the successful efforts and labours. These are huge: the rule is one employee per guest. World-wide rankings simplify this principle once more, otherwise it would be impossible to find a common denominator. So while we’re looking for the purest, simplest taste, on a commercial level we push out the exact opposite.

It all has to get sold somehow.

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These days social media feeds us lots of pretty The celebrity principle rules. The more famous, the better, the more exclusive, the more expensive. useless information, such as that René Redzepi did Limited editions are part of successful business deals. something with a basket of coloured sea urchins Hip or trash. The already struggling middle class has the day before yesterday, that it hailed in Ana Roš’ a hard time here, too. garden, or that spring has finally come to Magnus In the high-end range of the restaurants pro- Nilsson’s island. We see top chefs clutching glasses claimed to be the best, eating is increasingly becom- of champagne at parties, and on Twitter and Instaing a status symbol. Who sits where, and how often, gram we find heaps of photographic evidence of their in one of these restaurants? Yes, the served food travels across at least four continents. We will not matters, but so do the atmosphere, the other guests, discuss here any controversial pictures taken around the location of the table you’re seated at, the behav- the campfire or in the pool. However, this informaiour of the staff, their willingness to go the extra mile tion provides us with one certainty: the chef is not for that extra plate, that extra glass. in the kitchen.

It's really a shame that it’s becoming less and The restaurants owned by the world’s best chefs less about simply eating well and enjoying it. Today’s have one annoying thing in common: as a rule, they experienced guest is too full and always looking for are booked out for months in advance. Every last the extraordinary. Consequently every menu turns seat is taken in these places. Overcrowded places are into a carefully choreographed appearance. certainly not what us Viennese are used to, who exWhether in casting shows, at movie premieres, pect that there’ll always be some corner somewhere. on social media or in Formula-1 boxes, today’s culiIt’s why us locals consider it doubly humiliating nary celebrities are everywhere. That does require when there’s really nowhere left, when there’s no anan analogue presence on site, even in this digital age. gelic voice out of nowhere to reassure us, “Just wait And then there’s the ever-growing number of guest a little at the bar, we’ll manage it somehow.” appearances at other restaurants – these days that’s At last you’re sitting at the table you wanted, known as a 4-Hands Dinner – at specialist congress- having already dealt with attentive emails and calls – es and prestigious gastronomic award ceremonies. “You’re coming tomorrow? We’re looking forward to It’s all important for establishing status, for profes- that!” You even have a view of the open-plan kitchen, sional networking, for inspiration and expanding where 20 ladies and gentlemen are working away. one’s horizons.

You blissfully watch the chefs like a shepherd watchThe air miles that a few famous chefs collect in es his sheep in the meadow. It’s irritating, though, one year are enough for a life-long upgrade. that one sheep is missing, the one that’s known best.

It was the early summer of 2013. A few weeks How delightful that apparently at a culinary before, the restaurant “El Celler de Can Roca” in event elsewhere rabbit tongue, sea cucumber and Girona had become Number One in “The World’s pine cones are forming a spectacular alliance never 50 Best” ranking. The requests for reservations that seen before, but there’s no kitchen celebrity to be followed wore out the staff and made the owners seen here. tired, happy and proud at the same time.

Not that you wanted anything really personal, I had already invited Joan Roca to Vienna be- like a selfie, an old-fashioned autograph or a bloodfore, as an honorary guest at the Trophée Gourmet brotherhood. You just wanted to eat as well as posA la Carte-Gala. For Roca these two days were the sible. Can that happen when the head chef isn’t in?

Decades ago, when asked, “Who actually cooks first free time outside his restaurant: a kind of vacation and at the same time ambassadorial duties when you’re not here?”, Paul Bocuse coolly answered, in another country.

“The same person who cooks when I am here.” He Over a generous lunch at the Steirereck, we got was talking about his sous chef. to talking about the definition of gastronomical luxOf course the grand old man is right. Top cuisine ury. At the time he said, “Luxury is going into a large is a team effort. Just like top managers always praise restaurant’s kitchen with many staff and being per- their team or troop at award ceremonies, kitchen sonally welcomed by the boss. That counts for more chefs do the same. If we didn’t have open kitchens, a than select linen and lots of silver on the table, more guest would never think about who’s cooking today. than foie gras, caviar and the like on the plate. That’s He would just enjoy his meal. why there’s always me or one of my brothers at the front door to greet the guests and to say goodbye.”

Well, it’s great if there’s three brothers in charge, like at the Rocas’ place, but less so when you’re the only one to hold open the door.

C H R I S T I A N G R Ü N W A L D has lived in Vienna since 1962. He has been chief editor of the gourmet magazine A la Carte since 1990 and publisher of the annual gourmet guide Österreich A la Carte. He has also been Academy Chair of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list for Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Hungary and Slovenia since 2015.

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Who & why

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THE ARTISTS IN THE FIELD S . 4 0

HAUL OF THE WILD

SUPPLIERS AND PRODUCERS

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Oh how good it all is! Oh how good the Austrian lamb is, how good the Austrian game, how good the Austrian fish. And everyone knows the amazing achievements of those busy Austrian bees. These great culinary fortunes are only added to by Austrian produce, like vegetables that still taste like vegetables and mushrooms that tickle the palate. We are well off, we are spoiled. Quality shouldn’t be taken for granted, because really quality is a gift. We know to appreciate it, and we ought to give thanks for it, modestly.

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LORD OF THE BEES

MASTERS OF THE GAME

S. 50

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L AMBOROUS

THE MUSHROOM IS THE BLOSSOM OF THE FUNGUS

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V EG E TA B L E FA R M E R S

The Artists IN THE FIELD

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BY UTE WOLTRON

More a garden than a field

PHOTOGRAPHY: ALBERT HANDLER

Waltraud and Michael supply exquisite fruit and vegetable rarities, the stuff that top chefs spin their culinary dreams out of. The couple run an agricultural business in Stetten that reminds you more of a meticulously set-out fairytale garden than of fields.

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Michael Bauer leans on his shovel as he takes a break. Most of the work here is done by hand, as the farm is too small for heavy machinery.

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V EG E TA B L E FA R M E R S

Waltraud Bauer “prunes” the tomato plants – every single day.

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Several years ago the following happened in a top Vienna restaurant. A guest ordered a regal meal including five courses and brimming with the season’s delicacies. After the scallops, John Dory and other delights had been polished off, the satisfied guest leaned back and asked to see the head chef.

The latter came running, the guest looked at him ecstatically and declared that he had never eaten such good potatoes in his life. What kind were they?

preferably as soon as possible. What else could he offer? Everyone was very keen on fresh zucchini blossoms, practically impossible to get hold of in this country.

The potatoes whose ranking had overtaken the seafood came from vegetable farmers Waltraud and Michael Bauer, in Stetten near Korneuburg. The farm the couple run defies the inadequate traditional description of an agricultural business. Any visitor would wander through the Bauer’s realm as if in a fairytale garden full of colour, fruit and fragrance.

Michael Bauer went home and began to redesign his parents’ farm. Soon zucchini were growing next to his father’s wheatfield. May turnips and special kinds of carrot spread out over another. The next one was covered by strawberries – the final breakthrough into the demanding world of gastronomy.

Almost forgotten, the “Mieze Schindler” variety’s wild-strawberry flavour won over not only the caterers, restaurateurs and other food providers, but the guests, too. They were phoning restaurants, asking if there were more of those wonderful strawberries, and if so, could they book a table.

Blooming fragrant roses of all colours as well as head-high cardones, the artichoke’s wild cousins, grow between the border beds full of flowers with (needless to say) edible blossoms. Long raised beds exude the aroma of herbs most of us have probably never heard of, much less tasted. Rare apples, pears and apricots ripen on the fruit trees, while in large poly-tunnels physalis, aubergines, peppers, beans and cucumbers of all varieties run riot alongside innumerable kinds of tomatoes whose colours range from dark purple and striped green to creamy white.

Their flavours vary just as much as their appearance.

Soon other ambitious chefs also took notice of the Stetter vegetable specialists, and a fruitful dialogue between kitchen and field started that has continued to this day. Vegetable producers such as the Bauers are important in the gastronomy business. They deliver the stuff out of which chefs make their dreams come true. By introducing the masters of cuisine to new products and turning their attention to exciting taste trends, they act as a source of inspiration for all those who know to how appreciate this. “You need a nose for what’s coming next”, says Michael Bauer. “That’s why we try something new

This is one of the Bauers’ strengths: they make the most of the rich range of different varieties in order to deliver the best to Austria’s gastronomy business. You could describe the couple as artists of epicurean botany, ambassadors of organic taste, the vanguard of a culture of rooting out forgotten and newly found fruits, vegetables and herbs. They were already experimenting with exciting, unknown raw material when studying at the University of Natural Resources and Life 0 4 Sciences in Vienna. As a student It can’t get any tinier: flea beans Michael Bauer bred chicory, are the smallest amongst the world’s hardly known in this country 10,000 bean species. three decades ago, and wrote his dissertation on this bittersweet, capricious vegetable that will only grow in the dark.

Bauer recalls how after all the analysing was over, he stood in front of a not inconsiderable harvest of chicory and asked himself, “so what am I going to do with it all?” He packed up these crunchy little winter-salad ingredients, drove to Vienna and took a chance, knocking on the door of a well-known restaurant. A minute later he had got rid of his entire load, and in return received an order from the head chef to keep on supplying as much as he could grow,

“More than 90 percent of the experimentally planted herbs are not interesting, but every so often an exciting plant appears.”

Waltraud Bauer

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V EG E TA B L E FA R M E R S

One physalis isn’t like the next physalis. The largest aren’t the best, sweetest, or most flavourful.

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“You need a nose for what’s coming next.

That’s why we try something new every year.”

Michael Bauer

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V EG E TA B L E FA R M E R S

every year.” He looks after the fruits and vegetables, Waltraud Bauer after the blossoms and the herbs, but in the end everyone in the family business gets involved in whatever needs doing, whenever. This can mean working around the clock, especially between February and November.

Large food conglomerates grow produce for long-term storability at the expense of flavour, but those who disagree with that approach have to harvest tomatoes, strawberries and cucumbers every day, and zucchini blossoms twice a day. They have to ensure that the blossoms of delicate violet, wild pansy and scented geranium reach their destination within hours. The enterprise supplies about 30 gastronomy businesses a week with absolutely fresh produce. When Michael Bauer nips tomatoes off the stem, he knows exactly which ones have a perfect flavour just then and which ones need another day or two to ripen.

Corn, beans and pumpkin are grown in the same mixed-type cultivation used by the Central American Mayas at least 2,000 years ago. Corn provides the poles on which beans can grow, which in turn supply the corn’s roots with nitrogen. The pumpkins protect the earth from erosion and dryness. This history of shared cultivation of crops and people is part of Waltraud and Michael’s agricultural philosophy. They know their home-grown plants’ history just as well as their preferred locations, light, shade, water and soil consistency. It’s all part of the plants’ growth and their flavours’ development. For example, the same kind of potato can taste entirely different depending on the soil it matured in.

Waltraud Bauer collects seeds and herbs from around the world, sows and plants them, and tests them in field and kitchen. She considers only the best as marketable: “More than 90 percent of the experimentally planted herbs are not interesting, but every so often an exciting plant appears.” Take Sicilian dill. Freshly picked and immediately put in your mouth, it tastes similar to standard dill, but it develops surprisingly sweet and different, strong flavours on your tongue. Then there’s the horseradish leaf with its hot taste, the redleafed sorrel or the balsamic sage from Africa.

The stretched-out, half-raised plots housing this colourful sprawl of herbs display a practical elegance and have been made by the owners. It reflects the way the Bauers work: they try and do things, extracting the best out of everything, whether variety, plant, fruit or tool. They get their 0 6 hands dirty and always stay on Strawberries between the lookout for something new. the flowers.

So if a legendary Italian chef like Cesare Giaccone from the Piedmont comes to visit the couple’s vegetable domain and happens to mention a fantastic type of corn to use in polenta, soon after it will be test-grown in Waltraud Bauer’s corn field.

A guest like the one whose tastebuds were so thrilled by the Stetten potatoes doesn’t really need to know all this in order to enjoy. Quality stands for itself.

Nevertheless, a dish might just be even more delightful when you understand that the art produced in the kitchen has its roots in the soil and the people who look after it with such dedication.

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Carrots: orange, white, purple and pink, thick or thin, any which way you like.

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HONEYBEES

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LORD OF THE BEES T H E T E R RO I R D I S C USS I O N I S M OV I N G AWAY F RO M W I N E. N OW I T’ S H O N E Y R E F L EC T I N G T H E L A N DS W H E R E T H E B E E S A R E BUSY: ST Y R I A N H O N E Y F RO M B E E K E E P E R J O H A N N E S G RU B E R, W H E R E V I N TAG E S A R E CO M PA R E D F RO M Y E A R TO Y E A R. A LO O K AT L A N DS C A P E S I N JA RS O F R E S I D UA L SU GA R L E V E L S M A D E BY 16 M I L L I O N F E E L E RS.

BY NINA WESSELY PHOTOGRAPHY: MIRCO TALIERCIO

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HONEYBEES

After spending years in the international wine industry, Johannes Gruber has returned home.

Musicians, artists or chefs are said to have a revolutionary spirit; less so beekeepers. Indeed, a first encounter with Johannes Gruber in Buch am Buchberg in Styria does little to challenge this cliché. However, it soon becomes clear that a revolutionary heart does beat in Johannes Gruber’s chest, fighting for greater awareness and consideration of origins, this time in regard to honey. Earlier on he believed in the natural power of wines, grown organically, bottled free of contamination. The Styrian sold them in Paris and the south of France at a time when in Austria biodynamics was something talked about behind closed doors.

Today, revolutionaries regard organic and natural wines as old hat. Maybe that’s why Johannes Gruber fills up jars with landscapes made from honey, and why he’s moved back from France to the hills of eastern Styria. Here he’s busy shaking up the assumption that there’s just simple flower and forest honey. “In the honey, the bees reflect the landscapes they live in”, all within a radius of four kilometres (two and a half miles). It could be compared to a Grand Cru from Burgundy, where the wine grown

“Year by year, high-quality honey is a reflection of its origins.”

02 He cares for 8 million domesticated insects who produce up to 10,000 kilos (22,000 pounds) of honey a year.

in a few hectares characterises its region. “A jar of wood honey, please,” is not good enough for Gruber. The order should be for “a jar of Stuhleck mountain wood honey, vintage 2013”. Several of the nomadic beekeeper’s hives stand at the Stuhleck, in the foothills of the Fischbacher Alps, 1,200 metres (4000 feet) above sea level. He doesn’t carry his hives to the meadows on his back like they used to 200 years ago: these days bees travel by car, in Gruber’s case an old VW van criss-crossing southern and eastern Styria. This can be up to three times per season, whenever a bloom has faded and it’s time to move on into the forest or to a field of sunflowers.

