Hi, Y'all!
lately I was craving something typically German - Kirschstreusel! And then I realised that the most important ingredient is nearly impossible to get hold of. Sour cherries in a jar are only known to the immigrated Germans around. Therefore, I was very happy when Lidl offered preserved sour cherries and even plums (went by Alp Cuisine, haha).
Thus last Sunday we had a classic crumb cake and our Maltese family really liked it! And the oldest daughter of our friends could impress her German class with new vocabulary :-)
My grandpa always made a foundation of yeast dough and he only spread the drained cherries on top of it, whereas I made the base and the crumbs from the same dough. I only pressed the crumbs into the bottom of the pie pan and I thickened the cherries including their juice with some vanilla custard powder before I buried them under loads of Streusel.
Oh, btw there are a few cherry trees on the island (although I'v never seen one), so you are in fact able to buy them fresh, but the only cherries in a jar you get are either the insanely sweet cocktail cherries (Maraschino) or the other Italian Amarena cherries you use for the ice cream cups (also insanely sweet, to be honest).
And therefore I thought about a list of German pantry staples you can't get in Malta. Besides the aforementioned sour cherries Quark instantly came to my mind. Maltese (and also Americans) do not know what it is - some kind of curd cheese, and therefore they prepare their cheesecake either with ricotta or cream cheese. Apart from cheesecake I love Quark with herbs as a dip to oven roasted potatoes, vegetable fritters and so-on, but have been using yogurt instead. Somewhere on an expat-blog I found a recipe to make your own Quark (I think she used buttermilk), but I could not make myself do it - and moreover, I am not sure if you can get buttermilk here...
Another thing I could not find at first, was the good old custard powder. Although I know how to make custard (the Germans call it Pudding) without the help of Dr. Oetker, but I assumed there are lazy people even in Malta... And after questioning my beloved Maltese colleague I learned that of course you get custard powder. Only that the Maltese Dr. Oetker is called Foster Clark, and he packages his custard mix in tin cans instead of the single portion paper bags I knew from Germany. And because I was fixated on that kind of packaging I did identify the tin can as the item I was looking for only on the second glance.
Lidl (who can't hide it's German roots) also is the only shop offering the small bags with vanilla sugar, baking powder and instant yeast, us Germans are very much used to. If you want vanilla sugar here, you either have to prepare it yourself with real vanilla pods and granulated sugar (or buy the little pouches at Lidl), because otherwise you only get highly concentrated artificial vanilla powder or liquid vanilla extract. Baking powder and dry yeast you normally get here in much larger portions, 500 g for example. This comes in very handy! With my large numbers of bread and pizza I usually bake, these small bags wouldn't get me very far. And less packaging by larger portion sizes is always a good thing.
Another thing I think is very German is our attachment to fruit infusions (or fruit tea). Surely we drink our fair share of black or green tea, but when I think of the huge shelves filled with Teekanne and Messmer, that's a whole other story. Here in Malta you clearly can sense the British influence: You can purchase an abundance of black tea (Earl Grey, English Breakfast just to name a few), a large variety of green teas and a reasonable amount of herbal teas like camomile. But camomile is yucky! I'd rather drink hot water only than camomile tea! Which reminds me of Asterix with the Brits: "Would you like a droplet of milk in your hot water?" :-D
Hot Love (aka raspberry-vanilla), Spanish Orange, Winterdream (aka spiced apple) or Rooibos-Vanilla is much more up my alley. Therefore I am very happy when I can manage to grab a pack of fruit infusion/tea that is not peppermint or mixed berries. But this is whining at high level, of course!
Having said that I wish you a hoppy Easter - stay safe and have a cuppa!
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