On The Menu; Rudi Scherff

What would you think German food you've got to think Student Prince in Springfield Massachusetts. Oh no Rudy sure will be joining us tonight on the menu on the menu is brought to you by the members of WG view why. And by Commonwealth a registry of nurses professional caring staff providing the assistance needed to cope with the growing health care challenges with a nurse on call 24 hours a day. Christine Moriarty and her staff have offered an alternative in-home care since 1989. I

have one of the most popular men in Springfield that happens to be Rudy sheriff who's the owner manager of the Student Prince one of the Springfields landmark restaurants Rudy thank you for having me. As a matter of fact what always comes up is Why does your restaurant have two names i.e. the fort and or the Student Prince. Quick question we are asked that a lot. The restaurant was founded in 1035. Why some German immigrants they called it The Student Prince of that time. The there was a very popular operetta by Sigmund Romberg called The Student Prince the restaurant was named after that. There's different paintings of the from the operator in the in the old bar room and things went pretty well until the late 1940s when a few things happened first of all the Bard originally been pretty much shot and beer joint Springfield was blue collar. A

lot of union workers you had the armory. You had all these factories. And then we added a dining room that was more for the family trade for the wives and children and also there was an attempt to get a little bit away from the German identity in the late 40s for reasons that I like. I think you can sort of remember so I could figure this one out. The new room was called the fourth restaurant and the restaurant has the two names and its as good people call it as something I consider sitting on fourth street turn right it says on Fourth Street where there was actually a fort when the pensions found in the city of Springfield in 16 36 the city was attacked by Indians and the fort was about the only place of refuge for the people. Well you've been around for a long time since sixteen thirty six but I don't Sometimes I feel it. I'll tell you. Tell me you have one of the most extensive collections of German memorabilia points and Steins that I think I've ever

seen. We have a very large collection it's displayed where people can enjoy it. We clean it twice a year which is a real job it's funny people will mention on the collection. The gentleman will generally say how much is it worth. The ladies will say Who cleans it and I hope that's not sexist but is it about a logical action is there. There's a few of the breweries might have larger ones but as far as one on by private individuals I think that's as big as in New York that you buy that or has it all donated. We bought it through the heirs. What happens is someone will come in at the Wynn Brimfield has a flea market you'll see a lot of vendors from Brimfield. They might put a piece out in the fields there for $200 and then down a hundred dollars then they'll pack it up and go from Brimfield to the student prince and trade it for a forty dollar meal so we pick up a lot of stuff that way. I got to tell you if you've ever been a student prince the food is great and the atmosphere is

absolutely what we call a gimmicky cab there you go. And and Rudy is a part of all of that. So I would encourage you to do that well tonight we're going to do a little German cooking. And what are we going to cook. We're going to start off with some red cabbage that's about the longest cooking product we have here. Then we're going to make some cream of pumpkin soup which in German we called creme of CORBA soup. Then we're going to some home fries and some Wienerschnitzel kind of good basic food but stick to your ribs. Well that's what German food is always about. Why don't we get started with the red cabbage. OK this is the red cabbage and what do we put in this particular this we're going to make with a little sweet and sour sauce. When you have a red cabbage any cabbage there's a little bit of whiteness on the outside which is perfectly natural. You're going to take that off it looks a little better inside. This is this is called stripping the outer leaves. Sounds a lot more sexy than it actually is. But you get it so it looks looks pretty nice like this.

Now I'm going to I'll do the cleaning up to do the cleanup that's that's a thought apart. Now we're going to shred it. And again red cabbage has a red and white going all the way through. It's an interesting thing about red cabbage is it if you try to boil it. Especially with any acids in the water it will turn the most horrible disgusting purple you can imagine right now it's a pretty nice color as is. And it's makes a nice garnish we use a lot of called platters and we're going to heat this stove and we're going to throw a little dollop a butter in here. Now you use and salted butter for it. I generally do this is salted today. At home I generally use the n salt and it's got a little nicer taste. It used to be that on salt it was better but are they that sound good. Yeah and I think that's the cream for the on salted had to be absolutely perfect because the salt would hide a flaw or two in the cream. I don't think it's a

necessarily saw but I think the butter is pretty much the same product but for the salt. I'm going to toss a few onions in here and dice is such a little recipe consists of the cabbage of the onions then we're going to make it sweet and sour with a little bit of vinegar or a little vinegar a little sugar and you could use a lot of different things you could use in here. But red cabbage is whenever you're doing that you want to make it a brazier stir fry rather than a boiling. I remember one time when I was in college it was around St. Patrick's Day. I was cooking a corned beef and one of my roommates in the cabbies I don't feel like cabbage and I said if you want some you go out and get it. So he came in and he had Italian last name and he got a red cabbage instead of a green cabbage and I didn't know any better than a lot of things I didn't know any better back then. And so I wanted the cabbage put in the water in the whole thing was a most horrible look a mess you can imagine. That's how you learn the secret that a good good red cabbage is to