The bees are always busy gathering and filling up the honeycombs with fresh honey, from buckwheat pollen or cherry orchards near the Slovenian border. Gruber takes out and the full honeycombs and replaces them with empty ones. “You only need to know what is in bloom when and where, and of course you also have to be on good terms with the

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Multi-talented: Johannes Gruber is as much at home in science, philosophy and economics as he is in agriculture.

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HONEYBEES

F RO M T H E M O U N TA I N S TO T H E M E A D O W S 04–06

Instinct, know-how and patience are needed so that the bees can create honey landscapes at seven different locations.

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farmers,” says the beekeeper. They profit from the produced honey. Now the pioneer Johannes Gruber bees on their land, too: it’s an ingenious system that has developed 200 of them as well as his philosophy couldn’t have been designed better by an economist, that honey is the reflection of its origins. Also, honey a win-win solution for everyone, and 40–50 kilos can mature, as his wood honeys from the Stuhleck (88–110 pounds) per comb. “That’s even though bee- from 2003 to 2015 show. Each one reflects not only keeping avoids industrialisation as much as possible,” the location but also that year’s weather. “2012 wasn’t the former wine trader explains. The bees just can’t a particularly good year for wood honey. But the dancope with it. Maximising profits or splitting bee pop- delion honey has turned out to be especially intense ulations too often to keep even more hives doesn’t and delicate,” the beekeeper says, just like a vintner. work. “The bees will die.” A beekeeper’s job is to The 2004 vintage of mountain forest honey briefly ensure that there’s always enough but not too much carries you up into the tops of the silver firs at the space in the hives. “The temperature is crucial. If the Stuhleck. So why indeed should only grapes have the hive’s too big it gets too cold. If there are too many privilege of describing landscapes? This maverick is bees in one place there’s a risk that they’ll swarm asking the question now, and one day it will make out,” settling instead in a tree trunk or somewhere waves far beyond the four-kilometre radius of the else more suitable and comfortaflight of the honeybee. ble. To avoid that, the bees need visiting at least once every ten days, which limits the number of bee populations a beekeeper can look after. In Johannes Gruber’s case that’s an impressive 200, with 40,000 or more animals per hive in the summer.

In certain weather conditions, such as heavy rains, the 8 million insects need to be seen more often, as the danger of swarming out is greater. Not surprisingly, Gruber’s VW camper van has run up quite a distance. During the season, which starts mid-March with the flowering of the cherry 07 Buckwheat, dandelion or fir tree up to neophytes such as laburnectar: the result is different every time. num and impatiens in September, You can tell from just the colour. there’s hardly time to catch your breath; after that the bees want to be left in peace. “Feeding the animals with sugar water for the winter finishes at the end of September.” Then it’s waiting, putting together empty hives for the coming season and selling the past summer’s honey. In the meantime the winter bees snuggle up around the queen until late February, when she begins to lay eggs for the coming summer’s generation, the bees who can’t wait to go searching for the best nectar in Styria.

This honey-tasting rookie gets to try 23 varieties from summer 2015 and before. The journey begins in the woods on the banks of the river Lafnitz, takes me across the dandelion-filled plateau near Waisenegg and ends at Raab’s nature park, where the bees fully exploited the cherry blossoms. The resulting honey is creamy with an aroma of cherry blossom and marzipan. Then we’re taken into the forest; first to the spruces in the Naintschgraben. “This is where in 2015 my father harvested one of his best forest honey vintages. He was 85.” The son’s Naintschgraben is special, too: orange peel and caramel, slightly spicy. Of course, without the first two hives, a 1999 present from the father, the son would have never

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ON THE MENU

MASTERS OF THE GAME ARTWORK:

BY ANNA BURGHARDT

DEBORAH SENGL

Austrian game cuisine is roaming further afield. Spiced with Cambodian kampot pepper and stirring up great expectations with aroma of orange blossom, it has an impressive edge on a global level.

It’s only a tiny distance from the useless to the phenomenal – as well as a few years of working on development. These few years have seen chefs persistently demand new quality in game from hunters.

In fact, it’s thanks to a handful of ambitious hunters that today’s thrilling new Austrian game cuisine, unparalleled internationally, has become possible. They are less concerned with the perfect trophy and more with the right selection of animals from a herd, an exact shot, a stress-free death for the animal, and the

shortest possible timespan between shot and cold storage. All this determines the difference between useless and phenomenal. There can be no question that current culinary trends require a phenomenal quality of meat. Larding or basting in vinegar and then stewing everything, paying no attention to which cut is being dealt with while desperately hoping for some tenderisation – it’s all so last year, as is the predictable pink roasting of all the more delicate cuts. Today, game is steamed, made into a confit or

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gently roast on the bone, and combined with a variety of unexpected flavours.

Game is a great opportunity for Austria’s cuisine, and not just because of hunters’ current recognition of quality. Austria has always been a country for game, and cookery books from past centuries emphasise the meat’s importance. They feature recipes such as hare’s ear salad, leg of beaver, aspic of lark with orange, ragout of deer tongue and heel with mo-

rels, or wood pigeon in bacon and vine leaves. Recipes like these also inspire today’s cooking, although for various reasons, many animals that were eaten in past centuries, such as otter, wood grouse, snipe or cormorant, feature only rarely on today’s menus, or not at all.

Thanks to being as free-range as it can get, game has a huge advantage over other kinds of meat. Game feeds on the best forest and meadow have to offer, so

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ON THE MENU

it can grow and develop free of artificial, mass-produced food. The animals move a lot and are lean.

Apart from the boar, game is only available at certain times of the year. Chefs abroad are jealously eyeing up Austria’s forest management and the varieties of meat available. “In France game is a luxury product, up to 90 percent comes from abroad, and mostly frozen. That’s of a B-quality that we would no longer accept”, says Heinz Reitbauer, who has himself worked in France. From the Pannonian plain

with its wild poultry across the areas of boar and small game around Vienna, from the Hochschwab, central Europe’s largest chamois region, to the high mountains of Salzburg, Tirol and Vorarlberg – the range available to Austrian cuisine is enormous. And game isn’t the same everywhere. The flavours and textures of the meat vary so greatly that the possibilities and combinations are virtually limitless. This is what makes the use of standard spices juniper, allspice and pepper, which are supposed to work

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just fine with deer, stag, boar, hare and pheasant, so pointless. You have to listen to game, get a feel for it. Only then you will realise that pheasant and hare have nothing in common beyond belonging to the small game category. Pheasant, with such elegant silky meat and a light, almost fragile taste, is far more delicate when it comes to adding the right spices than the wild hare bawling out its deep dark flavour. The latter can cope with accompaniments like chocolate-habanero-chillies and its own blood that’s

been waiting as frozen ice cubes for the moment it can prove its willingness to bond. While shoulder of hare, Heinz Reitbauer’s favourite piece of game (“absolutely the noblest of meats”), develops sensationally when roasted, breast of wild duck or saddle of wild goat call for different preparation and treatment. Careful frying on the bone is recommended for breast of wild duck or pheasant, and generally the separation of breast and leg, too. Even the cuts of the same animal differ from each other, so using

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the whole body of any wild poultry makes little sense, as does deboning and vacuum-packing. A saddle of wild goat, the first game of the year and therefore greatly in demand (best killed in its second year), is especially well suited to gentle steaming. Sometimes wild goat is dressed in aromatic herbs, such as red orache spinach, perilla (a member of the mint family) or rocket lettuce. Orange or lavender blossom also add something to this meat, as they release their essential oils during the steaming process and provide

a fragrant counterpart to the meat’s woody and gamey flavours. August sees the first young deer, which goes well with chickweed and new corn. During the game season in autumn the Steirereck lists eight to ten game dishes on its menu; the guests’ favourite is pheasant, by a considerable margin.

Fruit and game go together particularly well, as shown in traditional Austrian recipes calling for the classic duo of orange and cranberry. These days

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quince and tomatillo, green tomatoes, pineapple and physalis are coupled with wild duck boar, stag and hare. A measured dose of something bitter, such as sorrel or fresh essence of lemon peel, is always good for balancing out game’s potentially dull and heavy character. Spices like cardamom, kampot pepper or sumac can also add lightness to game.

For all its variety, the potential of game cuisine has not been fully exploited in Austria. For example,

it is illegal in Austria to use a beaver – whose tail is considered a delicacy in Canada – for food, even though the animal’s population needs reducing because of the great damage it is currently causing.

However, beavers are only culled and their carcasses disposed of, when they could be delivered to ambitious chefs instead. Heinz Reitbauer thinks that crow would be exciting, too. “Our time will come.”

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HAUL OF THE WILD

BY ACHIM SCHNEYDER, PHOTOGRAPHY: MIRCO TALIERCIO

Unfarmed freshwater fish guarantees a very special taste experience. Österreichische Bundesforste manages Austrian agriculture and forestry, including sustainable fishing at the lake Hallstatt lake in the Salzkammergut.

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At the wheel: Maximilian Peinseiner and Alexander Scheck on board the Traun.

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02–03

The so-called gillnets measure 70 metres in length and reach down to depths of 13 metres.

The river Traun flows into the Hallstättersee, but the boat Traun floats on it, at 199 HP and built in a wharf in Linz specifically for this lake and its professional fishermen.

It’s Friday, 5am, and Maximilian Peinmeister, 25 and head of fishing at the Österreichische Bundesforste, and his 33-year-old colleague, biology

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Detailed work on board: every grip is right, every knot stays tight.

graduate Alexander Scheck, are heading from Hallstatt to the opposite shore. A few last shreds of rainclouds hang from the sky as the diesel engine putters along quietly on the lake as smooth as glass, and the early summer sun is getting stronger.

In a few minutes it will all look like a perfect picture postcard.

“The wild-fishing season starts in July and ends in October,” explains the head of fisheries explains and steers towards the net hanging from a rope held down by a stone in the shallow water. With the engine now switched off, Max and Alexander pull the boat along the rope away from the shore, towards the first buoy. The latter marks the start of a 70 metre-long gillnet that begins three metres below the water’s surface and reaches down to 13 metres. A cheeky gull is watching all the time, shrieking hungrily in the morning air, as one whitefish after another

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Going strong: Max Peilsteiner pulls up the ten-kilo anchor from the bottom of the lake.

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On ice: the fish, mostly whitefish, immediately land in the prepared boxes.

lands in the boxes filled with ice. “It’s sustainable management we’re looking out for,” says Alexander and points to the nets’ mesh. The 40 mm (1.5 inches) gaps are large and quite permeable, ensuring that it’s almost entirely whitefish weighing 400 g (14 oz.) or more to get caught. “These are mostly six years old or above, so younger fish swim through.”

Of course this applies not just to the whitefish but also any by-catches, mostly char, trout and – very rarely – pike. “Thanks to the width of the mesh and a ban on amateur fishing for lake trout, their stock has greatly recovered,” says Alexander. In short, wild fishing guarantees natural offspring, and for this reason no young fish are introduced into the

lake. The annual catch definitely does not exceed the natural growth of young fish.

The first net has been dealt with, now comes the second. Both are put out on Monday and emptied once daily from Tuesday to Friday, after which they are immediately cast out again, except on Friday. Wild catches generally mean absolute harmony with nature. Fish are caught now as they were when commercial fishing in the Salzkammergut was first documented in 1280. The animals go untouched by human hand. Neither fed nor bred, they live entirely on plankton – insects that land on the lake’s surface – and, if they are predatory fish, other fish. They’re at least six years old or above, at least in the case of the

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Prize catch: a splendid char is caught in the net.

whitefish. Another reason for the great quality of the fish is the excellent quality of the lake’s water, which even in summer hardly reaches above 21 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit). “This is mostly due to the glacial water that flows in the Waldbach down from the Dachstein mountain into the lake,” says Max. Together with the Traun river the Waldbach also ensures that the lake hardly ever freezes over.

“It’s because there’s such strong streams through the lake. The last time that it was really totally frozen after a long period of extreme cold was more than 20 years ago.”

There is sudden happy excitement on the 10 metre-long (30 feet) Traun boat: a respectably sized

08 Parking space: Old boathouses adorn the bank near Hallstatt.

char has gone into the net. Later, during weighing, this prize catch turns out to weigh 2.7 kilos (nearly 6 pounds). “An absolute rarity,” the fishermen cheer.

The char, which are distributed by the Bundesforsten, usually come from the lake Grundl and lake Toplitz. On average, three to four tonnes (3.3–4.4 US tons) of fresh fish are caught in the lake annually.

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A small part of the catch is sold through retail, but most of it goes to the gastronomy industry, both locally and to ten businesses across Austria’s nine provinces. Vienna is the exception with two: the Steirereck is one of them. One kilo (2.2 pounds) costs 29 Euro, regardless what kind of fish it is: what’s important is that it’s wild. This means that any delivery is sent out on the morning after the actual catch, at the latest. The Hallstättersee fish is dispatched by express delivery from the Bundesforste’s fishery in Kainisch, Styria, vacuum-packed and in water-tight iceboxes. The precious commodity arrives at its destination just 24 hours later. The drive to this up-to-date operation in the next province takes about 15 minutes, but for all the high-tech equipment, manual work is required, too: gutting, scaling, filleting, curing and preparing for smoking. Even though there’s a tool to use for scaling, machines come second here. “We always have to scale again afterwards to make sure the goods are perfect down to the very last detail”, says Max. Only high-quality salt from the Salzkammergut is used in curing and smoking. Indeed, when it comes to smoking, nothing is left to chance: they all swear by local beechwood from forests in the Inner Salzkammergut.

a freely ranging fish, caught in the wild after living for at least 30 months in a natural lake of crystalclear mountain water. Its wild genes make it an extremely energetic creature that’s far more active than traditionally farmed fish. It lives mostly in the deep, only racing to the surface for food before diving down again. Its instincts determine its life.

By now, an interested gourmet would presumably ask him- or herself what happens in the months from November to June, when wild fishing is not permitted. As the BunA R E STAU R A N T desforsten look after, work on and ON THE LAKE IS partly lease out 74 of Austria’s largS U P P L I E D BY B OAT est lakes and more than 2,000 kiloWITH FRESH FISH. metres (1240 miles) of running waters, including 400 fishing areas, one of the organisation’s staff, Matthias Pointinger, is well-qualified to provide the answer. “Apart from fishing the Bundesforste have two other responsibilities: cultivating animals in the wild, and pure culture, preventing adulteration and contamination.” Every fish from this wild culture is a direct descendant of

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Guaranteed freshness: the fish are always gutted and processed immediately.

“Sustainability guarantees that the fish stock recovers year after year.”

Max Peinsteiner

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Smoke signals: whitefish caught in the wild and now in the smoker.

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Alexander Scheck tired and worn-out after finishing work on the boat.

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13 Final touches: scaling, gutting and part-filleting.

“What’s really important to us is that rearing and appropriate feeding are carried out following nature’s principles, from their own quiet zones to having to earn their food themselves. Also, that the wild fish’s eggs harvested by hand during the winter months can carefully grow and live in our breeding plants, taking as much time as necessary. When it comes to flavour, even the greatest experts find it hard to identify a difference to completely wild fish.”

