Serving up a country

It's rare to eat a meal where every ingredient on the plate comes guaranteed with a clear source of origin.

And it's a double pleasure when one gets a chance to also sample some of the coolest regional cuisine over a single sit-down dinner without having to travel to all the regions of culinary influences.

On the last leg of our visit to Germany, our host, Werner Heesen, director of Lufthansa German Airlines, South Asia, promised that the restaurant he had selected for the evening would be a special one, a sort of a "culinary mini trip to the country" itself.

It was a long day of missed flights, sightseeing tours and a forgettable meal in an Indian restaurant (deep-fried, artificially-coloured pakoras, touted as "starters") in Wiesbaden, the capital of the province of Hessen half an hour away from Frankfurt.

I was beginning to wonder whether there was more to German cuisine than the kartofels (potato dishes), sauerkrauts (cabbage) and the mind-boggling array of 1,500 kinds of German sausages.

I was more than pleasantly surprised at our next restaurant hop where freshness was the selling point. Adler Wirtschaft, a quaint restaurant, is run by Franz Keller, who some regard as the "founder of nouvelle cuisine in Germany".

It is located in Hattenheim, a picturesque village lined with homes covered with wild grape creepers and gardens with blossoming lilacs and geraniums.

After training with the famous chef Paul Bocuse, one of the pioneers of nouvelle cuisine in the early 70s, and a career stint in a chain of five-star hotel restaurants, Keller settled down in this village to create his own local German version of nouvelle cuisine 15 years ago.

Located on the banks of the Rhine, which pops in and out of sight from the main road flanked by rolling grape fields, Hattenheim is in the heart of Rheingau, the region that produces the finest varieties of the refreshing German sparkling wine called sekt.

We started with the restaurant's own aperitif "" the Franz Keller Rheingau 2003 Riesling "" a fine sparkling wine with a hint of a fresh tangy fragrance, which the chef carefully selects after visiting the neigbourhood wineries.

But it was the version of the German nouvelle fare, accompanied by a dry wine from grapes harvested around Hattenheim and a 2002 Burgundy from a village 10 km away, that made it spendidly wholesome.

It was a feast both for the eyes and the heart and sheer delight to eat little portions of districts and villages in our soups and desserts. There were some 19-odd items on the last count.

A broth of chicken soup with shreds of crab pancakes was served in small bowls along with two others, including an asparagus soup dashed with chervil.

The fresh and thick gleaming white asparagus had been sourced from the Heidelberg region not far and was served with potato and olive oil bread and a curd mixed with local herbs.

By now, dishes such as the Rhiengau's speciality ""smoked duck breast, smoked eel, a northern German favourite, a liver and potato salad and fried pork in cranberry and apple sauce from southern Germany"" began to arrive at regular intervals.

The black sausages that came from the mountains of Taunus, 20 km away, were particularly good as was the pork cooked in apple and cranberry sauce and the goose livers.

While most of it was cuisine from neighbouring German states, Mediterranean dishes such as the tabouleh, and artichoke salad were also structured into the menu.

Among sausages, my favourite were the white ones from Bavaria. They are made out of minced meat of veal, pork and herbs and served in a lake of boiling water.

But here the black sausages from the Taunnus mountains 200 km away from the Adler were almost like experiencing a slice of culture.

And that perhaps is Keller's intention. "After exploring world cuisine for many years, I want to come back to my roots and showcase food that reflects local cuisine and market products," he says.

Keller runs the restaurant four days a weeks. The rest of the week is taken up by "research" work which could either be visiting and sourcing meat from a local farm or curing ham in his kitchen.

"Most of the ducks we source are not from mechanised factories but are allowed to run free in farms," he says. At the end, one can go back home not just with a sense of the lingering tastes but with a sense of well-being.