I was going to write that this wasn’t a German meal. The Sauerkraut came with turmeric, the Pellkartoffel were mixed with some celery and a bit of serrano pepper, and the Bratwurst was surprisingly spicy and almost sweet (even after all the time I’ve spent in Germany, my personal reference remains the uncooked Sheboygan white brat of my larger German-American family). Also, there was pickled okra!

Then I remembered that Germany is a big place, was once a way bigger place, and is surprisingly cosmopolitan today; also, its hoary cooking traditions are tweaked, both inside and outside its borders, sometimes.

• four links (one pound) of Møsefund‘s wonderful fully-cooked mangalitsa pork Bratwurst, purchased at the farm’s stand at the Saturday 23rd Street farmers market (they are normally set up there once a month), seared inside an enameled oval cast iron pan until blistered and heated through, served with a classic German mustard, Löwensenf Medium
• ten or 12 ounces of really delicious Pinto (or Pinto Gold) new potatoes from Norwich Meadows Farm, boiled with a generous amount of salt until barely cooked through, drained, halved, dried while inside the large, still-warm vintage Corning Pyrex Flameware glass pot in which they had cooked, a tablespoon or so of butter added, plus half a cup of thinly-sliced celery from Neversink Organic Farm and a bit of chopped fresh green serrano pepper from Central Valley Farm, seasoned with sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, garnished with chopped parsley from Keith’s Farm
• some Hawthorne Valley Turmeric Sauerkraut from a jar I had selected, I would have to say, uncharacteristically, at their stall in the Greenmarket a while back, probably overcome by the entire stand’s aura of healthiness (also the color of the cabbage)
• pickled okra from Millport Dairy Farm, also in the Union Square Greenmarket
• the last slices of a She Wolf Bakery miche that had been waiting in the bread box for just this occasion
• the wine was an Austrian (Lower Austria) red, Zweigelt, Erdenlied 2016, from Astor Wines
• the music was Nicola Porpora’s 1732 operatic masterpiece, ‘Germanico in Germania’