On the other hand, pure culture means that only the best and strongest fish reach the pool for breeding.

“Here too we place the highest value on near-natural farming and feeding,” says Pointinger. After all, pure culture ensures that all requests for first-class fish can be met, all year round. By the way, wildfarmed fish contain the highest levels of healthy omega-3 fatty acids of all Austrian fish.

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It’s Monday. Maximilian and Alexander have recovered from their weekday schedule, when they sometimes get as a little as five hours sleep. Lasting two seasons on average, the nets are ready to use again, after a few repairs had to be made here and there, like darning holes. Meshes can easily tear if capital catches like the large char get into the net.

The Traun also required some maintenance after a sudden wind on Friday drove the boat across a raised net that got wound up in the screw. A new anchor was needed, too, as the stone that was lowered to the lake’s bed, at the outer end of one of the nets under the buoy, got tangled up and tore off when it was pulled up. “We never get bored,” says Max as he starts the Traun’s engine. It’s the beginning of another week. May the nets be as full as in the previous days. It will keep the gourmets happy.

Scenic shots of the shore on the lake Hallstatt.

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Lamborous

01–02 About 150 sheep gambol on the Pogusch and reside in romantic rooms…

BY ACHIM SCHNEYDER PHOTOGRAPHY: MIRCO TALIERCIO

CO N N O I SS E U RS R EGA R D L A M B F RO M T H E P O G US C H A S T H E RO L L S- ROYC E O F T H E S P EC I E S. I T H A S E AT E N I TS FA I R S H A R E TO E A R N T H I S R E P U TAT I O N – I N FAC T, I T H A S A L R E A DY A D D E D S P I C E TO I TS OW N L I F E…

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It’s Thursday. Written in large letters on the blackboard outside the house, the meaty dialect underlines the tempting announcement of freshly slaughtered lamb. Another relevant statement follows in the line beneath: “Inner Values.” That should explain it all to any gourmet with even the tiniest of epicurean imagination, maybe not in great detail, but enough to go by. Also, he could always ask about the culinary excursions of the day.

The staff are as genuinely welcoming and ready to give out information as their traditional Styrian outfits are real. Soon the gourmet could be sitting in the Steirereck on the Pogusch, perhaps outside on the sun terrace, almost shamelessly close to culinary paradise as he takes in the unspeakably seductive aromas rising from the plate in front of him, like roast lamb kidney with shallots and sun-dried tomatoes, or lamb’s liver with shallots and thyme. Ideally it’s kidneys and liver, but special requests are fine, too. The customer need only charm the waiters by

“Some lambs need the bottle because the mother does not recognise them as her young.”

rural life’s work finally took off in the early summer of 1996. “Even so, I could not look after everything myself, of course, however close to my heart animal husbandry was and still is. And I also had to run the Steirereck in Vienna…”

At that time, 20 years ago, the barn was where now some of the outstandingly comfortable and mostly occupied rooms are. Along with that the barn was quite a bit smaller than the new, downright luxurious home for the animals, built in 2008, just a little lower down than the main house. The façade features a large, clearly visible sign: “Romantic Rooms for Sheep”. In a way we have Emma and Paula to thank for this new barn. They were two nasty hurricanes leaving devastation in their wake in early 2008, breaking trees like cocktail sticks and causing wood prices to plummet. “We made use of what is technically called the windfall, that is, the large piles of wood,” Walter says as he feeds two baby sheep with a bottle. There’s a good reason: “Every so often, when a ewe gives birth to twins she seems to completely ‘forget’ her firstborn and doesn’t recognise it as her own, because too much time has passed between that birth and the second one.”

complaining that he couldn’t possibly choose between these two delights to discover that a whole kidney from a sucking calf, roast in deep fat, is also on offer. Just saying…

Monday was slaughtering day.

“On average we deal every week with four to five of our lambs, as 03 well as two sucking calves we get The next generation on the Pogusch. from a farmer close by. We also Walter Gesselbauer helps to raise them slaughter our own pigs, depending with the bottle. on demand,” explains Walter Gesselbauer. Walter is something of a Pogusch bedrock: on 1 April this year he celebrated his 20th work anniversary. Heinz Reitbauer senior brought the professional carpenter on board – a wise forethought. The then boss decided that he no longer wanted to lease his restaurant and had begun to realise his vision of his own restaurant, together with the agricultural business already in existence. This

Today, about 150 ewes live on the Pogusch: Jura sheep and white mountain sheep – both give a particularly high milk yield – as well as blackface sheep. When Walter Gesselbauer started to work there, there were hardly 40, with about 20 goats and a few oxen. Jura and mountain sheep going into oestrus does not depend on the seasons, so two lammings per year are possible, while the blackface sheep only lamb once a year.

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Lord of the Sheep: on 1 April 2017 Walter Gesselbauer celebrated his 20th anniversary of working at the Reitbauer house on the Pogusch.

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Group portrait with cat and dog: all is well amongst the straw and hay.

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Not only sheep but pigs too are bred on the Pogusch, and “Petzibär” the boar regularly bestows the joys of motherhood on the sows.

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“In addition we cross-breed mountain sheep with Jura sheep, and then the first generation with blackface ones,” Walter tells us. However, it’s not just the various cross-breedings that are the reason for the quality of the meat, it’s also the animals’ way of life, and what they are fed as well as what fodder they find themselves. As soon as the spring weather allows, ideally the end of April at the latest, the sheep are out on the wide meadows. From then on they no longer eat mostly hay as in winter but above all the flavourful mountain and meadow herbs growing everywhere. You could say that the animals are already seasoning themselves... As a complement they get some energy food: corn, barley and wheat.

When the weather changes again in late autumn, they’re back in their romantic rooms, 24/7.

For some gourmets lamb is definitely not at the top of the list of favourite meat dishes, often because lamb can have a strong taste of mutton. That just doesn’t happen on the Pogusch nor at the Steirereck in Vienna, which, needless to say, sources its lamb from its Styrian branch. “We slaughter relatively early,” says Walter the shepherd. “Usually at the age of three-and-a-half to four-and-a-half months, after the animals’ so-called final fattening phase, they will have reached a live weight of 40 to 45 kilos (88 to 99 pounds).” Of course, cooks and chefs only get 22 to 26 kilos (48 to 57 pounds), after shoulder, saddle and other cuts have hung in the cooler for a week or two before the animals are completely carved up.

On the other hand, offal is immediately used for culinary purposes. Just as important, and one of the reasons for the indescribably good quality of Pogusch lamb, is the fact that the slaughter takes place right there. “It literally takes place in the room next door,” Walter says. “It spares animals the stress of being transported somewhere else.”

fattening pigs and five pigs moving from piglet to hog stage, weighing approximately 55 kilos (120 pounds).

The pigs spend a year living in the woods and are finally slaughtered when their live weight is at 130 kilos (145 pounds). “Petzibär”, father of so many wonderful roasts, weighs way over 300 (660).

07 The sheep feed on only the finest, while the ten piglets enjoy their mother’s delicious milk.

The same of course also applies to the Swabian-Hall swine, who live here like pigs in clover.

“Petzibär”, the name of the mighty boar, lives in his own little house with a front garden, regularly bestows the joys of motherhood on the four resident sows. In addition there are always on average ten

“Slaughtering takes place right here, it spares the animals stress.”

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BY UTE WOLTRON

Everyone knows about the cep, chanterelle and parasol mushroom.

But who has tasted specialities such as the wood blewit, or indulged in the aroma of the coral tooth fungus? The world of mushrooms is mysterious and far from thoroughly charted, and only few of these wild things let themselves be tamed and cultivated by humans.

HEATHED WOODTUFT The delicate representative of the pholiota family is a small agaric with a strong aroma. Not only does it smell pleasantly spicy, its powerful, nutty taste brings in the forest. It prefers to grow in deciduous forests, and although it looks like a bush it grows from a single stalk on stumps and branches of trees. The harvesting season kicks off in spring and lasts until late autumn.

The mushroom is the blossom of the fungus PHOTOGRAPHY: KLAUS FRITSCH

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Long before the start of the mushroom season, The world’s largest living thing is not the blue the large community of foragers is already debating whale but a fungus. It is about 2,400 years old, weighs anxiously. It's the same as every year: will there be an estimated 600 metric tonnes (660 tons), and, true enough rain in the decisive months? Will the best to the mycelium’s invisible form it is burrowed up to places for mushrooms keep their promises this year one metre below the earth’s surface and stretches too, as they did for so many previous years? Or will across 9 square kilometres (nearly 3.5 square miles) you, after hours of walking and clutching a basket, – four times the area of Monaco. This particular honfind yourself on empty pastures which only last year ey fungus grows in the Malheur National Forest in were covered by mushroom after mushroom, as if Oregon and produces thousands of delicious mushin an enchanted forest, and as you picked your way room blooms every year. However, these are only through you reached a state of happiness bordering edible when thoroughly cooked: in their raw state on ecstasy? After all, it is not just the Lord’s ways they are poisonous. that are mysterious, but those of the mushrooms too, It’s questions like this – can this mushroom go and you never know where those paths may lead to. on the dinner plate, or is it inedible or even toxic? Is However, the most angst-ridden question of all whatever you picked the mushroom you thought, or is: will the mushroom-foraging competition discov- is it actually a dangerous doppelgänger? – that make er the jealously guarded secret locations? A fungus foraging something of a black art. Only those who fetishist will share most things with his or her fellow really know their stuff can then reach out for other foragers, but when it comes to sharing in the woods, kind of mushrooms than just the few well-known they all agree: the best places are never revealed, and types such as the cep, chanterelle or parasol mushknowledge of these is only passed room. However, people like that down from one generation to the are few and far between. next, if at all. In a way, mushroom POPLAR FIELDCAP foragers have the same symbiotic Particularly sought after relationship to the object of their in Italy and Japan, this mushroom belongs to the catedesire as the mycelium with the gory of champignons. It loves trees and other residents of the the wood of poplars above forest. all and only reluctantly moves to other trees. Its delicate forest mushroom aroma remains genteel and mild, and the meat stays tender, too. By the way, in Italy the mushroom is called pioppino, in Japan it goes by the name of yanagi-matsutake.

Fungi are indeed highly mysterious creatures, neither plant nor animal, but they are more closely related to fauna than to flora. What’s more, they are found everywhere, even though they are not visible to us. The mushrooms we harvest are really only the tiny tips of an enormous iceberg. In an analogy to botany, mushrooms are simply the blossoms of enormous creatures that live just beneath the forest floor and which, over centuries, sometimes even millennia, can reach incredible dimensions.

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That’s a shame, because there are so many varieties of this culinary delight that even experts don’t have a complete overview of it all. It’s estimated that there are about 100,000 kinds of fungus across the world, but just five percent of those have been scientifically classified. About 3,000 so-called Higher Fungi grow in Central Europe. One person who doesn’t lose his way in this jungle and can define the 500 domestic types of mushrooms like an old witch could determine various flowers and herbs is Florian Kogseder, a young man from Molln in Upper Austria.

According to this specialist, mushrooms also need to be treated very differently in the kitchen.

Some develop the best taste when fried, but in others a quick shot of steam coaxes out the best flavour.

Some are excellent as a confit, while others are ideal for drying and using as a refined spice.

Kogseder has approached his topic both empirically and scientifically. The forager developed into a grower who runs an exquisite little farm for rare tree mushrooms. With an ideal combination of a grounded education in the kitchen and a study of biochemistry under his belt, it was only a matter of time before growing shiitake mushrooms for fun turned into a profitable enterprise. So he took on an age-old idea invented in Asia, injecting wood with mycelium, waiting patiently for a year or so and finally harvesting mushrooms over a long period of time as well as extending into other special mushroom varieties.

He has been roaming the forests in the Kalkalpen National Park since childhood, always on the lookout for special mushrooms with names like wood blewit, coral tooth fungus, velvet shank or cauliflower mushroom. As with many others, Kogseder’s passion for mushrooms started with the Big Three – parasol, chanterelle and cep – when he was still in primary school. However, after some decisive culinary experiences, such as deep-fried shaggy mane mushroom, the first fresh unforgettable morels, or the black chanterelle with its remarkably SHIITAKE intense taste, he was determined The Chinese have a particuto go down the less well-trodden larly lovely name for this delicacy: shiang-gu means paths in the land of mushrooms fragrant mushroom, highly in future and – after close examappropriate for this mushination, of course – taste his way room, which is also greatthrough its diversity. ly appreciated in Europe.

Shiitake is one of the oldest

Ask him to sketch out the difmushrooms, and the favourite in both China and Japan. ferent worlds of taste in the uniIn the past the Emperor was verse of mushrooms, and his degiven shiitake as a gift. scriptions will make you want to This delicacy has a highly rush into the woods and gather up aromatic and solid flesh. all these delicacies straightaway.

Kogseder says that the variety of the mushroom world is enormous, and is comparable in its abundance to that of vegetables. Practically everyone is familiar with the intense flavour of ceps, but that’s only a tiny part of an incredibly broad spectrum. There are mushrooms with bitter, sweet or fruity aromas. The texture of the mushroom’s flesh also varies greatly from type to type. Some are delicate and soft as butter, others crunchy or tough; many have a grainy consistency similar to chicken.

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By now he grows wild rarities such as golden oyster mushrooms, bearded hedgehog mushrooms, various woodtufts and a few other kinds, in natural conditions beneath the skies of Upper Austria.

Together with his colleague Johannes Pree he can barely meet the top-class gastronomy’s demand for freshly harvested produce. These mushrooms grow out in the open rather than in halls stifled by never-changing air conditioning. They may be cultivated, but really they are wild things, and blessed with the resulting strong aroma and desirable dense flesh.

No comparable tradition exists in Europe: the first European farming of mushrooms started only centuries later in France, and then only by chance. In the area around Paris, in about 1650, melon farmers were surprised to find fresh, crunchy champignons growing out of the horse manure they had recently put on the fields as a fertiliser. It took people another 160 years to find out that these kingly mushrooms grew even better in the dark, damp caverns and caves of the old Paris chalk mines than out in the open air.

Perhaps it is this wild, nearly untameable character that is part of the attraction, lending an almost magical aura to the subject of mushrooms.

Only about two dozen kinds of mushrooms can be successfully farmed, and even then they all have their particular preferences, by no means flourishing in every soil or in every wood. Most mushrooms form close bond with specific trees or other plants.

