Playing with Links, Logs and Wieners

Because I have an eternal lust for sausages and after experiencing a lovely Austrian sausage meal by Chef Bernhard Mairinger at Bier Beisl earlier this year, the Cute Gardener and I decided to recreate a sausage tasting together at home. After a little research we discovered that Mairinger buys all of his sausage for the restaurant from Continental Gourmet Sausage in Glendale so we decided to take a Saturday trek for links.

The deli was a serious place and aside from the crazy woman who ran in while we were there frantically demanding “gooseberry” jam, it had just about everything anyone would look for when trying to replicate an authentic German meal. Sausages galore, various lingonberry spreads, raspberry jelly candies, all the brands of European chocolates and yogurt based treats, dense marzipan roll cakes, mustards in various grains, and hearty, rye and rustic breads. They only take cash or checks though which is a little odd in this day and age but good to know if you are going to drive all the way to Glendale.

We chose our loot consisting of the following sausages:

Gelbwurst (veal)
Blood sausage
Swiss Bockwurst (Weisswurst)
Debreziner (Hungarian spiced wieners)
Kase Krainer (Swiss cheese stuffed sausage)

and ventured home.

On night number one, we decided to cook links and try each out with various preparations.

For the fragile and subtle Weisswurst, we chose to prepare a slow boil of leftover chardonnay, vermouth and white wine vinegar studded with onions and carrots. Once simmering, we added the plump white logs and covered to slow cook.

For the Swiss cheese stuffed variety and a wiener, we decided to toaster over them into a crisp outer plumpness accentuated by juicy innards and laid them in a bed of carrots and fava beans to roast.

We then made a mustard sauce the GC found in his French cookbook normally used for veal kidneys that turned out a hit for the evening.

Simple Instruction for this sauce that would be good over a variety of rich meats:

Melt four tablespoons of butter in a frying pan. Add two shallots that have been peeled and minced till soft. Stir in ¼ cup of cognac then six tablespoons of heavy cream. Lastly, stir in about three to four tablespoons of Dijon mustard to your particular taste. 

We understood after a few minutes of simmering the Weisswurst why Chef Mairinger had painstakingly slow simmered the sausage in a bath of soft milk. Ours split and popped open in an unfortunate moment causing the poor thing to look like some poor, circumcised…. well you get the idea.

Not prone to reject the runt that still probably offered us a good taste, we served it side by side with its better looking brother and decorated it cosmetically with the mustard sauce.

We also simmered another of the Hungarian spiced wieners in a broth of ginger ale and gin. It cooked nicely enough but was wrinkly and less exciting then its relative that came out of the toaster oven.

The lesson we learned this evening is that sausages take a certain amount of care and cook really fast. The carrots and favas from the toaster oven had to be pan, flash sautéed to catch up with the rest of our meal at the end. We also learned that the grainier sausages and the ones stuffed with cheese, are much better grilled, baked or toasted, while the more fragile ones with the dense and fine grains are better slow simmered and cared for with kid gloves. And that everything tastes good with a hunk of pretzel bread.

On evening two, we decided to skip the cooking and have a little cheese and charcuterie. We created a great starter salad out of artisanal lettuce, butternut squash chunks, chia seeds, champagne vinegar, walnut oil, and the reduced remains of the carrot-onion broth from the weisswurst sausage simmer the night before.

Cold, leftover slices from the night before’s cooked sausages, adorned the plate around freshly sliced circles of the blood and Gelbwurst sausages. With grainy mustard on Cuban white bread and rye sourdough, it was fun to mix and match the meats. I favored the dark and dirty blood while the GC favored the pale, clandestine veal; not uncommon for our puzzle pieced palates.

And of course, as is customary to our evenings in, we enjoyed some good cream and blue cheese and a magnificent bottle of pinot alongside the meal.

We ate like Viennese royalty for two nights straight for a fraction of the price of any similar restaurant. I am definitely a fan of seeking out the cuisine of different cultures, not in the grocery store, but in the delis and small businesses run by people who not only know and present the authentic food, but also who charge the respectable prices.

