Munich – When Claudia Fenzel cooks, she is in her element. Then he relaxes and gets to live out his creativity and put it on a plate – not only for his family, but also for guests at the Lindenkeller Inn on his organic farm in Tiefenbach in the Passau district of Lower Bavaria.
Guests asked for recipes
Guests travel from Munich, Nuremberg, Regensburg and Landshut to indulge in Claudia Fenzel’s culinary delights. They keep asking for their recipes. “I loved the idea of writing down my recipes,” says Fenzel. Until now, he had only collected them as notes in a folder. Now her favorite recipes have appeared in the cookbook “Claudia kocht vor Glück”.
How do you know Claudia Fenzel?
Claudia Fenzel is no stranger. In 1995 she was the dairy queen of Bavaria, in 2010 she participated in the BR program “Landfrauenküche” and for five years she regularly cooked in the program “Wir in Bayern”. In 2002, a qualified agricultural economist took over his parents’ farm in Tiefenbach.
With her Gasthaus Lindenkeller, which accommodates 30 to 60 guests, Claudia Fenzel fulfilled a dream more than 20 years ago and developed her own form of gastronomy, where she cooks according to her mood.
The media attention led to Fenzel receiving offers from two publishers. But she and her husband, Stefan Fenzel, who ran an advertising agency, had a clear idea of what their cookbook should look like. “Once in a lifetime we make a book, we wanted to take the liberty to produce it the way we envisioned it,” says Stefan Fenzel. So the couple took matters into their own hands and founded Weide-Verlag.
The project, which Claudia and Stefan Fenzel put not only two years of work into, but you also put a lot of heart and soul into it. Learning by doing was announced. “We’re not professionals, we’ve never done this before,” says Stefan Fenzel. They received support from a graphic designer friend and Stefan Fenzel’s nephew, who photographed with him dishes that Claudia Fenzel had previously prepared in her kitchen.
Without tools such as varnish or hairspray, which are often used in food photography. “We ate everything we photographed,” confirms Stefan Fenzel.
Important for photos: “Food makes me emotional”
It was important for them that the dishes in the photos looked real and could be touched. “Food evokes emotions in me, and pictures should reflect that,” says Stefan Fenzel. His wife adds, “If you cook according to the recipes, the dishes look like ours.”
And they taste the same. Therefore, the quantities and steps of preparation are as detailed as possible. Claudia Fenzel: “I want every recipe to be successful. Plus, I live in a country where everyone knows everyone else, and it would be even more awkward for me if a recipe wasn’t right.”
Recipes should not only be easy to implement, but also consist of ingredients that everyone knows and that you can source regionally. His own statement: “I don’t want any of my ingredients to have been on the plane.” Regional products are very important to them.
And so she cooks all year round and is currently creating dishes with strawberries, asparagus and rhubarb. “The best way to live sustainably is to see where food comes from. The easiest way is to get it locally so you can see how it’s produced.”
Because they come from their own production, Fenzels have a different relationship with food. “When you live with animals that live on pasture in herds as much as possible per year, you can’t imagine a different attitude,” says Stefan Fenzel.
The Fenzels keep nearly 200 cattle on their 65-hectare Hafninger pasture. They switched from dairy farming to nursing cows 13 years ago. Calves are not slaughtered. The meat from the cattle and chickens they also keep is sold directly from the farm and at two points of sale in Munich.
Stefan Fenzel says: “We had the idea to do a different kind of farming, where you deal directly with customers who get a good product at a decent price.”
Claudia Fenzel comes from a family that cooks a lot. At the age of twelve, he stood alone at the stove for the first time and cooked a roast pig for the whole family. “Mum was proud of how I did it,” he says.
Over the years, these classic family dishes have been supplemented with a number of modern, light and Mediterranean-inspired recipes. 120 of them made it into the cookbook. She has cooked and perfected every recipe in the book many times.
“Maybe we’ll bake with luck again”
Claudia and Stefan Fenzel are no longer sure which of the two came up with the title “Claudia cooks with happiness”. All that is certain is that it could not be more accurate. “Cooking makes me happy,” says Claudia Fenzel. “It gives me great pleasure to cook for other people.”
When his guests at the Lindenkeller are glowing because they enjoyed the food and spent a nice evening with him, “then I go to bed happy.”
The second edition of “Claudia cooks with happiness” has already been ordered. “We’re a farm. We don’t aim to become a real publisher. But if the cookbook continues to be so well received, maybe we’ll dare to do another one,” says Stefan Fenzel, adding: “We can still be lucky for the baking times.”
Recipe 1: Basil curd mousse with shrimp vinaigrette
Ingredients for two to four people:
curd foam
250 g of cottage cheese
125 g of yogurt
3 sheets of gelatin
90 g herbs (e.g. basil)
1/2 lime (juice and peel)
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon vegetable broth
a little pepper
Shrimp vinaigrette
4 radishes
10 grams of cucumber
1 spring onion
Juice and zest of 1/2 lime
3 tablespoons of oil
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
1/4 teaspoon of salt
coarse pepper
4-6 giant prawns
Watercress for garnish
Preparation:
For the foam, first soak the gelatin in cold water. Then put all the other quark mousse ingredients into the blender and blend briefly for 15 seconds on the highest setting.
Dissolve the gelatin in a little warm water, add to the curd foam, mix briefly again and divide into four small glasses or cups that can be drained and cooled.
For the vinaigrette, brown the shrimp in hot oil on all sides, season with salt and pepper and let cool. Cut the cucumber, radish and two shrimp into small cubes and the onions into fine rings.
Make a vinaigrette with lime zest and juice, oil, salt, pepper and sugar, add the diced vegetables and fish and let stand for 15 minutes. Now remove the whipped cream from the molds and turn out onto a plate. Add the shrimp, drizzle with the vinaigrette and sprinkle with the watercress.
Recipe 2: Buttermilk Cream
Ingredients for ten small glasses
500 g buttermilk
300 grams of cream
5 sheets of gelatin
100 g of powdered sugar
60 grams of lemon juice
fruits for decoration
preparation
First put the gelatin sheets in cold water. Whip the cream with a hand mixer until stiff. Mix buttermilk, lemon juice and powdered sugar with a whisk.
Squeeze out the gelatin well and dissolve it in about 3 tablespoons of water on the stove, stirring constantly. Stir the liquid gelatin into the buttermilk mixture while whisking vigorously.
Fold in the cream, spread the finished cream on the dessert glasses and put it in the fridge for two to three hours. Garnish with fruit before serving.
“Claudia kocht vor Glück” (240 pages, 29.80 euros) is available in the online store and in selected stores. Information at weide-verlag.de
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