Their mycelium links up to the trees’ roots, but every so often this also penetrates the trunks, growing through these for many years while out of sight unPALE OYSTER til it finally makes its appearance If mushrooms had a club for as a tree mushroom. For human beautiful people, the elegantly shaped pale oyster beings, these “fruits” of the forest mushroom would be one of the have been on the menu since prefirst to be admitted. It is historical times, as foodstuff as related to the oyster mushwell as medicines and drugs. room, but it is firmer and meatier, and has a surpris-

The first attempts at cultivating scent of aniseed. If it hasn’t been harvested before, ing mushrooms by injecting seits cap can grow up to lected wood with mycelium were 20 centimetres wide, but the made by people in the Far East. best time to pick it is while As far as it is possible to determine it’s still young and tender. today, the Japanese were the pioneers, starting to cultivate tongkou about 200–300 years before the Western calendar, and later also shiitake mushrooms. In China too there were also early attempts at cultivating them, as there mushrooms are traditionally highly regarded and play an important part in medicine. A simple Chinese written manual for mushroom farmers dating from 600 AD deals with the Mu Err, known as wood or cloud ear in the West, a mushroom highly valued to this day in cooking as well as Traditional Chinese Medicine.

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In addition, farming champignons like this protected them from the elements and had the great advantage of making deliveries to customers possible at all times of the year. Soon the champignon industry was flourishing: at its height it is said to have produced a daily harvest of 30,000 kilos (66,000 pounds).

By the way: true mushroom connoisseurs also forage in the wilderness of alluvial forests, farmed woods and other locations – highly secret, of course – just about all year round. Mushrooms mature even in the depths of winter. One example of a classic winter type is the oyster mushroom. Spring sees the arrival of the widely unknown edible mushrooms such as the March mushroom and the spruce-cone toadstool, followed by the delicious morels – which so far nobody has managed to grow. From as early as May the first ceps burst through the forest floor, while the chanterelles come in June, and if you’re lucky, the parasols. After that it’s just one after the other, and the foraging season is considered officially open, even to those amongst us who aren’t experts.

Usually one of the best edible mushrooms, the shaggy mane mushroom, only appears in late summer. Related to the champignon, it is ideally harvested while still very young and served immediately. But it is an unpredictable beast. Other mushrooms at least stay in the same place, and their growth depends mostly on benevolent weather conditions. However, in the case of the shaggy mane you can’t rely on anything, you never really know where it’s going to pop up next.

JAPANESE WOODTUFT The Japanese woodtuft offers up a solid, crunchy texture and a fine nutty aroma that make this little beauty one of Japan’s favourite edible mushrooms. It particularly adds flavour to soups, stews and noodle dishes.

When it is freshly harvested, a sticky film covers the reddish-brown, shiny cap, but this layer disappears completely during cooking.

Even so, while the foraging community is out searching, Kogseder can stay calm and harvest, because this delicacy too grows in his front garden.

Who knows what’s coming next?

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THE JOY OF FRUIT

CHEERFUL Cosmopolitan

BY KATHARINA SEISER, PHOTOGRAPHY: KLAUS FRITSCH

The lemon is the most universal of all citrus fruits. It is used around the world, and its availability all year round is taken for granted. A declaration of love in 26 chapters.

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A

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Ancestry

Blackcurrants

There are various taxonomies of citrus fruit. Swingle and Tanaka’s classifications are the most well-known but differ widely. While Swingle identifies 16 types, Tanaka determines 10 times as many. Those set out

by British botanist Mabberley start out from three archetypes – Citrus medica (Citron), Citrus maxima (Pomelo) and Citrus reticulata (Mandarin) – whose genes play a part in nearly all types and sorts of citrus fruits.

are sour too, but they contain not just citric acid but malic acid as well.

The type of acidity has an influence on a food’s taste, which is why sour ingredients cannot be exchanged at a whim. For instance, acetic acid dominates in vinegar, oxalic acid in rhubarb, tartaric acid in the tamarind, and lactic acid in sauerkraut.

C

D

Citrus

Dragon, yellow

is the botanical genus name for the family of citrus fruit.

Its members have branched out in all directions, wildly cross-breeding across the world. Citrus x limon is the lemon.

This isn’t a friendly one like Fuchur from The Neverending Story but a dangerous one. Yellow Dragon or Huanglongbing is the name of a bacterium that ruins whole plantations of citrus trees and is considered as one of the greatest threats to the global citrus industry. Monocultures are easy prey: once trees are infected they die.

The flea that has carried the bacterium to Europe was discovered in Spain in 2014, but the bacterium itself has not been found yet.

E

F

Enhancement

Fish

How bland many dishes might taste if it weren’t for lemon and other citrus! Take the famous Italian dish Ossobucco alla Milanese. The braised slices of calves’ legs would be half as seductive without the gremolata on top. The finely chopped lemon peel, parsley and garlic are scattered across the steaming meat, and as the way that the aroma develops and wafts across the room whets everyone’s appetite.

Cleaning, souring and salting when preparing fish is something all chefs learn. Many consider lemon a must-have ingredient in cooking fish as well as in deep-fried dishes of all kinds, whether Schnitzel, liver or mushrooms. Its use with fish originally came from the need to neutralise the smell of a food possibly not that fresh anymore by adding lemon juice. In deep-fried foods it is used to stimulate the digestion of fat.

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THE JOY OF FRUIT

H

I

Grater

High season

Ichang

They’ve only been around for 20 years, but the graters by Microplane have revolutionised the way citrus fruits are treated in the kitchen. The US manufacturer of wood processing tools first introduced its zest graters to the market in 1998. They’re not that pretty but long and above all extremely sharp, and indispensable ever since.

for lemons as well as for oranges, mandarins, citrons or Seville oranges starts in late autumn and lasts over the whole of winter through to spring.

The Ichhang lemon or Ichang papeda from China is probably the most frost-resistant type of citrus. The natural crossing of the Ichang with the mandarin is the Yuzu, currently very popular in kitchens globally.

K J Junos

The Citrus Junos, aka Yuzu, is gastronomy’s new lemon, but due to restrictive EU import rules it’s available not as a fresh fruit but as conserved juice, dried peel, jam or candied. With a rich aroma and a sour juice, it’s like a lemon, mandarin, lime and grapefruit mixture but has its own flavour, bitter in high doses. It’s known as Yuja in Korea and is very popular there and in Japan.

Kalbsrahmgulasch

Without the fresh aroma of lemon zest, this veal goulash tastes like bread without salt. While there’s no place for lemon in a beef goulash, it definitely goes with veal lights, although there’s an ongoing argument for and against when it comes to apfelstrudel. Using lemon in traditional dishes truly is a minefield. The peacemaker is the realisation that it’s absolutely indispensable, in cuisines north of the Alps, too.

L

M

Lime

Meyer Lemon

also known as “Lost in Translation”. In some places “lemon” means the citrus medica, and the limone (citrus limon) describes the “citrus limone” lemon. Old cookbooks listing the limone as an ingredient actually mean the lemon. And these days, anybody talking about the limone probably means the lime.

is a crossing of lemon and orange with an unmistakable aroma. It’s only been known here for 100 years when American researcher Frank N. Meyer brought it from China. It has become increasingly popular in Europe, and rightly so.

Its high season here lasts from mid-October to mid-December, and it’s grown organically in Turkey.

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N North Africa

is the home of preserved lemons, a fermented food that has been recognised for centuries and which adds an unmistakably fresh taste, especially to both meat and vegetable stews. The lemons are cut into but not sliced through, filled with coarse sea salt, tightly stacked in jars, covered with lemon juice and left standing for several weeks. They become ever more intense and keep for years. Separated from the fruit’s flesh and rinsed, the peel is used in small amounts because of its high salt content and its intense taste.

O

P

Q

Organic

Peel

Quince

Often only a lemon’s juice is considered desirable, but honestly, the essential oils from the peel are at least as attractive. The peel of conventional lemons are treated with a cocktail of wax and fungicides, so it’s better to leave those aside and go for organic lemons.

It’s stardust, the outer skin of lemons and other citrus fruits, without the white, pectin-rich pith. The sharper the grater the more essential oil goes into the dish, not the air. To add peel and sugar, rub them together with your fingers until the sugar is moist, lumpy and yellow: the best way to dissolve and diffuse the aroma.

goes together with lemons extremely well – as indeed all stone fruit do. Whether to apply the juice or the peel depends on the other spices used. Lemon juice also stops fruit from turning brown, while the peel brings with it intensive fragrances that could rival many a flowery, tender pear or quince.

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R

S

Refrigeration

Sicily

Strips of zest, such as from Meyer lemons, are excellent for freezing. Keep in a glass container: plastic is no good because of citrus fruits’ high essential oil content. Pressed juice is also better frozen, as its taste changes only after a few hours in the fridge, but whole lemons are best stored loosely in the refrigerator.

A must-go destination for all citrus lovers. Autumn and winter are the most thrilling. The local lemon cultivation is so detailed that fruit from the same tree have different names depending on the time of growth and harvest. The first in early autumn are called verdelli, primofiore are the main winter harvest, and bianchetti describes the paler fruit in spring.

T Tarte au Citron

Aside from Lemon Bars, this is probably the most famous pastry dish made with many lemons and lots of sugar (usually in the form of a lemon curd), and a shortcrust pastry. The French version often comes with a meringue topping, while the American type is particularly good with Meyer lemons.

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U Useless,

absolutely useless, and something that resembles an alien object from outer space: that’s our verdict on the world-famous lemon press by Philippe Starck. Far less well known locally but much more worthwhile is the practical tool made from wood, which produces a particularly high yield. Lemon presses are usually made from stainless steel or glass; however, plastic is not recommended for using with citrus fruit.

V

W

X

Vitamin C

Wirsing

X

is contained in lemons, but the health factor is probably not the main reason why people love them so much. Surely it’s the fragrance of the peel and the fresh tang of the juice.

is the name for cabbage in Vienna. However, the location doesn’t matter that much: all kinds of cabbage, universally, go extremely well with lemon. An especially tasty dish is blanched kale or collard greens tossed in brown salted butter with plenty of grated lemon peel.

In botanical classification of the great citrus family, the x after the genus name citrus is an essential indicator of a hybrid, even if it often omitted. The crossing process may have occurred naturally or been caused by intentional hybridization.

Y

Z

Yellow

Zest

Ripe lemons aren’t always yellow. Some are green or a mixture, such as the typical Sicilian verdelli lemons in autumn. Lemons only turn yellow, as oranges turn orange, when the night-time temperature drops below 10°C (50°F). Often gas is used to speed up the process, as the market doesn’t accept ripe green lemons. But it’s not that straightforward anyway: a particularly beautiful kind of lemon starts out striped green and yellow but matures to pale yellow and pink stripes, with pink flesh inside.

Unlike the finely grated peel, pieces of zested peel are thicker. These strips are either peeled off with the zester – a tool invented for this very purpose – which makes them available for use straight away, or cut off more thickly with an ordinary peeler and then used immediately or finely chopped to unfold their entrancing effect. Candied lemon peel is not made from standard lemon peel but the peel of cedrat lemons.

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LETTER OF THANKS

LET TER TO FR ANK NICHOLAS MEYER (1875 – 1918) American Plant Researcher and Discoverer of the Meyer Lemon

BY KATHARINA SEISER

Dear Frank, I hope you don’t mind me addressing you so informally. My first conscious meeting with your research work was on 2 September 2011. On a hot day in late summer the specialist gardener Heimo Karner gave me a personal introduction to the citrus collection in Schönbrunn. From the cookery books

by Alice Waters (I think you would have liked her famous restaurant “Chez Panisse” in Berkeley) I knew that there is a particularly tasty type of lemon named after you because, according to your travel notes, you apparently discovered this on 18 or 19 April in a Beijing courtyard. I asked the citrus gardener about the Meyer lemon and whether he cultivated it in his collection of more than 100 types and sorts. He wanted to know whether it was a particularly special kind, but decided that he would probably have a plant somewhere. In the Crown Prince’s garden right next to the Schönbrunn Palace we strolled through the lemon trees lined up in a historical order until Karner stopped at a stunted little tree with just a single fruit. “Ah, that’s the Meyer,” he said – and just a moment later he had snipped off the large, soft fruit with an orange-yellow glow with his gardening shears. I think that you two would have got on well, as you are both men of action with a sense of unreserved curiosity and a great love of the beauty and wonder of the botanical world. Anyway, he placed the solitary Meyer in the palm of my hand, with the remark that should this turn out to be a good fruit, he would ensure its wellbeing and propagation (which indeed he has been doing successfully ever since). After a few days of admiring this present, which I considered immeasurably valuable, I reached for a knife. I will never forget the first strip of zest. Nothing in the world compares with that fragrance, which completely turned my head. My already high expectations

were exceeded by the complexity of the refreshing, clear and yet warm smell of a lot of lemon, a little orange and obvious thyme. However, at that time the fruit was still illegal in Europe, and you could only get it by travelling to California and smuggling it back deep inside in your suitcase, or maybe picking it off a hidden little tree whose value had not yet been recognised. In autumn 2013 a knowledgeable friend (who sends you her best regards) discovered a trade in Meyer lemons organically grown in Turkey.

They were still officially declared as normal lemons, because nobody knew what a treasure was being imported. Since then a steadily growing club of Meyer lemon fans longingly awaits their arrival. For two months we indulge in the aroma and ennoble practically every meal with it while greedily inhaling the peel’s fragrance throughout the food’s preparation.

In the meantime I have found out that salted Meyer lemons taste particularly excellent. However, the claim that the fruit is not suited to transport and storage because it is too soft is just balderdash and piffle. Ahead of the last delivery before Christmas I always fill up a shelf in my refrigerator, and it all keeps for several weeks. I hope I can rely on your approval as I vehemently campaign for the appreciation and cultivation of Meyer lemons in Europe.

I am no longer surprised that alongside the 2,500 other edible plants that came to America and have been grown there since as a result of your lengthy travels through Asia, you also discovered the Yuzu, currently the most sought-after citrus fruit in the West. Rest assured that with your inquiring mind and your great foresight, you have made millions of people happy – and continue to do so.

Yours eternally grateful, Katharina

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T H E STA RT E R B E F O R E T H E STA RT E R S

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CUISINE & GUESTS

The great Russian author Leo Tolstoy (1828 –1910) wrote, “You can give bread without love, but if you give love, you will always give love, too.” Bread, sadly in many places nothing more than a badly needed nutrient, in others is an enjoyable treasure. Either way it deserves the greatest respect – the kind of respect that is lived out at the Steirereck.

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JOYFUL MO UTHFULS

T H E R E D S H AV E I T

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T H E S TA RT E R B E F O

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O R E T H E S TA RT E R S

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T E M P T I N G T H E TA ST E B U D S

The Steirereck’s bread basket is a trolley. Steering the trolley is Andreas Djordjevic, better known as Brot-Andi.

01

For almost 13 years Andreas Djordjevic has given due honour to bread at the Steirereck.

BY ACHIM SCHNEYDER, PHOTOGRAPHY: PHILIPP HORAK

At the old Steirereck, the Steirereck in the Rasumovskygasse, there was something that wasn’t there at the new Steirereck, the one in the Stadtpark: the bread trolley. It was like the bread basket but on wheels. That’s just on the side, for those of us who can still remember the legendary advertisements for bread and other baked goods that featured the basket. The restaurant moved to its new culinary location by the banks of the river Wien in January 2005, and many of the guests who loyally followed soon wanted the trolley to be wheeled out of retirement in a dusty garage and brought back onto the culinary boulevard.