Sausage and Schnitzel at Bier Beisl

I love restaurants where the kitchens are exposed to diners just like the innards of a watch where you get the insider’s glimpse into how all the parts work together in unison from the chopping block to the frying pan. I especially love watching the spectacle when the kitchen contains only one serious chef and a sous chef commandeering an entire dining room. When that chef turns out to be a rising star, like 27-year-old maestro Bernhard Mairinger, who was named one of Zagat’s 30 Under 30 hottest up and coming chefs this year, it’s even more exciting because you know you will get an earnest attention to detail that someone starting out and eager to please can only deliver.

The Cute Gardener and I have had Mairinger’s Bier Beisl, an authentic Austrian food and sausage joint, on our “to try” list for quite some time and decided to try it out last Saturday after a trip to Miracle Mile to patronize museum row. Mairinger not only stayed in the kitchen cooking the entire time, but I hardly once saw him even mutter a word to his sous chef or any of the guests. He was concentrated and focused the entire time and I knew it probably had something to do with the packed house thanks to an L.A. Times article that came out that same day. As a matter of fact, actor and writer Carl Reiner clutched the article and ordered from it directly at the table right behind us.

We arrived pre-sundown to the nondescript Beverly Hills location with a delightful, intimate and square, high-ceilinged dining room that filled up with serious eaters while we ate. On each wooden table sat a small red lantern just like in European bistros with a tiny white flickering candle. The home cured char appetizer was yummy and rich with dill and accentuated by tiny shards of luscious, tangy heirloom beets. A hunk of pretzel was brought out to eat with our second starter.

The second starter was the Weisswurst sausage pair. I had been hankering for this dish since reading about it and the fact that it was slow simmered in milk. Two fat links came plainly adorned with only sliced white onion, soft-enough-to-eat, spicy peppercorns and grainy mustard on the side. The sausages were very finely dense and the most mellow-flavored I’ve tried and really delicious. I was surprised at how big the portion was per price.

The restaurant actually offers an entirely separate sausage menu that offers links in ones or duos for anywhere from 5-10 bucks per dish. You could enjoy a sausage and beer tasting alone and be perfectly satisfied.

I wasn’t planning on eating schnitzel but once I sat down and saw the golden brown fried bits of bliss on other diner plates, I was taken back to the taste of the kinds I had enjoyed in Austria and decided I would be remiss not to try the traditional dish. I did opt for the veal version rather than pork to try something new. The schnitzel was light, perfectly fried with a nice ratio of breading to actual meat, and the veal was cooked very tender with a delightful dipping sauce of lingon berries. The potato salad was a gourmet version of the typical, tangy German version and I liked that the potatoes were thinly sliced coins dressed in yellow with herbs. My boyfriend reminded me that it was hard to screw up fried meat and then went on to really enjoy his own entrée.

A nice medium sized bowl of crispy pork belly and braised pork cheek on a pile of champagne cabbage, fat noodles, tiny, moist and unique vanilla carrots and whole grain mustard infused pork jus was the happy dish of the night.

We also ordered another sausage after seeing how great the first one was. The Kasekrainer came as one fat link, blistered beautifully on the outside and infused with Swiss cheese. Absolutely delicious alongside a pile of the fluffiest horseradish, although it obviously didn’t stay on the plate long enough for me to even snap a picture.

The Sachertorte and Apfelstrudel desserts were good but not spectacular, although I did think the way the strudel was thinly stacked with strata of apple, dough and sauce was architecturally appealing.

Austrian wines were a pleasant surprise for us over the course of the evening. I had enjoyed discovering Austrian wine country while roaming the Linz and Melk countrysides along with Vienna last year and was happy to try them again in Los Angeles. We enjoyed and shared a Malat 2010 Gruner Veltliner; a Wieninger Estate, Gemischter Satz (white), 2009 from Vienna, Austria; a Umathum Estate, Zweigelt Classic (red), 2009 from Neusiedlersee, Austria; a Markowitsch Estate, Blaufraenkisch (red), 2009 from Carnuntum, Austria and for dessert, a Hiedler Estate, Reisling Urgestein, 2009 from Kamptal, Austria.

I would totally go back for a sausage tasting experience, seated at the bar with a bunch of friends looking for something interesting to do and I hope others do too because the restaurant deserves the support. I hope people don’t try it once for the signature schnitzel novelty and then fail to come back again, although in this fickle town that’s going to be a hard-pressed feat.