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Every time I invite my children over for Sunday dinner I have to think hard. One has a problem with flour, another doesn't eat meat, and a third won't touch raw fish.

This weekend, the situation was somewhat simplified by the absence of my vegetarian daughter, so I decided to focus on meat. I chose German-Austrian cuisine. Heavy and fatty, avoiding vegetables and seafood, but oh so close to our Polish tastes. It is a bit like alcohol for the liver: it is better to go all out every once in a while, to poison the body with small doses every day.

For an appetizer, I made a typical German fast food - Curry Wurst. I cut the Frankfurters into pieces and fried them, then threw them into a reduced sauce of onion, apple juice, ketchup and two tablespoons of red curry paste.
For the soup with the Germans’ beloved asparagus, I took two bunches of white asparagus. I cut off the soft ends and set them aside. I cut off the hard ends and threw them away. I peeled the middle part and fried it in butter with onion. I added the chopped white part of the leek and two diced potatoes. I poured the pork shank and vegetable stock over it. I cooked it for twenty-five minutes. Then I blended it, rubbed it through a sieve, added the soft ends, salt and pepper and cooked it for five minutes. I served it with a spoonful of cream.

The next appetizer was a dish that no decent Bavarian can do without - Bayerische Haxe, or Bavarian pork knuckle. You generously salt the pork knuckle and leave it overnight to tenderize. The next day, you wash off the salt, pour water over it, add allspice, bay leaves and stock cube and cook for two hours. You can use the broth for soup. Pour beer with marjoram, sweet paprika and cumin over the cooked pork knuckle. Marinate for two hours. Then put it in the oven at two hundred degrees for an hour, basting it with the marinade from time to time. Serve the pork knuckle with Sauerkraut, or sauerkraut, cooked for an hour in vegetable broth, allspice, bay leaves, salt and pepper.
The last appetizer was the most famous German dish, Kartofenlsalad. I peeled and cut boiled potatoes into thick pieces. I added red onion cut into strips, pickled cucumber into rings, fried smoked bacon and thick cream.

The main course was Austrian Wienerschnitzel with fried cabbage. I pounded the veal schnitzel thinly, salted and peppered it. I rolled it in cornmeal, then in egg, then in breadcrumbs. I fried it in oil with butter. I shredded the young cabbage, then boiled it for twenty minutes with allspice and bay leaf. I added fried bacon with onion and a spoonful of potato flour, salt and pepper.

For dessert, I served a cake invented by Franz Sacher, considered the king of desserts in German-speaking Europe. Eight egg yolks are beaten until smooth with one hundred grams of sugar. Two chocolates melted with one hundred and fifty grams of butter are added, beaten egg whites made of eight egg whites and one hundred grams of sugar, and then a mixture of one hundred and sixty grams of flour, twenty grams of starch with a tablespoon of cocoa and a teaspoon of baking powder. The cake is baked for an hour at one hundred and eighty degrees. After cooling, it is cut in half, soaked in rum and sandwiched with apricot jam. The icing is made of chocolate, butter and cream. It must be refrigerated for three hours before serving.