One day Birgit and Heinz Reitbauer felt they could no longer resist, and so the lady of the house began to search for a suitable driver. She approached the food runner Andreas Djordjevic, then still “rather shy”, as he puts it, and made him an offer. “The boss asked me if I wanted to take on the bread trolley for a few weeks once it had been brought back,” recalls the 33-year-old with Serbian roots. “So I thought, be brave and give it a go.”

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THE PROFESSIONAL CUTUP The probationary few weeks have turned into almost 13 years of duty, and the shy food runner of the past has become something of an institution, standing proud, with a self-confident, genuine but never intrusive manner. His colleagues respectfully refer to him as the bread sommelier, due to his extensive knowledge, and many regulars fondly call him Brot-Andi. With a twinkle in his eye he refers to himself as the “trained cutup” who rolls through the restaurant with the stuff that comes before the starter.

This cutup now shows off his bread both at lunchtime and in the evening. At midday it’s about 20 different varieties, in the evening it’s a bit more, sometimes up to 25. Four kinds are made in-house: the incredibly juicy black-pudding bread, huge lye pretzels, gluten-free potato bread with chives and sour cream, and white bread with lavender. The lavender used here grows in the herb garden on the roof of the Steirereck. The rest comes from currently seven different, more or less independent bakeries in and around Vienna.

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T E M P T I N G T H E TA ST E B U D S

ON THE SEARCH FOR INSIDER TIPS Nothing enters the house that hasn’t been previously inspected, tasted, assessed and eventually considered as good. “I know all our bakers’ kitchens on a personal level, if you like. I need to see how a place operates, I want to know where the ingredients and products come from, and how they’re made,” says Brot-Andi. He is proud that over the years, his floury fact-finding missions have led him to making some great discoveries.

“Initially it was the case that we bought many of our breads from bakeries that also supplied other restaurants. However, we weren’t always pleased with the quality.” So Andi went on a search and found

more and more small businesses who produced the kind of bread that went down well at the Steirereck.

Today Joseph Brot is the only supplier with a comparably well-known name. All the others are effectively insider tips and passed-on secrets, such as Denise Pölzelbauer in Bad Erlach, Schweighofer-Steiner in Tulln, or the Reiter bakery in Korneuburg.

“When it comes to bread,” Andi says, “it all depends on the smell, the crust and the fluffiness. The press test is also important. When you press into the crumb its shouldn’t give way too much.”

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FIVE KNIVES AND A PERFORMANCE Of course, the choice of knives matters just as much. “I use five different ones,” Andi explains, although in fact he always has six knives on his bread trolley. However, one of these is more or less for decoration. It’s the precious bread knife from the Austrian enterprise Blades of the Gods based in Bali. “I could use that one too, of course, but this knife requires a lot of care afterwards. So I usually do without this gem and just have it with me for show.”

The knife that Brot-Andi bought years ago for three Euros at a discount shop is no gem, but he can not do without it. “This has turned out to be a godsend for every type of ciabatta, which isn’t easy

to slice, because a good ciabatta is crisp on the outside but very soft inside. You always run the risk of squashing the bread or tearing it up. But not with this knife, with this knife the bread cuts like soft butter.” Both the black-pudding bread and the gluten-free bread have their own dedicated knife. “Because with the black-pudding bread it usually turns out a bit of a mess. And of course the gluten-free one mustn’t be contaminated.” If that weren’t enough, there is also one model for very fine slicing and one for coarser cuts.

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THREE CROSSES ON THE CRUST Bread knives are filling up the kitchen drawers in Andreas’ home. “At one point I started to collect them. By now I own about 30, and – to the despair of my wife – there is no end in sight. But when you look at it like this, in a way bread defines my life.”

Whether at home or at work, before Brot-Andi slices into a loaf of dark bread he carves three little crosses into the loaf ’s underside with the tip of his knife. That puzzles some guests, who may well also ask him why. Others however are familiar with this custom and appreciate it. “I haven’t seen that for such a long time…” is a sentence Andres Djordjevic hears quite often.

“I’m blessing the bread,” he explains. It’s a ritual that he learned from his grandmother and that has been a matter of course to him for as long as he has been able to think. It also only applies to dark bread – at least in Austria. “In Serbia, my father’s homeland, white bread is blessed, too.”

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“Years ago I found a bread knife for three Euro at a discount shop.

Since then I can’t do without it.”

01 Nothing goes to waste.

Anything that doesn’t get eaten is used elsewhere, for instance as food for sheep.

D OWN TO THE L A ST CRUMB When it comes to the daily dealings with guests, there are different approaches and different types.

“Some guests are curious and want to be told everything. They like to talk to me about the bread. Others prefer a straightforward service, point to the bread they want, and then I’m gone again, so to speak,” is how Andreas describes his day. “Often I can already sense as I approach what’s coming next.” It’s what you call experience or insight into human nature.

For Andi, a particularly important part of his work is the fact that nothing, but absolutely nothing, must go to waste. Any left-over white bread is turned into crumbs for cooking, and black bread into

croutons, for example. “To tell the truth, we have a pretty good handle on it all, in that we can estimate precisely how much we need every day.”

The bread that is not finished by the guests and may even come back half-eaten is also not thrown away. Instead it is collected and delivered to Styria, to the Steirereck on the Pogusch, where it is fed to the sheep and the pigs. “That completes the circle,” Brot-Andi says. “It’s good and right that way.”

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SET & SERVED

JOY MOUT

Four seasons on the plate, A YEAR OF DELIGHTS. Culinary treasures out of the earth unite with fish and meat – the tench swims with chervil, the partridge partners with the truffle. Creative combinations that make the palate tingle with joy.

TEXT: ACHIM SCHNEYDER

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 FUL HFULS

When AUTUMN and WINTER arrive, the aromas become stronger and the flavours rounder. We all want to feel warm. In SPRING and SUMMER the dining room moves outside again, and lightness is on the menu. A theatre of tastes, in four acts.

PHOTOGRAPHY: THOMAS SCHAUER

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A TA ST E O F T H E F O R E ST 1

Shaggy mane mushroom filled with puffed grain Porcini bread with butter of mushroom plant 3 Steamed Russula integra mushroom with baby corn 4 Crispy lion’s mane mushroom with gelatinised milk of caraway 5 Baby aubergine with shingled hedgehog mushroom and walnut 6 Fermented and dried sheathed woodtuft mushrooms 2

Recipe

FOREST MUSHROOMS:

More than 3000 types of mushroom grow in Central Europe, but sadly very few are picked and used.

Florian Kögseder and Toni Fickert gather the taste of the forest, such as shaggy mane mushroom, sheathed woodtuft mushroom, charcoal burner mushroom and other edible russula mushrooms, parasol, violet chanterelle, cauliflower fungus, dotted stem bolete, hedgehog mushroom, bay bolete, saffron milk cap, lion’s mane, and many more.

S H E AT H E D W O O DT U F T M U S H RO O M INGREDIENTS

P R E PA R AT I O N

- 2.5 g lactic acid bacteria - 500 ml unpasteurised milk

Preparation for making whey: Add the lactic acid bacteria to the milk to curdle.

Leave for about 6 hours.

- 3 drops of rennet

Add the rennet, stir well and let the milk stand at room temperature for about 24 hours until it starts to curdle. Let drain through a course-meshed sieve.

The liquid part is the whey.

Tip: the whey can be frozen in small portions and used again in the preparation process.

- 1000 g sheathed woodtuft mushroom/ Japanese or European (cleaned and rinsed)

Preparation of fermented sheathed woodtuft mushroom: Place in sterilised and cooled fermentation containers.

- 1 750 ml water -6 0.5 g Carpathian salt (2.2%) -4 1 g whey bacteria preparation (1.5%)

Completely dissolve the salt in the water and add the why preparation.

Pour the liquid into the fermentation container with the mushrooms. Push the foodstuff to be fermented under water with a fine mesh to prevent any moulding.

Weigh down with keystones so that everything, including the stones, is under water. Fill the fermentation pot’s gutter with water & let stand at room temperature (about 22°C/72°F) for 5–7 days as required. Vacuum pack in small portions and store cooled until required for further use.

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TO M ATO E S W I T H W I L D F RU I T S, H A Z E L N U T S & PINE APPLE SAGE 1

arm marinated tomatoes with pineapple sage flower verjus W Onion & sweet potatoes with pineapple sage 3 Rowan berries marinated in ginger 4 Sea buckthorn candied in flower-honey 5 Green hazelnuts 6 Ground cherries infused with verjus 7 Lemon balm & lemon verbena 8 Hazelnut oil 9 Tomato and ground cherry jus with sea buckthorn honey Wine 2015 Cheverny “Frileuse”, Thierry Puzelat 2

Recipe

PI N E A PPL E SAGE :

Originally from the mountains of Mexico and Guatemala, pineapple sage has a pleasant, fruity flavour and even when only touched, gives off an incredible pineapple scent. The deep red flowers are rich in nectar and natural sweetness, making them a rare delicacy. The leaves, often tinted red, are prized for their fruity flavour as an addition to drinks.

From the Steirereck Garden.

T O M AT O A N D G RO U N D C H E R RY J U S , 2 0 P O RT I O N S INGREDIENTS

P R E PA R AT I O N

- 1 white onion (peeled and coarsely chopped) - 1 clove of garlic (peeled and coarsely chopped) - 25 g grapeseed oil

Sautee the onion and garlic in the grapeseed oil at medium heat until translucent.

-5 00 g yellow beef tomatoes (coarsely chopped) - 400 g clear tomato water - 375 g verjus - 140 g ground cherries

Mix the tomatoes and ground cherries in a blender for 5 sec. and add to the onion.

Slowly bring to the boil and reduce by a third at medium heat.

Strain through a fine-mesh sieve.

- 28 g sea buckthorn honey - Carpathian salt - Guar gum

Season with the honey and salt, bind with a pinch of guar gum and sieve through a fine sieve.

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C O U RG E T T E & S P E LT S E E D L I N G S , W I T H O R A N G E B LO SS O M , P I STAC H I O & C U R E D EG G YO L K 1

ourgette marinated with orange blossom & Mexican wild betel leaf C Roasted spelt seedlings with dried courgette, pistachio & brown egg chili 3 Cream of grilled courgette and pistachio 4 Egg yolk cured & dried in mountain trout garum Wine 2014 Caroline, Pranzegg 2

Recipe

GARUM:

A fermented fish sauce once used as a condiment in the cuisines of ancient Greece, Rome and Byzantium. The Romans thought the Latin word garum derived from the Greek garos, a fish from which it was supposed to have been originally made.

M O U N TA I N T R O U T G A R U M :

Whole mountain trouts are fermented with salt at a constant temperature. The remaining liquid is filtered & aged for a specific time.

From the Steirereck kitchen.

C R E A M O F G R I L L E D C O U RG E T T E A N D P I STAC H I O, 4 P O RT I O N S INGREDIENTS

P R E PA R AT I O N

- 2 courgettes

Generously chop off the sides of the courgettes down to a square core.

Grill about 60% of the side pieces over charcoal, then let completely cool.

Cut both the grilled and the raw courgettes into 2 x 2 cm dice.

Tip: Dispose of the courgette core.

- 175 g diced courgette (grilled) - 75 g onion (peeled and roughly chopped) - 25 g pistachios (peeled) - 115 g diced courgette (fresh) - 66 g butter

Sautee the onion in the butter until soft and translucent.

- Carpathian salt - Juice of Meyer lemon

Season with salt and a little lemon juice.

Add the diced courgettes & pistachio and braise for another 5 mins.

Put the mixture in a thermal mixer for 20 minutes at 70°C/160°F until it is a smooth, fine puree.

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ROMAINE LE T TUCE WITH ME YER LEMON, P O TAT O & V I E N N E S E C AV I A R 1

Recipe

omaine lettuce with sweet potato, meadow mushroom, Meyer lemon, R sea lettuce, bone marrow & rye 2 Viennese sturgeon caviar 3 Champignons & romaine lettuce hearts marinated in fermented Meyer lemon 4 Potato and garden cress sauce Wine 2014 Grüner Veltliner “Elementar”, Herbert Zillinger 1 S T V I E N N E S E S T U R G E O N C AV I A R :

The female Siberian sturgeon grows for 7–10 years in highly mineralized mountain water near Wiener Neustadt, before the first caviar is produced. The delicate, nutty flavour is due to the high amount of minerals in the water and the use of less salt. The caviar is no older than a week.

Klecka Caviar / 1st Viennese Sturgeon-Caviar

P OTATO A N D GA R D E N C R E SS S AU C E , 1 0 P O RT I O N S INGREDIENTS

P R E PA R AT I O N

- 1000 g large Agria potatoes (floury)

Wash the potatoes and pierce all over with a sharp knife. Place on a bed of salt and bake with slightly open door at 220°C/430°F for 2.5 to 3 hours until soft.

Take out, halve while still warm, scrape out and put through a food mill.

Use 450 g of the potato mash in this recipe.

Tip: - Bottom heat is ideal for roasting on a bed of salt.

- The mashed potatoes should still be warm for use in the rest of this recipe.

- 75 g carrot or other root starch - 8 0 ml chicken stock

Beat with a whisk, heat up until the starch binds the ingredients to produce a paste. Stir the mashed potatoes into the root paste.

- 400 g butter (chilled and coarsely diced) - 2 00 ml chicken stock - Flesh of salt lemon - Garden cress

Gradually stir the butter and chicken stock into the potato mass with a whisk.

Keep the sauce simmering throughout.

Season with salt and salt lemon, and strain through a coarse-mesh sieve.

Before serving stir the sauce up a little and stir in the garden cress.

Tip: The amount of chicken stock can be varied depending on the potatoes’ starch content.

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T E N C H W I T H C H E RV I L RO O T, APPLE-PEPPERS & UHUDLER 1

ench confited in brown butter T Chervil root cream with tarragon & grapes 3 Confited & grilled chervil root 4 Preserved apple-peppers 5 Red onions cooked in Uhudler grape juice 6 Sorrel 7 Fresh-water fish & mushroom stock with macrut lime Beverage Pearl barley cocktail 2

Recipe

TENCH:

Although rarely eaten because of the time-consuming preparation required in removing the y-shaped bones, tench has a firm, lean flesh with a delicate, nutty flavour.

From Gut Dornau /Leobersdorf, Lower Austria

UHUDLER ONIONS, 8 P ORTIONS INGREDIENTS

P R E PA R AT I O N

- 500 g Uhudler grapes

Uhudler pulp: Crush the grapes and put in a casserole, press slightly ad cover.

Carefully bring to the boil, take off the heat and pass through a food mill as well as a fine sieve.

- 2 red onions - 200 g Uhudler pulp - 40 g apple juice (cloudy) - 1 tbsp. vegetable oil

Cut the onions into 3 mm slices.

Heat the oil in a casserole and sweat the onions until translucent. Pour in the apple juice and the Uhudler pulp and cook on a low heat until soft. Take off the heat and let cool while covered.

