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Frankfurter Lentil Soup

2 bunches of soup vegetables, 2 potatoes, 300 g brown lentils, 1 bay leaf, 1 tsp dried thyme, 1.5 l stock, 1 bunch flat-leaf parsley, 1 onion, 100 g beef jerky, 1 tbsp clarified butter, 4 pairs frankfurters, 2 tbsp vinegar, salt, pepper.

Clean and dice soup vegetables. Peel, wash and dice potatoes. Bring lentils with vegetables, potatoes, bay leaf and thyme to a boil in the stock and simmer for 30-40 minutes. In the meantime, chop the parsley. Peel the onion and dice it as well as the dried meat. Sauté both slowly in lard over low heat. Add the bacon mixture and sausages to the lentil soup and cover, but do not allow to boil. Stir vinegar and parsley into soup and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve the soup sprinkled with parsley.

 

Frankfurter sausages in the Hanauer Landstraße

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"We're not allowed to make any, others do that," her mother always answered when asked why the butcher's shop didn't make frankfurters. This is what Friederike Satvary, who runs the traditional butcher's shop Gref-Völsing together with her sister Dorothea Wohlberg, tells. Nevertheless, the noble sausages have been available in the shop on Hanauer Landstraße for several years. Why not, the butcher's shop is located on Frankfurt soil after all. It was a slow start, but Gref-Völsing's Frankfurter sausages soon earned their excellent reputation. In particular, the large trade fairs in the city contributed to this. The city of Frankfurt's business development department was and is also a major buyer of the sausages.

Even and especially those among the butcher's clientele who might not like Gref-Völsing's famous beef sausage praised the quality and good taste of the house's Frankfurters. "Ours are smokier," says Friederike Satvary, "other producers brine their sausages, but we vacuum ours, which results in pure, unadulterated flavor." Meanwhile, the frankfurters are also available in jars and cans. They are made from "the very finest pork". From animals that have grown up in the Frankfurt area and in the Bavarian Rhön.

In particular for their offspring, customers like to buy Frankfurters. "They are real sausages for kids," Ms. Satvary observes, "because they are so wonderful to eat cold, too." They continue to be a popular take-away item, "a pair of frankfurters is always good". By the way, she is generous with the baby food. There is no special pastry similar to the Wasserweck with beef sausage. A normal roll is usually requested. "Many eat the frankfurters as a side dish, for example with a casserole, or have them cut into their lentil or pea soup`; there are customers who eat three or four pairs at once."

A Frankfurt baker sources special, slightly shorter frankfurters from Gref-Völsing to wrap them in mustard-covered buttter croissant dough. "Tastes fantastic," Ms. Satvary raves. Speaking of mustard, she says the old custom of eating grated horseradish with frankfurters, instead of mustard, has probably gone under; she has never heard anyone ask for it.

"All four generations of our house have always resisted the temptations to use the name Gref-Völsing as profitably as possible via an idustrial expansion," the butchery's homepage says. As honorable and sympathetic as that sounds, it also prevents the sisters from opening sales stands in Frankfurt's main train station or at the Rhine-Main Airport, for example, and offering "Original Frankfurters" to people from all over the world. The market leader should be surprised if it doesn't make a buck!

Butchery Gref-Völsing
Friederike Satvary and Dorothea Wohlberg
Hanauer Landstr. 132
60314 Frankfurt am Main
Tel. 069-433530, Fax 90436710

Internet:<link http: www.gref-voelsings.de _blank> www.gref-voelsings.de

from Waldemar Thomas