Meet In Your Kitchen | Krautkopf's Roasted Kale, Apples and Potatoes
This post is part of my Meet in My Kitchen podcast: How did we get to where we are in life & what does food have to do with it
"It's really the story of simplicity. You can create great taste with just a few really good ingredients. You won’t need much." - Susann Probst
When I hopped onto the empty platform after a 2.5 hour train ride I found myself in front of an old red brick building with broken windows and a faded sign painted over the door. I smiled as I thought of the last sentence I had written to Susann Probst and Yannic Schon of Krautkopf"If you won't manage to pick me up in time, don't worry, I'll walk around in the village." There was no village.
The first Meet in My Kitchen Podcast On Tour took me right into the picturesque countryside of Mecklenburg Vorpommern (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) in the north-east of Germany. Golden hills draw their rolling lines into the landscape right where the cloudy sky begins, old trees frame the endless alleys, and villages are rare. This is the place that a young couple chose as their new home, after 10 years in Berlin building up one of Germany's most successful food blogs, publishing a cookbook, and releasing a recipe app.
An old post-war Siedlerhaus (settlers house) rustically built in 1948 out of leftover bricks and beams, compiling of a barn, a couple rooms, and a vast amount of land made Susann and Yannic fall in love with a region that couldn't be more of a contrast to buzzing life in Berlin. However, exactly that - and the creative potential of the two old buildings and the huge garden - were the reason why they both felt ready for a new chapter in their life.
"You see what is in season just because that’s how you planted it. There was all this creativity happening, you went outside and looked into your harvesting basket or in general, you looked at the plants and what was going on there." - Yannic Schon
The Krautkopf cosmos is the inspiring symbiosis of two minds, well attuned, who express themselves through photography, food, design, and now also gardening. Susann and Yannic found a new playing field for their creative energies initiated through the big move in 2020.
The house's interior brings together warm hues, all shades of earthy colors, it plays harmonically with darkness and light, and it treasures all the old features. The dining room feels like a cozy cave, the kitchen, which used to be the barn, still has the old uneven brick flooring, the little lattice windows letting in beams of light. It wouldn't really surprise you if you saw a sheep munching on hay next to you. It's all very rustic but then at the same time it doesn't have the dusty layer of the past covering up the fact that it's 2021. It's minimalist and modern without neglecting the past, here, the presence lovingly embraces the past.
Susann and Yannic always keep all creative decisions in their own hands, be it a blog, a book, a sofa, or the new field of gardening. They read and learned everything they could possibly find about seeds and seedlings, flowers and orchard meadows, bees and bushes. The couple created a garden that combines all the romantic ideas of living in the countryside with the modern desire of a sustainable life with nature and not against it. The huge vegetable garden offers every ingredient a cook could ask for. Tomatoes, zucchini, squash, peppers, peas, beans, and potatoes - all popping when their season has come. There's really everything right at hand in front of the kitchen door that a cook could ask for - and it all looks so perfect and pretty.
When Susann and Yannic worked on their new book, Erde, Salz und Glut (soil, salt and heat; only in German) they just had to walk into their garden to create all the colorful recipes circling around vegetables that fill their book's pages. The concept for the book came up during a trip to Scotland. Living in a tent and reducing ingredients, tools, and techniques to a minimum for their travel cooking, the ingredients basically only needed salt and heat. When they moved to their new house shortly after the trip and when gardening and harvesting became such a big part of their everyday life, they added 'soil' to the book's title.
The recipe they shared with me is from their new book. It's a celebration of their garden and of their favorite season, of autumn, its flavors and its colors: Roasted Kale, Potatoes and Apple.
The podcast episode with Susann and Yannic is in German. You can listen to the Meet in My Kitchen podcast on all common podcast platforms; there are English and German episodes. You can find all the blog posts about these podcast episodes including my guests’ recipes here on the blog under Meet in Your Kitchen.
Listen to the podcast episode with Susann and Yannic on:
Spotify / Apple / Deezer / Google / Amazon / Podimo
On Instagram you can follow the podcast @meetinmykitchenpodcast!
Roasted Kale, Potatoes and Apple
by Susann Probst and Yannic Schon (from Erde, Salz & Glut)
Serves 2
700g / 1 1/2 pounds small waxy potatoes (with skin)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium red onion, peeled
2 medium baking apples
100g / 3 1/2 ounces kale
1 handful walnut kernels
Salt
2 tablespoons walnut oil
1 tablespoon mustard
70ml / 1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon apple juice
4 medium sprigs tarragon
Preheat the oven to 180°C / 355°F.
Cut the potatoes into 4 wedges each. Drizzle 1 tablespoon of the vegetable oil on a baking sheet, add the potatoes, toss them in the oil and spread them out. Roast the potatoes, on the middle rack, for 10 minutes.
While the potatoes are roasting, cut the onion into slim wedges, cut each apple into 8 wedges then cut out and remove the core. Trim the kale leaves and tear large leaves into smaller pieces. Chop the walnuts roughly.
Add the onion, apples, and kale to the potatoes, add 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil, mix with your hands, and season to taste with salt then bake for another 15 minutes or until the potatoes are golden and just cooked through. Add the walnuts and roast for 1 more minute.
In a small bowl, whisk together the walnut oil, mustard, and apple juice and season to taste with salt. Remove the tarragon leaves from the sprigs then drizzle the dressing over the roasted vegetables and sprinkle with the tarragon. Serve immediately.