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WILD LE T TU CE WITH BABY CORN, C ALF’S TROT TER & CHANTERELLE S 1

hargrilled wild lettuce & baby corn C Roasted baby corn cream 3 Wild lettuce marinated in monarda verjus 4 Chanterelles roasted in coffee butter 5 Wild lettuce leaves marinated in cold pressed sunflower seed oil 6 Calf’s trotter broth W i n e 2014 Priorat “Muscat”, Terroir al Limit/Priorat 2

Recipe

M O NA R DA :

A wildflower in the mint family, the Monarda is widespread and abundant as a native plant in much of the Northern Hemisphere. It has summer-blooming, nectar-rich edible flowers and has been used as a medicinal plant by the native Americans for centuries. Monarda is still used today as a natural source for the antiseptic thymol, the primary active ingredient in modern commercial mouthwash formulas.

WILD LETTUCE:

This lettuce variety is more meaty than its cultivated counterpart and in appearance more similar to a stemmed plant.

W I L D L E T T U C E M A R I N AT E D I N M O N A R DA V E R J U S, 1 2 P O RT I O N S INGREDIENTS

P R E PA R AT I O N

- 250 ml red verjus (Öhlzelt) - 10 g rose monarda/blossom

Vacuum-pack together and cook in a bain-marie at 72°C/162°F for 30 minutes.

Take out and let cool.

Tip: Monarda – one of the deadnettles that belong to the labiate plant family. The shrub with its lovely curled blooms has a sharp, spicy and bitter aroma similar to oregano. The delicate fringed calyx is ideal as a spice and for making syrup.

The baby leaves can also be used as a tea. From the Steirereck garden.

- 1 wild lettuce/asparagus lettuce/ Chinese lettuce - 250 ml monarda verjus

Peel the wild lettuce and cut lengthwise into 2mm slices.

Use a small cutter or corer to cut small round discs out of the slices.

Vacuum-pack these with the monarda verjus and marinade at a cool temperature for 24 hours.

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SET & SERVED

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PA RT R I D G E W I T H R A D I C C H I O, P É R I G O R D T RU FF L E & WA L N U T Recipe

1

Whole roasted partridge glazed with Périgord truffle, black nut paste & salted greengage 2

Partridge sauce 3

Confited partridge leg with spiced onions & walnut 4

Radicchio rosso di treviso marinated in Muscat grape vinegar & walnut oil 4

Périgord truffle 5

Truffle & walnut vinaigrette with fermented greengage Wine 2012 SL St. Margarethen Schuster R A D I C C H I O TA R D I V O :

Radicchio has been cultivated since the fifteenth century. The different varieties are named after the regions from where they originate. The bitter, spicy tasting Tardivo with its slender purple leaves is available only in the winter months.

S A LT E D P L U M S :

Unripe plums that are preserved in salt during summer. After six weeks they develop an intense plum-cherry aroma.

From the Steirereck larder.

B L A C K N U T PA S T E , 8 P O R T I O N S INGREDIENTS

P R E PA R AT I O N

- 100 g white onion (finely chopped) - ½ head of garlic (finely chopped) - 12 ml vegetable oil

In a casserole, heat the vegetable and sautee the onion and garlic until soft and translucent.

- 80 ml red port

Deglaze with the port several times, allowing the port to be absorbed.

- 250 g black (pickled) walnuts - 250 ml walnut pickle juice - Carpathian salt

Add all other ingredients, cover and cooked until soft. Pass through a food mill and then through a fine sieve to get a paste as smooth as possible.

Pour into a jar or other container and store in a cool place.

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SET & SERVED

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N A S T U RT I U M B L O S S O M W I T H T I G E R N U T, ELDERFLOWER & OX ALIS 1

Nasturtium blossom sorbet

Warm & crispy tigernut cake 3

Iced & dried gooseberries 4

Tigernut pudding 5

Elderflower meringue 6

Nasturtium petals & lemon verbena 7

Lemon verbena oil 8

Oxalis gigantea Wine Pet Nat Burgund 2

Recipe

OXALIS GIGANTEA:

Originally from Chile, this perennial succulent plant has swollen, crisp, tangy-sour leaf stalks.

Produced by Evelin Bach/Vienna TIGERNUT:

This fruit belongs to the sedge family and has been grown for centuries, mainly in Africa. The plant was brought to Europe by the Arabs. Its bush is very robust and the rhizomes have the same size as a hazelnut, and are long and brown, with a white kernel. The flavour is very similar to the almond. These tubers were already been used in medieval times as a substitute for coffee.

TIGERNUT PUDDING, 12 P ORTIONS INGREDIENTS

P R E PA R AT I O N

- 200 g pasture milk - 60 g brown sugar

Tigernut pudding: Bring to the boil together. Mix together.

- 50 g pasture milk - 50 g egg yolk - 25 g corn flour

Add one third of the boiling milk to the egg yolk mix, stirring constantly.

Then gradually add the egg yolk mix to the remaining milk and let the mixture thicken.

- 2 sheets gelatine - 30 g Tigernut oil

Dissolve the gelatine and stir carefully into the lukewarm pudding, followed by carefully stirring in the tigernut oil. Cover and let stand to cool.

- 125 g Philadelphia cream cheese

To finish: Shortly before serving, mix the Philadelphia cream cheese with the cooled tigernut pudding.

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SET & SERVED

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BL ACKBERRIES & VIENNESE FIGS WITH B U C K W H E AT & P I N E A P P L E S AG E 1

lackberries with white-leaved savory B Viennese figs with dried lime & lemon summer savory 3 Roasted buckwheat-koji cream 4 Warm pineapple sage blossom verjus 5 Fig-leaf ice cream Wine Macvin du Jura, Ganevat 2

Recipe

Koji is not actually a yeast, as many people mistakenly believe. Koji is cooked cereal, rice and/or soya beans that have been inoculated with a fermentation culture, Aspergillus oryzae. This naturally occurring culture is particularly prevalent in Japan, where it is known as koji-kin, which explains why so many Japanese foods have been developed over the centuries using it. It is used to make popular foods like soya sauce, miso, mirin and sake.

B U C K W H E AT - K O J I :

Through roasting of the buckwheat-koji it gets a nutty & sweet taste and an intense flavour of malt-caramel.

Homemade by Steirereck.

FIG-LE AF ICE CRE AM, 12 P ORTIONS INGREDIENTS

P R E PA R AT I O N

- 5 fig leaves (untreated) - 250 ml grapeseed oil

Fig leaf oil: Clean the leaves and vacuum-pack with the oil.

Then cook in a bain-marie at 73°C/163°F for 90 min. Remove and marinade at a cool temperature for 48 hours.

- 500 ml organic milk

Fig leaf sorbet: Carefully bring the milk to the boil.

- 150 g egg yolk - 125 g granulated sugar

In a large metal bowl beat the yolk and sugar with a whisk until foamy.

Gradually add the milk to the ice cream mixture, constantly stirring. At the same time, place the bowl in a hot bain-marie and constantly stir to thicken.

- 2 00 ml fig leaf oil

Stir into the hot ice cream mixture, then place the bowl in ice water to cool.

- 275 g creamy plain yogurt, 3.6%

Stir in the yogurt, pass through a fine sieve and freeze in an ice cream cooler.

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S CHÖNBRUNNER CITRUS FRUIT S 1

Limequat Persian lime with perilla 3 Bitter orange with poppyseed from the Waldviertel 4 Variegated lemon 5 Buddha’s Hand lemon 6 “Diamante” candied lemon peel 7 Marinated and iced calamansi with makrut lime-buttermilk & mountain pine 8 Sea buckthorn with chocolate quinoa & orange blossom 9 Orangeade Orange Kisses 10 Meringue with myrtle and bitter orange leaves Beverage Steirereck Limoncello 2

Recipe

Since 1647 citrus plants have been cultivated in the Orangery of the Schönbrunn royal park. Nowadays the collection comprises about 100 varieties, and about 35 of them are historical. This diversity is unrivalled throughout. For many years we have felt very honoured and proud to use these different fruits in our kitchen. Long Live Diversity!

OR ANGE PEEL AND OR ANGE KISSE S, 100 P ORTIONS INGREDIENTS

P R E PA R AT I O N

- 225 g egg white - 200 g granulated sugar - 2 pinches of Carpathian salt - 1 vanilla pod (pulp)

Using a mixer, beat a creamy foam.

Tip: do not completely whisk the egg white.

- 500 g walnuts (roasted & roughly chopped) - 375 g candied orange peel (finely diced) - 125 g dates (finely diced)

Carefully fold in all other ingredients. With a small spoon place little heaps on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake at 140°C/285°F for 30 minutes until golden brown. Turn the tray halfway through baking.

Let cool overnight at room temperature. Pack airtight and let cool for at least three days.

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TEST WINNERS

THE REDS HAVE IT 01–02 René Antrag has greatly enjoyed tasting as well as reviewing his way through various wines.

BY ACHIM SCHNEYDER, PHOTOGRAPHY: PHILIPP HORAK

Austria’s 2014 vintage doesn’t enjoy a great reputation. Unjustly so, the Steirereck’s sommelier René Antrag maintains, and pours himself glasses of the glorious seven standing up for the reds.

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TEST WINNERS

03–04

There’s no denying that René Antrag has a great nose, even for the difficult vintages.

“Perfect table wines, high fun factor and low alcohol levels.”

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It was cold and rainy in Austria during the wine year of 2014. However, that doesn’t necessarily make for a bad vintage. “At best it’s a difficult one, difficult for the vintners,” claims René Antrag. He places the selected bottles of red wine on a side table before he tastes the glorious seven a second time, this time for the photographer. He’s already tasted them extensively once before when inspecting and preparing, at times right there in the vineyards. While René is opening the bottles again he reveals some less wellknown facts.

“In terms of the weather and the temperatures, 2014 was a similar year to 2010 – and the vintners had learned their lesson from 2010,” says René. “Those vintners who don’t stick to the rulebook, who know how to deal with extreme weather conditions and can come up with solutions, they will manage to produce high-quality wines even in difficult years.” Therefore it’s particularly in damp years that you have to pay even more attention to the planting. “It’s the only way of getting control over the massive amounts of water. Vineyards without such greenings can at times turn into veritable lakes.” No less important are the extremely tight selection and sorting processes. “Even though it’s very labour-intensive and means that the amount of harvest is reduced, the end product is so much better in terms of quality.” As far as the expert is concerned, wine appreciation doesn’t always get it right anyway. “We should stop celebrating the vintages from the really hot and dry years. Sometimes it’s just those vintages that vintners consider perfect and seemingly straightforward that can in fact produce very unbalanced wines with unnecessarily high levels of alcohol.” The specialist press likes to describe these as extremely powerful and solid, and praises them accordingly. “Often there is some justification for this, but sometimes less would be more, if wine from hotter years also offered a much-needed freshness and balance.”

The reds from 2014 have a very modest level of alcohol. However, as far as René is concerned, this does not mean that they have less quality, body and complexity. “Personally I appreciate those delicate red wines that radiate refinement and vitality.

They’re excellent for accompanying meals and perfect table wines, with a high fun factor and low in

alcohol. Of course you can let them rest for longer, but who says that you have to? We love light, fresh and crisp white wines, so why not drink reds like that, too? A Blaufränkisch can definitely have only 12 percent alcohol without lacking in balance and body.” Seven Austrian wines have been chosen for this story: the first has only 11 percent, but all of them are definitely something to enjoy…

05–06 A Blaufränkisch with only 12 percent alcohol? Why not? It doesn’t mean it’s lacking in body.

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TEST WINNERS

BL AUFR ÄNKISCH “ TO CHTER” 2014,

P I N O T N O I R “ H O C H E G G ”,

ANDRE A S NIT TNAUS, GOL S

K A R L S C H N A B E L , G L E I N STÄT T E N

A first-vintage wine from Hans Nittnaus’ son Andreas, from a site at the Tannenberg hill in the Leithaberg hills. It has a perfect rhythm, reflecting Andreas’ second passion for drumming. With only 11 percent alcohol, it’s very pure, with a well-structured acidity, rich with grapefruit and sour cherry flavours, an impressively long finish and a salty aftertaste.

If this wine is a taste of the future, we have something to look forward to.

There’s a straightforward answer to why a Styrian vintner from the Sausal area produces mostly red wine: “Because I prefer to drink red wine myself,” says Karl Schnabel, a thinker and creative, and sometimes quite a stubborn guy – in a good way. The Hochegg 2014 is another one of his pretty great achievements. Matured in little Burgundy oak vats, without any sulphur, and also at only 12 percent, this Pinot Noir thrills with its incredible harmony of fruit and tannin, and a hint of saltiness.

MUS CHELK ALK ROT 2014, KLOSTER AM SPITZ, T H O M A S S C H WA R Z , P U R B AC H

A 100 percent Blaufränkisch, and as in the difficult year 2010 a blend of Eisner and Rohrwolf grapes. Unfortunately Thomas Schwarz couldn’t produce a single-grape because of a small harvest. Not that that’s a bad thing: quite the opposite. An incredibly elegant wine, very solid, with enticing tannin, meaty spiciness and very lively acidity. Once again a wine reflecting Thomas’ philosophy: nonconformist, not a powerhouse or sycophant, but distinguished by its clear, fresh fruitiness and a natural minerality.

PINOT NOIR 2014, CL AUS PREISINGER, GOL S

Like so many, a true masterpiece from this wonderfully headstrong maverick in the Burgenland. The vintner himself doesn’t waste a lot of words on this product, simply describing it as “wicked”. Nothing much to add to that, apart from that this Pinot with 12 percent alcohol was hand-picked in September 2014, spontaneously matured in open vats and wooden fermentation stands, and bottled unfiltered. Its origin accounts for the many-layered flavours: it comes from the vineyards on the flat Parndorfer Platte, where it’s a little cooler than on the sloping hills.

“We love light, fresh and crisp white wines, so why not drink reds like that, too?”

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07

The sommelier has done his work – but it’s not as hard as it looks in this snapshot…

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TEST WINNERS

B L AU E R P O RT U G I E S E R “ E T S D O R F ” 201 4, M AT T H I A S WA R N U N G, E T S D O R F A M K A M P

Blauer Portugieser is a grape (not from Portugal, in spite of its name!) that receives far less recognition than it deserves. This Portugieser is a perfect example. This is a wine full of thrills, a joker in the glass, crisp, red-berry-flavoured, floral, with a taut and vibrant aftertaste. A wonderful complement to fish – especially when well-cooled. Matthias Warnung is working on the Blauer Portugieser’s image: at this standard, may he continue to do so for a long time.

