Munchen Brunchen

Since the last brunch we had was so much fun, we decided to make another one shortly after... but this time only for Jon and I :) We had been reminiscing about our trip to Germany, and decided we were going to try and recreate one of our favorite dishes we had while out there: ochsenaugen.

 

We have no idea what it actually was, the translation while ordering was a bit fuzzy (me tyring to act like a chicken laying an egg, Jon pointing to other people's dishes and saying "eggs" over and over.) We ended up getting the dish we wanted, and decided it was a creamed spinach with fried eggs on top, served with home fries. And it was AMAZING. So after some searching we found a few recipes to try at home to mimic our glorious Munchen brunch.

German Creamed Spinach
adapted from: What's Cooking America

2 - 3 Large Bunches Fresh Spinach
4 Tbs. Butter
4 Tbs. Finely Chopped Onion
4 Tbs. All-Purpose Flour
3 - 4 C. Milk (depending on how thick you want the sauce)

Cook spinach and squeeze out any excess liquid. Chop the spinach into smaller pieces then set aside. Melt the butter in a frying pan and cook the onions in it until they are translucent. Add the flour and cook for a minute or two, until it is smooth and there are no lumps. Add in desired amount of salt and pepper. Slowly add the milk to the onion/butter mixture, mixing constantly. Bring the sauce to a boil then remove from heat. Mix the sauce with the chopped spinach, add more salt/pepper to desired taste.*

*We actually ended up added a bit of turmeric and garlic powder to this to give it a little more dimension. But that is optional.

  

We also tried our hand at homemade German pretzels! They turned out OK, but nothing to write home about. I'll try again to make better ones, maybe using a different recipe, and definitely putting more salt on them. The one thing I learned about pretzel making... even when you think its a lot of salt, its not enough. Probably why the beer tastes extra good in Germany.

On that note, what would a Munchen brunch be without sausage and beer?! We brought the giant mugs home from Germany, so we busted them out along with a spread of all the beers we tried while over there. We were able to find literally the EXACT beer we had with this brunch in Munich thanks to Craft Beer Cellar! We were so happy that a local store carried it. It definitely brought us back. We were also able to get weisswurst thanks to Karl's Sausage Kitchen. They had a rost bratwurst that we got and truly enjoyed, but we LOVED the weisswurst. Between that and the beer we felt like we were back in the Marienplatz.

 

Oh, take us back!

 

 

 

 

PROST!