keep it a long cooking a long long long slow cooking yeah. And I'm going to cut and cut a little bit more of this while we're at it. I want to make sure there's enough for both Utah and I was I'm just concerned there's enough for me. Yeah you're on your own in this thread's very nicely. Some say that the red cabbage doesn't have quite as fine a flavor is green cabbage I've never actually seen too much of a difference. Red cab you could also use it makes a nice cool slaw standard coleslaw recipe. Maybe maybe if you wanted you could throw a few raisins in with a corset Germans or throw raisins in most inopportune places. Now do you get back to Germany at all to get any inspiration for this I hadn't been there for about 20 years and then in October. The people from spot and beer were kind enough to give me a little hand. So my wife by and I went over for a week we had just a wonderful time and the October fest was

going on then. I had come primarily for a scholarly tour of the spot and brewery but unfortunate up having to go through the October fest. You know it's amazing I imagine when Germans come to visit people here in United States I'll bet you the first thing they want to do is bring them down and taste your German food. We have a lot. It's the Germans will come here and of course Germany is a pretty good sized country so you'll have some people coming in that might say these are bunch and have this but the the general I began to feel in the restaurant is a very very tippy should watch typical German. So there is a watch pot there's I watch pot now we're going to add some salt and I'd like to just put a little in at the start of cooking to get a little flavor into it. Then towards the end if you need you need to put some more in. That's fine but it is much easier to add more salt than to take salt from that fact if you can learn how to take

salt out of a pot of this a little bit of sugar. See how we've got a nice nice color on that and that color should stay a little sugar and they're just I guess just a little bit I probably will need a little bit more towards the end. And I'm going to add just a pinch of water you know not hands drop I guess this is a better term and we're going to drop the temp on that. It will let that simmer down a little bit. Well with that underway we're then going to move on to our next next dish is going to be a cream of pumpkin soup. One of the ingredients of that in that well we have right. There you go. And chicken stock. We're going to make a butter rule in there we're going to add the meat over there to go OK I can do that we're going to turn and turn this on. So I got through a

few. You know you have a tone of a lot of flak we have I mean a little red cabbage you get a very nice some very nice flavor but we'll take it from here. There you go. I'll clean this mess up. Not that it's a mess I mean it's not a mess it's just some cook at home do you also get to pick up her. If I try cooking without picking up I would definitely have a problem with my my wife and I love the quote She's on restaurants and so with the two of us will make all sorts of things usually about 10 times as much and as well every But we have a blast doing it. And I dare say you probably cook all types of recipes that oh yeah I will do it from from Indian food to Chinese food and it's a lot of fun and after we've got all this work and make these wonderful meals the kids will look and they'll be my tribe 8 year old twins.

They'll look at us with disgust and go to the freezer and get out a frozen macaroni and cheese with us it always makes you feel good. You're going to want some flour on that I'm going to want a little flour Yeah. You know I'm going to put Let me I think we need someone other than that a little more. It's amazing how butter goes when you're you must be southern German very frugal. Oh all Germans are very frugal. Germans are frugal. You know we're going to we're going to saute just a little bit of onion in there. By the way where did your folks come from. My my mother's came from Ohio. My dad is from North Germany the Hartz mountains. And he was from a little town called Al Feld which is right right around where the Fulda Gap is used would have been the way any invasion from the east into Germany when he arrived in the States when he came to United States in 1934.

He was working in Munich and he waited on a German couple named Yar Lane who are the owners of the Highland hotel. And he worked very hard in their party at that time Germany was an economy that was it was not not good. This is Highland This is our island well and Mrs ya and Mrs yelling orders certain brand of creme de menthe after the meal it took about 10 minutes for my father to serve it and Mr. Young said what. What took you so long and he said I had to go on my bike and go to a package store and buy it. So then Mrs You said Well when we bring this boy over I remember they had a steak room downstairs a grill. Yeah that was a wonderful place in that unfortunate close along I think in the middle 1950s and it was a wonderful place there were tons and tons of the restaurant community around here. It actually worked at the Highland. You had Vincent Vincent steakhouse work

