Stuttgart

How guest journalist Sukhada Tatke discovers Swabian cuisine.

Over the last two weeks, I have been amusing myself by just observing different ways in which people hold their daily companions, Pretzel. You can almost guess how the person is or under what circumstances he is eating the heart-shaped bread just by looking at the way he or she holds and then eats it.

Some of them merely balance the bread between their two fingers with a bored look on their face. It seems like somebody, possibly the wife, has forced them to take it while leaving their homes lest they remain hungry. And the delay of a second caused by that forces them to hold and then eat it grudgingly. Then there are others who hold them like they hold their suitcases. So there is a briefcase in one hand and a Pretzel in the other. These people come across as being obsessed about their work and treat everything around them as a chore to be finished. They eat it because it has to be eaten. And the third and my favorite Pretzel-holding people are the ones who leisurely play with the Pretzel, spinning it around their index finger, caressing it gently and then biting into it. To me, they seem to be full of life and know the joie de vivre.

People here are so passionate about eating, to put it mildly. The portions of food served in restaurants and canteens bear testimony to that. Before the first meal is over, people seem to be making plans about what to eat for the next meal. Most people are very possessive about their food though: they order one dish for themselves and do not offer it to others at the table. It is surprising for a person coming from a place where an order is placed collectively after detailed deliberation on the subject, and depending on the number of people. Customarily, once the food arrives, it is shared among each other.

But that does not mean they don't want others to eat. Everywhere I went, people spoke with great enthusiasm about Rostbraten, Maultaschen, Kasspatzle and Spargel und Flädle and asked me if I had eaten Swabian food. "You will get this food only here, this is a Swabian specialty," the Swabians would say with pride. In Stuttgart, it took me more than a week to remember, pronounce and differentiate between the names of meat food items. I thought they all sounded the same: complicated, because of which I wondered if they would taste any different. And even as these difficult words were being flung at me all the time, as the days passed, I started forming my own opinions about the food I liked.

What is most heartening about the food here is the interesting story behind each food item. My personal favorite is that of the origin of the Maultaschen (mouth pockets). Naturally, it has become my favorite Swabian dish. Apparently, during Easter, monks were forbidden from eating meat. So in order to fool God into not seeing the meat they were eating, the monks chopped it into pieces, mixed it with spinach and cheese and wrapped it in a dough "pocket". What emerges is something like Italian ravioli or Chinese wantons.

The story behind the spargel (asaragus) fascinates me as well, and of course, when eaten with Schinken (ham) and Flädle (pancake) with a Dutch sauce, it tastes like heaven. It seems that several years ago, poor peasants would take heart in the abundantly-grown asparagus and wrap it in a pancake. This was easy to make and inexpensive.

I love the way these stories are cherished and repeated over generations. Swabians seem to take pride in the history of their different varieties of food. One thing I am waiting to eat, or just see perhaps, is the famous Bubespitzle dish. I am not sure, though, how comfortable I would be putting something that looks like a small penis into my mouth. How then does it then matter if it is just mashed potatoes rolled into those shapes and fried?

Everyone here wants to know if I like Swabian food and if I miss the "spicy" food back home. I can see that when I eat, people are waiting in anticipation to know what I think when I take the first bite. It is heart-warming to see that people want me to fall in love with their food. At first, all the meat tasted and smelled the same, but now I can tell the difference. The different kinds of bread, ice-creams, potato-dishes are mouth-watering. I love the feeling of biting into most things here with melted cheese spurting into my mouth. Swabians have succeeded in seducing me with their food. My only request: please keep the names simple.