Recently, Juliana and I ate Rote Grütze - and I had an urgent desire to make Rote Grütze myself afterwards. On Wednesday's market, we bought a lot of berries and this morning I stood at the stove.
The whole thing is quite simple actually. And it just tastes delicious. What goes in:
- a jar of cherries (I had a 500ml jar, 375g fruit)
- top up to 750g - 800g with fresh fruits (we had blackberries, blueberries, and red currants)
- 50g sugar (those who prefer it sweeter can go up to 100g sugar)
- we also had half a packet of vanilla sugar
- the juice of half a lemon
- about 50-60g sago (you can also use neutral starch)
The preparation itself is also quite simple:
- boil the juice from the cherries together with the lemon juice in a pot
- add about 1/3 of the fruits to the boiling juice and bring to a boil
- stir in the sugar and sago
- turn down the heat and let it simmer for about 30 minutes with frequent stirring (the sago grains should ideally all be clear and no longer stand out light - I stopped a bit too early, it might be easier with regular starch)
- when the pudding is nice and thick and the sago is clear, add the remaining fruits and simmer for 5 minutes
- then fill the pudding into bowls, let it cool, and put it in the fridge
- serve with vanilla ice cream (that's what we had today) or vanilla sauce, or cream, or even just some milk
The pudding becomes so firm and thick, just as I remember it, not as thin as you often get it - it's really more of a pudding and not a soup. And if you have a bottle of red wine open, you can also cook the red wine well with the pudding (but a glass of red wine is really enough).