there. Time he subpoenas from the oil that's worked there. That's interesting all these people went on to a successful career on their own right. So we're going to just melt down that Butterball joint about her and what we're doing now with you. If you watch popper or some of these places we're making a row. You know Rue was basically a mixture of flour and butter. And we'll be using that to thicken thicken the soup. The object is not to burn it in the object is not to burn it with a rule if you were. If this was a thicker soup beef soup or brown soup you would want to. You would want to get some color into the road. But this we don't. And rule also at home you would call it a white sauce. What we're basically what we're doing here although you're in a white sauce you use milk. Now I have some chicken stock here right there. This is some chicken

stock I brought this from the restaurant. I mean homemade stock is obviously best. And what I like to do is just add a little stock then mix it very thoroughly with the rule. So you get a uniform product. See how that's nice yeah that's what I mean I want a nice overhead and that's OK. That very nicely. And we have that and I'm going to add a little more of this. It's just too bad that too many people just throw away the carcasses of their chickens once they've had it. You can do it a roast actually a roast chicken makes a wonderful stock because you already have some common was Asian the balance of skins the parts that you don't eat that much. So now we have this particular resident does and I'm going to hold back a little chicken stock because we're going to put in some pumpkin puree in and that's stats year job. Now I could tell you how we cooked off the pumpkins very carefully scrape the not ready flesh out of it. Put about half of it in

and see how it looks. We very carefully scripted flash out of the pumpkin then we put the pumpkin through a food processor Sasser then through a strainer or I could tell you we went to Big winds and you might see some little ridges in the pumpkin but the pumpkin if you want to go through the effort to use fresh pumpkins. It's kind of fun to do maybe but it's a lot of work and I really really think that this is one of the very few cases where the canned product is the equal of the. We appreciate that attempt. We appreciate that. I like the consistency of this stuff. Let's let a quick little bit I think we can put just a little bit more they will put a little milk in it towards the end. OK and I'm going to put a little salt and pepper in there right now. And then what you do with this is we are going to end up doing basically some of the spices that you'd use in a pumpkin pie. Not a lot you don't want to make it real sweet. I mean like cinnamon cinnamon not make laws all

that stuff because Pumpkin has a marvelous marvelous flavor it's basically bland but it's it's like a canvas for the cook to work on. And let's see what we have here is cinnamon. These you can tell with a noise like you know they I could tell all the green herbs with my nose but I'm going to put a little cinnamon or some nutmeg and see if you agree that not to make me not make it a wonderful spice but real white it can get real bitter it can really hold too much of a can can can blow a dish way out of proportion. And you know I was just going to cut the. Temp on that down a little bit and we're going to let that cook down a little bit and then towards the end we're going to add some milk finalizes seasonings and now we're going to start our potatoes and let's see let's see if they dip in from the

potatoes and we do that here we're very efficient here by having done all the preparation in advance. Hours and hours we've been working on this and used to bowling put a little boiling potatoes. Yeah I use a boil avocados we use a Prince Edward Island basic potato they have a nice they have a nice flavor to it. And for the home fried potatoes you will you take your potatoes your whole potatoes your washroom most potatoes are going to need a little washing. If there's any spots on them that look a little bad cut them off so that if you have watched him put them in a pot with some water water to cover a little bit of salt in there boy. 10 minutes 12 minutes till the fork there just fork tender you want to not try to over cook him for this too much of the weather just got a magic going. They go to mass then you're going to cook them a little more in this product although what you're doing is as much reheating you need either an oil much on good Aqua junk we use

you know used butter and oil and then we have our taters a cooked drain and you want to peel them and when you're peeling a dull knife which is often been ripped I've been referred to that quite a bit. You don't want you you don't need to use a real sharp knife or regular butter knife or regular table knife peel it and they feel so much better when they're still warm. If you let them get called they get starchy they get nasty. You can add the oil. Why do I get the complicated job. Yeah well. We take care of that. And after you peel after you peel them let them cool and slice some. I just you know quantum we call it like that if you want to do a finer dice you could do it if you wanted to add some onion. That would be fine. The all time diners you see these little paprika with them. Again

nothing wrong with it. And one of the keys to having a home fries come out good is you want to turn it down just a little bit is to have you're all oil or grease in the pot. Fairly hot and in here we're using a combination of butter and cooking oil. The addition of the cooking oil enables you to put a lot more heat into it I say but it will burn it I think. 3:10 you put some cooking oil in there takes up to 340 350 so you're able to get a little more of a Browning into it a little less of a burning and start to smell decent You see that sells that has still got a ways to go. I mean it's now we're doing this. And can you get me some bread crumbs and some salt. Thank you. The bread and some salt. You know I'm going to I'm going to trust you to solve this. OK you know you think I'll do it to taste. Well it depends whose taste you're salty and everybody salts to tell I

