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Before writing this piece, I checked the Slashfood archives to make sure that I wasn't repeating something that had recently been covered. I needn't have worried; while we've had a few posts on German food over the years, our coverage has tended to focus on chocolate cake, beer, and potato salad, in that order.

While unfortunate, this is totally understandable. Although once a respected cuisine, German food has fallen on hard times. Rich in flavor, it is also rich in fat and salt, and lacks the exuberant seasoning of Italian food or the light freshness of nouvelle cuisine. It is a warming cuisine for a cold climate and, with its emphasis on preserved vegetables and cheap cuts of meat, it seems out-of-place in our fast-paced, refrigerator-dependent world.

The thing is, German food is attractive, cheap, and flavorful. Easy to prepare and a pleasure to eat, it is home cooking in the most meaningful sense of the word. What's more, by reducing serving sizes, playing with accompaniments and adjusting ingredients, it is possible to enjoy the reassuring warmth of German seasoning without breaking our increasingly health-conscious American diets.