This year's summer weather here in Germany is - the first time for many years - like summers were in my childhood. Mostly a mix of sunshine and rain with moderate temperatures. 20-25 degrees for the Celsius people, in the high 70s for the Fahrenheit crowd. A few hot days are interspersed and quickly terminated by thunderstorms.
On those days, my mother used to keep the house dark and make either biscuits seeped in buttermilk for lunch or something called "Kaltschale", literally "cold bowl". This is, essentially, a soup made of berries or other fruit and served cold.
This being the 1960s and 70s, the food industry quickly developed "just stir into cold water and serve" packages that were quite popular for some time. But they dropped out of favour in the 1990s, perhaps because of their artificial taste.
They were still served in the cafeteria of the University of Heidelberg when I studied Chemistry there. We used to say they were "full of the vitamins B,A,S and F". Vitamins S and F do not exist, of course, but BASF was the big chemical company just across the Rhine in Ludwigshafen.
Long story short: the weather bringing back my childhood, I decided to make Cold Bowl from fresh ingredients and see if I/we liked it, and it was a success. So I share the recipe with you:
1 handful of fruit per serving
water or suitable fruit juice to well cover the fruit
sugar to taste
1 teaspoon of cornstarch per serving
Clean and cut fruit into cm-size (half inch) pieces. Put in a skillet and cover with water or fruit juice. Cook until desired tenderness. Make a cornstarch slush with additional cold water or juice and stir it into the boiling mixture. it should thicken immediately. Let cool to room temperature. Add water if it's still too thick and chill in refrigerator.
I tried this with rhubarb and currant, using apple juice for extra taste. Some sugar was needed, but these are rather sour fruit and this year's weather wasn't kind to them. Strawberries or raspberries, apricots or peaches might not need sugar at all.