find that taters tend to take a lot more than you would imagine. Yeah it's general General ratio always 3 percent of salt per product. But that that can vary an awful lot. Then I'm going to spring cause secret for this little bit of Red Cross bread crumbs that will enable your potato to brown much more quickly and almost get a little crust you're in the finished dish you probably not even to be where the bread crumbs. OK we're going to let that go. OK now we're going to bash. We will be using that a moment. But we are OK and right now we are going to add we have some apples and I'm going to dice in I'm going to add that to our red cabbage and ice I'm going to Julie or matched it. Now do you recommend any particular apple for this amount the granny smith would be good whatever you know if you don't want a cookie Apple but if you have I mean this is

also a nice way. Again I've got the eight year old twins at home and maybe they take a bite out of an apple and eat an apple put it somewhere and so you're sitting at some looking at something and this gives you use for it I that were do not do this at the sandwich from the restaurant but it's if you have an apple at home that has a little bit of a off spot or something cut off the off spot and this is a this is a way you can use one apple in something you don't have to make an apple pie. OK now we're going to put it. Let's do it like this. There we go we have a little heat over here playing a musical musical burner. No not a way we do this anymore. We're going to be using that for our right we would. So the first thing with the you need for Wienerschnitzel. Now what's in this menu. This is a wiener schnitzel I have a couple pieces of veal here. These happen to be veal Tenderloin which is a very nice piece you can use a piece from the

leg. I will then turn to those so it's all OK you're OK. Where we went at night and I you you all you got me here just happy I mean if you're involved boy if you want to get there you get the bill OK. He's got the BIG BUCKS a lot of you know you have by using utensils. Now the meaning of Wienerschnitzel Bean is the German term for the beautiful city of Vienna in Austria. And schnitzel means cut. So this is a Viennese cutlet and we're taking our view and we're going to pound it. And one good investment for your home kitchen is to get yourself a good Mallet I used to have some out one tenth of this and will use it for Rush all or any number of things with the turkey. Sometimes you get turkey breast chicken breast so tender rises and tender eyes it also it doubles your it doubles the amount of a coverage also what would have taken 12 minutes to

coopt will take you 3 4 minutes to quote the feel has a lot of connective tissue in it. This will break that down. So right here we have our schnitzel. There's all sorts of wonderful stories about schnitzel a lot so which might even be true. Who are we looking for here. I want to make an egg wash. But it is said that the wiener schnitzel. I've let my people heard you can say OK I'll get back there in in Italy. They obviously use a lot of VO and they would make a dish like a Wienerschnitzel. But instead of using breadcrumbs to coat it they would you use gold leaf gold leaf gold leaf in the various

rulers. And I believe this is Milan is in northern Italy. They have what they called sumptuary laws. And they banned this salt beef. This came the gold leaf was replaced just by the breadcrumbs. We have about a minute. OK. You know we got to go we're going to get as a matter of fact if you would like to get any of the recipes here at WTOP why we suggest that you send us help a stamped envelope and send it to on the menu at 44 handed street. Springfield Massachusetts 11 0 3 and I would encourage you also to go to our website WG wide dot org. So as you can see our meal is almost done. All but the schnitzel have ready. OK well we took we had to stand so we pounded it then we dipped it in little flour

and egg wash which is made with whole egg and some milk and it's months seasoned bread crumbs then we put it in a hot pan with a little butter rounded on both sides and that's our Wiener schnitzel. We're going to add this to the plate in the winner's not so the red cabbage in the home fries a very classic and very delicious German combination. And where would you like these people that you have the artistic touch. I don't know maybe here I got the business types the plate looks and we show the meat you know you go there not a bad idea and pump consume consume it is ready. I if you had you could use some crew tons in this. A little meat a little and sweetened whipped cream whatever. And there's a pumpkin soup. Well what do you know here you have a pumpkin soup. I read cabbage over here. A German roasted I'm not German roasted but German. Home fried potatoes and then of course I Wienerschnitzel add by the way if

I want to change it at this moment and go to a hosting what would you put on it. I put a fried egg on it and a little bit of it and show a little bit of ancho and a paper count Holstein was a German diplomat who would only have one breakfast instead of three or four so he put all his stuff on one plate he put his veal his egg and a little bit of a sandwich in the engine. I got to tell you what I got to tell you. You've done it again on the menu is brought to you by the members of WG wine and by Commonwealth registry of nurses professional caring staff providing the assistance needed to cope with growing healthcare challenges with a nurse on call 24 hours a day. Christine Moriarty and her staff have offered an alternative in-home care since 1989.