B L AU F R Ä N K I S C H “A LT E R E B E N ” 201 4, WAC H T E R-W I E S L E R , DEUTSCH SCHÜTZEN

Christoph Wachter seems to have no problem following in his father Franz’ footsteps, because nothing has changed in regard to quality since the son took over everything in 2010. By now Christoph is a fixture in the Blaufränkisch universe, and his “Alte Reben” – formerly “Steinweg” – grows on vines up to 80 years old, in soil of sparse green slate with an at times thicker layer of mud typical for the Eisenberg area. The “Alte Reben” 2014 reflects Christoph’s style – a wine full of elegance, delicate, spicy, succulent and piquant.

A wine bursting with potential.

HIMMEL AUF ERDEN ROT 2014, CHRISTIAN TSCHIDA, ILLMITZ

It’s not called “Heaven on Earth” by chance. Christian Tschida “borrowed” it from the artist Alfred Hrdlicka’s etching of the same name (part of the “Schubert” cycle) depicting women indulging in wine and cherubs playing tricks; the label shows a section.

It’s just those sensory delights that this blend of Cabernet Franc and Zweigelt stands for. Radiant and playful, lively and stimulating, light-footed and not carried by the alcohol, it’s a high-class daytime wine, in spite of its vintage, or maybe because of it…

To sum it all up, one thing can be said for all these wines, and the many more wines they are representative of: they will give us greater and greater joy the longer we leave them in our cellars. That is, if we do leave them in our cellars. We don’t have to, we could always enjoy them right now…

“ There is no such thing as a bad vintage, only a difficult one.

But good vintners know how to deal with that.”

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BERRIES & BLOSSOMS

Which ones & how many

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Mystery and superstition surround the elderflower. In Austria it’s often associated with stupidity, but in other places and at other times it’s been considered magical and holy.

Already in prehistorical times it was used for dyeing and for making flutes. The Ancient Greeks and Romans as well as early Germans knew that kind spirits lived in the plant. Eating elderflower fried in butterat 12 noon on St John’s Day was said to keep away fever for a whole year. Whether you belive any of that, one thing is for certain: it tastes really good.

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IT’S FOREVER BLOWING BUBBLES

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S. 120

THE BERRY IS A HERB

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F E R M E N TAT I O N

IT’S FOREVER BLOWING BUBBLES

BY ANNA BURGHARDT

PHOTOGRAPHY: KLAUS FRITSCH

If you’re not fermenting with lactic acid you don’t stand a chance. Fermentation is the method of the hour.

On autumnal asparagus, winter greengages, promises of healing, and laissez-faire.

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Fermented asparagus is served at the Steirereck since autumn.

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F E R M E N TAT I O N

Today Lady Beetroot is in the mood for a chat.

She has been silent for too long, it’s her third day in the dark, and she’s slowly getting bored. So she blows a few bubbles: blub, blub. Isn’t it great to be alive! She does it again: a few more bubbles. She feels really good. One pot further on, the Cucumber Sisters try to find out if they’re strong enough to lift the lid yet – one, two, three, lift-off! The lid really does move a bit. So there you go! The two have never felt so bubbly. Since they’ve been steeped in salted water in tall crockpots, they’ve constantly had this tingling sensation all over, as if little animals were tickling them all the time.

The grown-up version of this story contains the words “microorganisms”, “lactic”, “anaerobic”, and “starter culture”. “Asparagus”, “greengages”, “radishes” are less technical, more sensuous words, and as for the more philosophical expressions, well, there’s “taste of the future”, “a life of one’s own”, and “independence”.

Fermentation is one of the great culinary issues of the day. It seems like a fairly recent theme, if you discuss it only in terms of Louis Pasteur’s definition of microbacterial changes in airtight conditions.

However, from a broader view that includes maturation and oxidation, it has been a subject for ever. You couldn’t imagine a life without foods and drinks that have only become what they are because of microorganisms.

There’d be serious gaps in the Bible without bread and wine. Without chocolate, beer, salami, cheese and tea, our Western taste range would be reduced.

Without miso, natto, stinky tofu and tempeh, many Far East Asians would feel as if they’d lost a limb. If there were no pickles, market stall holders would be without a job, and the line between Berlin and Vienna 0 2 Condiknown as the Pickle Meridian ments made by might have remained nameless fermentation: forever. Indeed, without the on- a new dimension board supply of pickled cabbage of aromatics. full of vitamin C, James Cook and many other seafarers could have died of scurvy. Food philosopher Michael Pollan’s opinion on fermentation is that if there is any civilisation out there that doesn’t apply fermentation to its food or drink, anthropologists have yet to find it.

Master chefs have discovered fermentation, too.

An extreme way of describing it is as a form of letting food go rotten, but desirable, and controlled whenever possible. It’s mostly lactic acid that is used in fermentation today, a method as age-old as it is simple. Beetroot, onions, watermelon peel, pitted fruit, asparagus, cabbage and many other potentials are steeped – separately and sorted by kind and variety, of course – in cold brine with a salt concentration of about 6%. They’re carefully weighted down so that they’re completely immersed and don’t come into any contact with air. Then it’s simply the good microorganisms who do their job, breaking down the sugar into lactic acid, while the salt gets rid of the bad bacteria. Unlike all the others, the bacteria in lactic acid are resistant to salt and can work in the brine. They live nearly everywhere within the fruit and vegetable, so starter cultures are not absolutely necessary. However, sometimes sugar, honey or even grated pears are used to provide the microorganisms with extra nutrients.

Usually the fermenting foodstuff and the brine are kept in tall crocks with a water-filled groove. The lid rests in the water and keeps the pot closed airtight, but gases developing during fermentation can still escape. Depending on the external temperature, the typical taste of anything fermented in lactic acid develops a few days later. The easiest way to describe it is “sauerkraut-like”, even though this label doesn’t cover it all by any means. During the fermented foods’ storage – traditionally in a cool cellar, now more likely vacuum-packed in a cold store – the flavours continue to develop, often becoming more rounded and full-bodied, but sometimes spicier and sharper. Let yourself be surprised.

Fermenting is more than just a method. One group of supporters led by American guru Sandor Katz views it as promising health and healing. They see it as a tool to free humanity from large conglomerates and their empty, dead non-foods that don’t support life but make children sick quicker because they no longer develop an immune system. It could make us independent from power cuts and other apocalyptic scenarios, as you don’t need electricity for fermentation and, in most cases, for storage. Katz claims that eating fermented foods and trusting in

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 03 Purple carrots are just as suitable for fermentation in lactic acid as cabbage is.

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With fermentation you can turn seasonality on its head.

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F E R M E N TAT I O N

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microorganisms again rather than 0 5 There’s demonising these tiny creatures is worlds of aromas the only way of reining in the ram- between the raw pant rise in allergies. As far as he original product is concerned, our current phobia and when it has of bacteria is absurd: after all, they fermented. were used for centuries in the preservation of foods – keyword sauerkraut. We should view life as a side-by-side existence of humans and microbes, and regard those as important, capable partners, Katz postulates with almost religious zeal.

In his book The Art of Fermentation, considered the bible of fermenting, he even quotes one of his apostles: “May you nourish me as I nourish you.”

For other culinary thinkers fermentation is more a philosophy. You could use it to turn seasonality on its head, putting asparagus in the crockpot in spring but serving it in autumn alongside chestnuts and pumpkins as a refreshing and crunchy surprise. Greengages could be fermented in the summer and put on the table during an otherwise dull time when only root vegetables are available. In addition, the nuances between the raw original product and its fermented form are ideal for playing with subtle flavours. For example, the beetroot could present in many variations: raw, boiled or oven-roasted; fermented for a short time and raw or roasted; long-term fermented and cooked, or not. The juice produced in the fermentation process can also be used. With its syrupy texture, this elixir exudes an awesome shade of magenta never before seen in beetroot.

„May you nourish me as I nourish you.“ Quote from “The Art of Fermentation”

Some gastronomical professionals find the fine line between decomposition and putrefaction highly thrilling, although some guests might balk at the idea. Another refreshing contrast to highly developed culinary technologies is the limited influence of humans. While you can try to monitor the process with starter cultures, painstaking hygiene and closely checked temperatures, you still won’t have total control over the microorganisms in the crock and the final results. Apply another method instead: laissezfaire. Take care of the surrounding conditions and leave the microorganisms to it. Have faith, and good things will come to you.

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THE P OWER OF THE BERRY

T H E B E R RY I S A HERB

PHOTOGRAPHY: PHILIPP HORAK

Did you say “herb”? Yes, indeed, the black elderberry is part of the Adoxaceae herbaceous plant family. Nevertheless, it’s the berries that belong in the kitchen and the hands of good chefs – and finally on the plate.

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ELDERBERRY BLOSSOMS CA P E R S INGREDIENTS

- 500 ml pear vinegar 6% - 150 ml elderberry blossom syrup

PREPARATION

Pear and Elderberry Blossom Marinade: Stir all ingredients together until the salt has dissolved.

- 25 g Carpathian salt - 300 g elderberry blossom buds (whole vine, cleaned) - 675 ml pear and elderberry blossom marinade

Vacuum-pack the mix and let it steep cold for at least 48Â hours.

Pluck some leaves off the main stem before serving.

TIP

The small, flowery yet sour capers are suitable for adding flavour to grilled fish, meat or roast vegetable as well as hard cheese.

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THE P OWER OF THE BERRY

ELDERBERRY AND YOGURT SORBET 12 PORTIONS

INGREDIENTS

PREPARATION

- 650 g elderberries

Elderberry Pulp: Gently simmer all ingredients in a casserole for about 5 minutes and then strain through a food mill.

(rubbed & cleaned) - 150 ml lime juice - 150 g granulated sugar - 1 vanilla pod (pulp) - 1/2 lemon grass (crushed & chopped) - 50 g glucose - 1 leaf gelatine (soaked)

- 400 g plain yogurt

Sorbet: Mix with the elderberry pulp and simmer in a casserole until the glucose has dissolved. Remove from heat immediately and allow to cool.

Dissolve the gelatine in the warm pulp and then pass through a pointed sieve on to ice.

Stir the yogurt into the cold pulp and freeze the mixture in an ice maker.

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ELDERBERRY PEAR 4 PORTIONS

INGREDIENTS

PREPARATION

- 100 g granulated sugar

Elderberry Sauce: Caramelise in a casserole until golden.

- 750 ml red port (warmed)

Pour over the port and boil to reduce to half.

- 250 ml cassis pulp

Add and bring to the boil.

- 100 ml pear juice - 400 g elderberries - 2 vanilla pods (pulp & rind) - 5 star anise - 10 cloves - 7 cm cinnamon stick - 15 g ginger (peeled & diced) - 4 pears (firm flesh)

Place the star anise, ginger, cloves and cinnamon in a spice bag and add to the sauce together with the vanilla. Cover the casserole and cook on a low heat for about 25 minutes. Take out the spice bag and pass the sauce through a food mill and then through an Etamin cloth or a pointed sieve.

Pears (steeped): Peel the pears, add to the sauce and simmer for 2–3 minutes depending on their ripeness. Remove from heat and let the pears step in the sauce overnight.

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THE P OWER OF THE BERRY

ELDERBERRY PICKLE 20 PORTIONS

INGREDIENTS

- 15 g peanut oil (Fandler)

PREPARATION

Sweat the spices in the peanut oil.

- 1/4 chili (roughly chopped) - 3 g ginger (peeled and chopped) - 1.5 g garlic (peeled, chopped) - 50 ml soy sauce (Kikkoman) - 45 ml white wine vinegar - 45 ml pear most

Add all the ingredients, bring to the boil and simmer for five minutes. Remove from the heat, cover and store cold for 24Â hours. then strain and store in a cool place until used.

- 7 ml Yuzu juice - 50 g elderberries - 20 g brown sugar - 1/2 dried lime (Loomi)

TIP

This aromatic elderberry pickle is best suited to fish with a firm flesh. Steep the fish in the pickle for 30 minutes before grilling, and glaze with a little pickle after grilling.

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THOSE WHO LIKE & THOSE WHO CAN

There & back

S. 126

“I leave cooking to my wife, she’s definitely better at it,” says actor Peter Simonischek.

Without wanting to do Simonischek’s wedded and fellow actor Brigitte Karner an injustice, the guests who stayed in Upper Austria’s Mühlviertel for a few days this summer are probably even better cooks. The place was honoured with the presence of the culinary elite, from René Redzepi via David Chang to Ana Roš. Speaking of honour: honour where honour is due. In this instance it’s Austrian cuisine, which also made a great impression on that gathering of illustrious chefs.

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T H E C H E F S , T H E S U C KLING PIG AND THE AROMA OF FOREST ANTS

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SNEEZING FITS AND THE CALL OF HOME

BOOKING ELSEWHERE

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AT T H E S U M M I T

The chefs, the suckling pig and the aroma of forest ants

01

Building bridges: the chefs were plunged into the cold waters of the Große Mühl for the sake of art.

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How the small Mühltalhof hotel in Upper Austria’s Mühlviertel became the world’s culinary centre for a few days, how chefs like Ana Roš, René Redzepi and David Chang regard Austrian cuisine now, and why Instagram is a great disseminator but also somewhat underexposed.

BY SEVERIN CORTI, PHOTOGRAPHY: GEORGES DESRUES

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AT T H E S U M M I T

Of course it is pure, crystal-clear, distilled madness to fly in a star troop of the most desirable chefs around the world for one evening for 150 food fanatics, just to turn the village Neufelden at the Große Mühl river in Upper Austria’s Mühlviertel region into the centre of the foodie universe for a moment or two. Of course an event like “Gelinaz!”, the name of the touring thinktank of international avant-garde chefs that stopped off in Austria at the end of summer, costs rather a lot. And of course some of the money came out of the public purse, along with funding from courageous sponsors from relevant institutions and from some of Upper Austria’s most innovative companies.

However, one could counter this with the argument that international media, starting with the New York Times, were also on site to document the event and its development. More than that, they

02–03

could make new culinary discoveries in Austria, particularly in this region north of the Enns river, and whet the world’s appetite for what the new generation of our most exciting chefs – and above all, hosts Helmut und Philip Rachinger – have to offer.

Our homegrown chefs cooked and talked with the top stars (which can be entered in the accounts as “priceless transfer of knowledge”) but also proved that they are skilled enough to compete with anyone and everyone. However, when it came to self-marketing, personality development and so-called storytelling, Rachinger, Nagl, Filippou and Co. had a chance to take a leaf out of the books of the greats in the field.

For instance, from New York global star chef and Netflix moderator David Chang. He immediately took a video on his mobile phone of the suckling pig ordered from butcher Hans Zalto in nearby Kirchberg on the other side of the Danube for the team

That makes David Chang (r.) from New York smile: the team around Magnus Nilsson and Konstantin Filippou smoked whole deer for his dish.

dinner on the evening before the great Gelinaz, and put it on Instagram with the caption “Austrian pig roast: This was incredibly delicious”. It obviously hit a nerve with followers and fans on the other side of the Atlantic: 180,000 Likes, Shares and enthusiastic comments flooded in within minutes. It confirmed social media’s importance for promoting one’s own as well as others’ events on an immediate level. Austrian festival organisers should prepare themselves for an invasion by a horde of roast-pig fanatics from the other side of the pond.

