There's hardly any food you would more expect to find on a website dedicated to Freudian recipes – after wiener and sausages, of course – than asparagus. I call this vegetable the vegan ersatz wiener, to convey a somewhat more contemporary chic if you will. Asparagus was traditionally the nobleman's food of idleness. A gourmet's delight for kings and emperors, Roman, French and Habsburg's alike, in need of something... The post Freud’s Asparagus, the Vegan Wiener – Two Recipes: White French with Hazelnuts and Light Vinaigrette & Sautéed Green Italian with Olives and Lime (Recipe) #Vol ..read more

As readers asked me about good books, not only cookbooks, to read about Vienna, I finally came up with a list of major references about the city, Jewish cooking, and Sigmund Freud. I even added a list of my favorite movies connected to Vienna and to Freud. To make this bibliography, even more useful, I rely on your help. I, therefore, encourage you to contact me or to leave a comment about any striking omissions or any suggestions for inclusion that you might have. Meanwhile, I do hope you enjoy the read! The post The Foodnik’s Good Reads on Sigmund Freud, Vienna’s Cuisine & Jewish Cooking ..read more

Eight days of intensive testing have yielded this authoritative latke story and recipe. Potato pancakes and hash browns are eaten all over the world. Going by the name Erdäpfelpuffer, they are also a popular winter dish in Vienna, of all places. As Yiddish latkes, one of the most famous of Jewish foods, they're charged with religious meaning for the holiday of Hanukkah. That's when, in just eight days, Jews eat the same quantity of oily potato pancakes that the world eats during one whole year. Fried in oil, latkes commemorate the Hanukkah miracle in whi ..read more

In recent years champagne-creme-filled and gold-leaf-topped donuts and sufganiyot have been en vogue. Try these wonderfully homey jelly doughnuts for a change. Though you don't have to use jelly, apricot jam is the most classic filling in Vienna, as strawberry jam is in Israel. Use any filling you prefer, like vanilla cream, Nutella, or even marzipan. Today I'm making some classic Viennese jelly doughnuts with Uri Scheft of New York's Breads Bakery and of Tel Aviv's Lehamim Bakery.  Krapfen are Viennese doughnuts, delicious little pastries filled with apricot jam. They ..read more

Nothing bland about this poached fruit! Cherished and cultivated for its intense floral fragrance since the time of the Akkadians, the quince has a smell so wonderful that the Jews even have a special blessing for it. Why would you overpower these aromas with heavy, spiced poaching liquids, tasting like gingerbread, applesauce, or pear compote? I'd rather indulge in its rare and uniquely luscious perfume unadulterated, somewhere between rose and honey, with a hint of citrus. Food god Paul Bocuse himself only used sugar to accommodate this strongly perfumed fruit for jellies or paste. Quince do ..read more

In German, Vienna is Wien, and wine is Wein. Coincidence? Perhaps not. More important, Wein/wine sounds like whine, which surely is the Viennese's favorite pastime hence the large amounts of alcohol consumed in the whole region. There's even a wine unique to Vienna, the Wiener Gemischter Satz. Indeed, the city has a vibrant tradition of making and drinking wine. (Though there's a lot to be said about Viennese beer too.) Parisians may boast their small, secret, last remaining active vineyard, Clos Montmartre, located literally in the middle of the city. Brooklyn may have its roof ..read more

What an incredibly beautiful place, especially in autumn: The vineyards of the legendary Vienna Woods, the Wienerwald! Just look at these pictures I took on this weekend's walk through the Viennese vineyards. We were having a glass of new wine in a sublime fall setting at the Heuriger Wailand on the Kahlenberg Hill. Overlooking Nussberg hill, the panoramic view of the city and the Danube river are simply gorgeous. And it's only a few bus stops away from the city center!  Sigmund Freud also loved to hike and wander around in the Vienna Woods on weekends. The whole ..read more

Are all strudels wieners? The strudel is a classic Viennese delicacy. In Germany, it's called Wiener Strudel, or "Viennese strudel". But "wiener" and "strudel" are also both slang for, um, a male's privates. Is "Wiener strudel" an expression out of a Viennese dream, revealed by a Freudian urban dictionary? It gets better:  Serve it with a "blow" (really) Now, it is a local habit to serve this "Wiener" strudel with – and I'm not making this up here – "Schlag", Viennese whipped cream, which translates to "blow"! Get your heads out of the gutter. It's "blow" as ..read more

Chopped liver, also known as pâté de foie in French when finely purréed or — generally, when more coarsely chopped, as gehakte leber in Yiddish — is a beloved traditional Ashkenazi Jewish dish often served as a spread or side dish. The meaty version of the dish is made from liver, typically chicken livers, which are cooked and then pureed with onions, hard-boiled eggs, and sometimes other ingredients such as schmaltz (rendered chicken fat) or matzo meal and nuts. This rich and flavorful dish is considered a classic comfort food in Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine and is often enjoyed on special occasi ..read more

Tante Jolesch (aunt Jolesch, pronounced “Yollesh”) was admired for her Krautfleckerln, which is Viennese German for fried cabbage and noodles. In Yiddish, we’re talking about kraut lokshen, kraut pletzlach, or pletzel. It is that delicious pasta dish consisting of small dough squares and diced cabbage, spiced to be either sweet or savory. In the Hungarian half of the [Habsburg, Ed.] empire they were dusted with powdered sugar, while in the Austrian half they were seasoned with salt and pepper. Of all the masterworks, Krautfleckerln were Tante Jolesch’s most famous creation. I emphasize that we ..read more