It is just as pleasing that Chang posted again, this time a cascade of superlatives, sharing his unbelievably delicious evening at the Steirereck and reported in particular of the genius idea and execution of the char roast in beeswax. However, the fact that he received only a modest 14,000 Likes for this video indicates that quantity may not be the best measure in this age of food porn. It’s clear that innovation, culinary intelligence and sensitivity will never have the same mass appeal as the mouthwatering image of a good old crispy pork rind.

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Magnus Nilsson (Fäviken Magasinet, Järpen) and his homemade broom of corn leaves, with which he constantly brushed the smoked deer.

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AT T H E S U M M I T

Gabriela Cámara (Cala, San Francisco) and chef of chefs René Redzepi in the massive Lohberger kitchen that was built especially for this event.

Chiho Kanzaki (Virtus, Paris) and Margot Janse (Le Quartier Français, Franschhoek, in the background) were in a team with Heinz Reitbauer.

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It has to be said that the suckling pig that fired David Chang’s enthusiasm and his extremely selective Instagram thumb was also a damn fine one. The homegrown pork and how Austrians treat it left a lasting impression with others taking part in the Gelinaz hullabaloo. For instance, René Redzepi was delayed in joining the rest of the group because of his teething daughters – one has to have priorities – so the megastar missed the good food on the excursion to the Wachau on the way to the Mühltalhof, which included a Käsekrainer sausage grilling session.

After Mauro Colagreco from the Mirazur in Menton

(No. 4 on the list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants) raved about how “appallingly delicious” these crispy cheese-filled sausages were, the Danish chef wanted to taste them, of course. No sooner said than done, and the effect of the sausages was unmistakable: “These just taste insanely good – and this is what’s sold at every street corner into the wee small hours?

I don’t even want to know what I would look like if I could pig out on something like this any time after work.” Konstantin Filippou wasn’t the only one to respond with a knowing laugh.

07–08

May Chow (right), just voted best Asian chef, in conversation with Mauro Colagreco (Mirazur, Menton).

Redzepi’s Gelinaz-Team included Gabriela Cámara, who runs restaurants from Mexico City to San Francisco and is celebrated as the queen of the new Mexican cuisine, Milena Broger (Klösterle, Lech) and Felix Schellhorn (Hansi Hansi, Bad Gastein).

Every so often they struggled with the Stakhanovlike demands from the superstar, for instance when the latter rushed into the kitchen at two in the morning, “just for a second”, to refine his idea of the final dinner. However, the Dane was generally astonished at how relaxed and urbane the Austrian chefs came across. “Are you all this open and uncomplicated?”,

he asked, before adding slightly sarcastically, “Berlin is a girls’ boarding school in comparison. But seriously, it’s seldom that you meet successful chefs who are as straightforward and open, happy to experiment and at the same time as skilful as the colleagues here.”

Indeed – for instance, after an excursion into the local woods with Redzepi, Lukas Nagl (Bootshaus at the Hotel Das Traunsee) was so taken with the flavour of the local ants Redzepi let him taste that he “definitely” wants to allow them to seep into his

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creations one way or another. Never mind the generally conservative tastes of visitors to the Salzkammergut (where his restaurant is): “They have this really clean, explosive flavour of Kaffir limes and coriander – as a regionally minded chef I’m extremely fascinated by the fact that such a deliciously exotic flavour could come from our woods,” he says.

After the walk in the woods with Redzepi, Lukas Mraz, who – keyword Berlin – had just whipped up the Cordobar into the German capital’s coolest address, is wondering “only half-jokingly” whether

09–10

to open in Vienna. He already has a name and signature dish in his head: “Schnitzel & Ants – tastes just like it should, but the batter doesn’t turn so soft.”

Meanwhile Bo Songvisava, who has dared to come up with a groundbreaking new interpretation of Thai cuisine and is considered the “hottest chef ” in the kingdom, has been researching another, quite different Austrian classic. Together with her other team members, the French Argentinian Mauro Colagreco and the Peruvian-Mexican Karime Lopez, she had been given the challenge of coming up with

The hosts Philip (left) and Helmut Rachinger and their teammate Ana Roš served a marinated char in a hollowed-out horseradish root.

a new interpretation of the Rachinger’s grand potato goulash. This made Songvisava spin out some astonishing theories regarding Austrian history: “Potatoes and peppers – these two ingredients reached Austria when the Habsburgs reigned in Spain – and therefore also in the colonies in South and Central America?”

A great idea, but it only applies to the potato.

The paprika pepper only became an acceptable vege-

table and national spice thanks to the Turks in Hungary. Songvisava immediately passes this piece of information on to her fellow chefs with a triumphant, sly smile. “There you have it, paprika and chili may come from your continent, but they only got to Austria via Asia. You have to know how to use those spices so that they taste good.” Later the three serve a potato dumpling filled with a kind of goulash as their interpretation of the Rachinger’s “Matrix Dish”.

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The fact that some definite Latin American tastes came through could be construed as a generous gesture by the chef from Bangkok.

Celebrated in Paris for her delicate cuisine, the Japanese chef Chiho Kanzaki (Restaurant Virtus) was looking forward to reinterpreting a salmon classic with her teammates Margot Janse from South Africa and Heinz Reitbauer. “I have hardly ever worked with freshwater fish and was really surprised that it tasted so pure. I was expecting it to carry stronger flavours.” Well, you would think that a “fish that lives

11–13

First came the dip in the Große Mühl (right), then there was time for beach banter: René Redzepi and Magnus Nilsson, the culinary greats of the north, used the chance to exchange ideas.

in wild nature” would take on the wild tastes of its surroundings. Chiho was to find out that she was actually right, but only when she jumped into the cool waters of the Mühl in front of the Rachingers’ hotel.

Here all the chefs had to build a bridge that would lead the guests from the hotel and the restaurant to the Art Space created by Rachinger’s brother-in-law Joachim Eckl. “Your water is so unbelievably clean,” the astonished Kanzaki said, “it tastes like spring water.” Sometimes it’s art that makes understanding take a great leap.

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R O U N D T H E TA B L E

BRIGITTE KARNER’S & PETER SIMONISCHEK’S FLAVOURFUL MEMORIES, RECORDED BY ACHIM SCHNEYDER

SNEEZING FITS AND THE CALL OF HOME PHOTOGRAPHY: PHILIPP HORAK

“To your good health,” she says. “Thank you,” he says. If you’re wondering why he replies with a “thank you” rather than “to your good health” or “cheers”, it’s because the married couple of actors Brigitte Karner and Peter Simonischek didn’t toast each other a minute ago. The great protagonist of the human character had one of those sneezing fits that shake him every time he has an espresso after a good meal. “You could call it the grand finale,” the Styrian laughs. “And it’s just as bad whenever he eats dark chocolate,” adds the lady from Carinthia. Bless you.

The backgrounds of these two as indicated above are not totally unrelated to their flavourful memories described below. After all, when Brigitte thinks back to her childhood, she immediately remembers the seductive smell of the Reindling, the fantastic Carinthian Easter cake her mother prepared. For Peter it is his grandmother’s fried-up polenta Sterz with granulated sugar, a dish popular throughout Styria. He’s fond of corn to this day: in fact, he describes boiled corn with butter and salt as his culinary drug, while she is addicted to beetroot in any shape or form. An old friend knows all about Peter and corn, and every year Simonischek receives a message in deepest Styrian dialect on his mobile phone to remind him that the corn is out again. It’s a welcome call back to his home.

Of course it wasn’t just Reindling and sweet Sterz that accompanied the couple’s culinary growing-up. Certainly Simonischek also has some far less positive memories. “I was born in 1946, and at that time food played an important part simply because after the war there was always the question of where you could get food. My grandmother, who could travel by train for free because my grandfather worked on the railway, often took the train east from the nearest station and rattled over to the neighbouring southern Burgenland on one of the few routes you could travel on then. If we were lucky, she would return in the evening with treasures like a few eggs or

some milk.” Simonischek’s father was a dentist, and he cycled from one farm to the next in the hope of finding people with toothaches so he could offer his medical services in exchange for some food. Later, when things were beginning to look up again, he at least got some bread and butter for supper, with two or three slices of Extrawurst sausage and fresh peppers from the garden. “And always black tea.”

Another formative experience for the hunting and fishing enthusiast were the nine years at boarding school at St. Paul in the Carinthian Lavanttal valley. “Formative in the sense that for nine years I could inwardly prepare myself for the day when I would hopefully also enjoy good food. It was pretty awful at the boarding school, and the weekly plan was always the same. For instance, on Friday we regularly got white beans cooked to death, together with a cabbage salad. The moment of greatest culinary happiness for me was when after finishing school I was in a restaurant and finally got to hold a menu in my hand. All those choices…”

Brigitte Karner’s father was blind. And it is said that blind people have not only a particularly strong sense of taste, but also a very sensitive sense of smell.

“For that reason good food was highly valued in the house. When for the first time in my life I took in the smell of bad fat in a restaurant, it literally made me shake. You could say that a good nose was part of my upbringing, right from the start.” You might quiver a little, too, when you find out that some combinations served in Brigitte’s parental home seemed rather wayward, like apricot dumplings with cucumber salad. The latter was very rich in garlic. “Admittedly that may sound very strange, but at Easter we Carinthians traditionally eat the sweet Reindling with an Easter ham and chopped hard-boiled eggs with horseradish, vinegar, oil and mustard. And the whole thing not one after the other, but all at once.

So what’s wrong with apricot dumplings with cucumber salad?”

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professional colleagues, privately a couple with many shared interests. Like food…

Simonischek and Karner, who met during filming in Germany in 1984, have kept up this Easter tradition of Reindling, ham and the egg mish-mash in their shared household. Here they can also be found side by side in the kitchen, although they are not a cooking duo. “I leave cooking to my wife, she’s definitely better at it. I take on the role of wine waiter and serve her a glass of wine whenever requested to help with the cooking. “ “I do have to admit that when we started out together I had little else in my repertoire than Tafelspitz and turkey legs. And Reindling.” The husband chimes in: “To this day I remember the metallic sound ringing out when the first Reindling she ever baked for me hit the bottom of the steel kitchen

bin because it was so rock-hard.” “To be honest, the first one that I managed to do perfectly happened to be first one I baked after my mother’s death. It was in her honour, if you like.” “In regard to Brigitte’s sense for the Lucullan in general, it was always very strong, which in turn was important for our life together. Because if she were a less culinary person, the end of our relationship would have been in sight right from the start – previous relationships with less culinary-minded women has shown me that.”

In 2019 Brigitte Karner and Peter Simonischek will be celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary.

Cheers, and bon appetit.

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R EC O M M E N D E D R E STA U R A N T S

BOOKING ELSEWHERE RECOMMENDATIONS BY BIRGIT AND HEINZ REITBAUER, PART 1

WORLD CL ASS AMADOR’S WIRTSHAUS Grinzinger Straße 86 1190 Vienna www.restaurant-amador.com KONSTANTIN FILIPPOU Dominikanerbastei 17 1010 Vienna www.konstantinfilippou.com MRAZ & SOHN Wallensteinstraße 59 1200 Vienna www.mraz-sohn.at SILVIO NICKOL Coburgbastei 4 1010 Vienna www.palais-coburg.com TIAN Himmelpfortgasse 23 1010 Vienna www.tian-restaurant.com

VIENNESE C U I S I N E AT T H E HIGHEST LEVEL GASTHAUS GRÜNAUER Hermanngasse 32 1070 Vienna www.gasthaus-gruenauer.com MEIXNER’S GASTWIRTSCHAFT Buchengasse 64 1100 Vienna www.meixnersgastwirtschaft.at PETZ IM GUSSHAUS Gußhausstraße 23 1040 Vienna www.gusshaus.at RUDIS BEISL Wiedner Hauptstraße 88 1050 Vienna www.rudisbeisl.at

C R E AT I V E & CASUAL FABIOS Tuchlauben 4–6 1010 Vienna www.fabios.at

GRACE Danhausergasse 3 1040 Vienna www.grace-restaurant.at MOCHI Praterstrasse 15 1020 Vienna www.mochi.at

VIENNESE INSTITUTIONS PLACHUTTA WOLLZEILE Wollzeile 38 1010 Vienna www.plachutta-wollzeile.at SCHWEIZERHAUS Prater 116 1020 Vienna www.schweizerhaus.at ZUM SCHWARZEN KAMEEL Bognergasse 5 1010 Vienna www.kameel.at

WINE BISTROS MAST WEINBISTRO Porzellangasse 53 1090 Vienna www.mast.wine O BOUFÉS Dominikanerbastei 17 1010 Vienna www.konstantinfilippou.com/ de/oboufes

HEURIGEN (TRADITIONAL VIENNESE W I N E TAV E R N ) MAYER AM PFARRPLATZ Pfarrplatz 2 1190 Vienna www.pfarrplatz.at WEINGUT WAILAND Kahlenberger Straße/ Ecke Eisernenhandgasse 1190 Vienna www.wailandwein.at

WIENINGER AM NUSSBERG Eichelhofweg 125 1190 Vienna www.wieninger-amnussberg.at

W U R ST STA N D

HOFMEISTEREI Wösendorf 74 3610 Weißenkirchen in der Wachau www.hofmeisterei.at JAMEK Josef-Jamek-Straße 45 3610 Joching www.weingut-jamek.at

BITZINGER BEI DER ALBERTINA Augustinerstraße 1 1010 Vienna www.bitzinger-wien.at

KNOLL Unterloiben 132 3601 Dürnstein www.loibnerhof.at/weingut

MARKETS

CITY ESCAPES – BURGENL AND

BRUNNENMARKT 1160 Vienna KARMELITERMARKT 1020 Vienna KUTSCHKERMARKT 1180 Vienna

CITY ESCAPES – AROUND VIENNA GASTHAUS FLOH Tullner Straße 1 3425 Langenlebarn www.derfloh.at GASTHAUS ZUR SONNE/ FAMILIE SODOMA Bahnhofstraße 48 3430 Tulln an der Donau LANDGASTHAUS SCHILLER Hauptstraße 31 2453 Sommerein landgasthausschiller.at TRIAD Ödhöfen 25 2853 Krumbach www.triad-machreich.at

CITY ESCAPES – WACHAU LANDHAUS BACHER/ THOMAS DORFER Südtiroler Platz 2 3512 Mautern an der Donau www.landhaus-bacher.at

GUT PURBACH Hauptgasse 64 7083 Purbach am Neusiedler See www.gutpurbach.at TAUBENKOBEL Hauptstraße 27 7081 Schützen am Gebirge www.taubenkobel.com ZUR DANKBARKEIT Hauptstrasse 39 7141 Podersdorf am See www.dankbarkeit.at

ON OUR OWN ACCOUNT WIRTSHAUS STEIRERECK POGUSCH Pogusch 21 8625 Turnau www.steirereck.at

Solitaire No6

Juwelier Wagner Vienna

juwelierwagner

Solitaire No16

www.juwelier-wagner.at