The hose that Lukas Rönninger calls his kitchen is twelve meters long and 2.40 meters wide. But because the kitchen appliances are on the left and right in this hose, i.e. the convection machine, the salamander, the gastro dishwasher, the Electric stove and the refrigerators, the walk-in part of Lukas Rönninger’s kitchen is barely more than a meter wide. He takes 10,000 steps every day on this hose lined with grass-green rubberized plastic – he measured this with the fitness watch, always back and forth between the stove, the pass and the cold store Cook a la carte menus?” And the 34-year-old answers them: “With loud music. With metal.”
He actually wants to continue talking about music right now, but because he’s putting barley barley in a pot with olive oil at the same time, he first has to explain why he doesn’t cook his risotto with rice, but with these barley barley. “They contain just as much starch, but they are native here and have many more healthy ingredients.” The only disadvantage: they have to cook about twice as long as normal risotto.
While adding hot broth, he resumes the thread of his conversation: “Last year I listened to 180,000 hours of Spotify, 60,000 of which were metal” – which is characterized by distorted guitar riffs, punchy rhythms and strong bass and drum sounds. But because his mother-in-law is a member of the kitchen team – she does the dishes – and she doesn’t like metal, she can always make a wish when it comes to cleaning the kitchen in the evening. “Then we play Chris Rea and Clearwater Revival – alternating every day,” says Rönninger and grins.
Other family members also help: Rönninger’s wife Eszter, his mother and his father, a metal worker who renovated the listed former pigsty in which the restaurant is located. Together with Rönninger’s uncle, the blacksmith, and Rönninger’s brother, the electrician. And the pictures on the walls were painted by his aunt, an artist. “I wouldn’t have been able to become self-employed on my own. There’s family in every corner,” says the young man as he puts the beans to boil and melts sugar for the fig sauce in another pot.
His mother opened a café in 1999
Table of Contents
Originally, the “99er Kulinarium” in Iphofen, Franconia, was even a café – his mother Marion Rönninger, actually a teacher, opened it on September 9, 1999 and ran it for 13 years. In 2012 she had health problems, he stepped in for a few days and thought: “Either I’ll take it on as boss, or it won’t work.” He put a lot of heart and soul into it “and everything he could.” And turned it into a restaurant.
Because, as he knew from a very early age, cooking was “a lot of fun” for him. Anything else was never an option for him because even as an eight-year-old he was always helping in the café’s kitchen. He is certain that he can no longer work as an employed chef. He likes that he can be creative in the kitchen. “It’s a bit of arts and crafts too.”
The barley barley that will be used to make risotto is still well covered in broth, but Rönninger is already adding hot broth again. “This is another advantage of pearl barley: you don’t always have to reduce all the broth before adding new ones – they are significantly less sensitive than rice when the starch is boiled out.” While he stirs, he casually explains why risotto sometimes still has a hard core in the rice grains that simply doesn’t want to become soft after cooking for a long time: “Then the broth wasn’t hot enough when you poured it in. That doesn’t happen with pearl barley either.” Once cooked, he explains, barley risotto can easily be reheated without it becoming soggy, as long as you haven’t added the vegetables, butter and cheese yet: first fry the vegetables you want to add in a pan. Then add the finished risotto and hot broth. Finish with butter and grated cheese.
After his training at the Hotel Leicht in Biebelried, Rönninger started working for the former television chef Stefan Marquard in the golf club restaurant “Dining Range” in Olching near Munich – he got the job because he presented himself on crutches. “I was 17 and tore a ligament from pogo dancing three days before the journeyman exam.” When he appeared for the interview shortly afterwards, Marquard said: “Oh, you took the journeyman’s exam on crutches? That’s enough as an employment criterion. Your taste in music is crucial.” Back then, Marquard only listened to punk rock in his kitchen. Rönninger says: “I could have worked for a star chef near here, but I didn’t want to.” At Marquard it was cooler, less complicated.
The “99er Kulinarium”, on the other hand, is pretty down-to-earth with its rough stone walls and light wooden tables in the dining room – at least as long as there is no music coming from the kitchen. There are almost 50 seats, plus 50 in the garden. As one of the last bars in the area, it also has a regulars’ table. “Some guests have been coming since September 9, 1999, and they also help serve beer when we have a street party.”
Unlike many other chefs, he doesn’t have a staff shortage. He has five employees: himself, his mother-in-law, his mother, his wife and a cook. There are also four temporary workers.
He has a garden nearby
The door to the restaurant opens and a dynamic woman enters the dining room – Rönninger’s mother Marion. A large box is wedged under her arm. “I harvested sloes,” she announces as she is already on her way to the kitchen. The son explains: “Earlier she was fetching empties, and then she probably saw sloes somewhere, harvested them and put them in the empties boxes. Otherwise they fall down and break.”
Without making too much of it, Rönninger uses a lot of organic vegetables and fruit in his kitchen. Because he has a garden nearby, 2000 square meters. 20 chickens live there and are fed with kitchen scraps. Herbs, zucchini, chard, beans, rhubarb, quinces, pumpkins, apples, pears, figs and much more also grow there. And what doesn’t grow here, he buys from a large supplier, from a butcher or a hunter. Or from the saffron farmer. Or from the truffle farmer who lives three kilometers away. “The slow food area managers from the Convivium Mainfranken-Hohenlohe come to me every year to eat truffles,” says Rönninger proudly.
He now cools the cooked beans with ice and cold water so that they retain their green color. At the same time, he takes the meat out of the cold storage and puts it in the oven at 60 degrees for about 15 minutes. “The biggest enemy of meat is: straight from the fridge into the pan. This causes a shock, then the muscle proteins on the surface contract quickly and therefore lose water more easily.”
“You can season meat before roasting it”
He then boils the figs with wine and butter, with the lid on, on a low heat. While they are cooking, he always places two slices of bacon next to each other so that their fat edges overlap. He now places the salted and dried beans in four piles on the four bacon bases, then he rolls up each base and cuts them twice. Finally, he fry them in a pan and then place the sections on their cut surfaces. He puts them in the oven to keep them warm.
He now removes the figs from the stock again, and while he continues to reduce the stock, he seasons the meat with salt, pepper and sugar: nine parts salt, half a part sugar, half a part coarse pepper. “You can season it before frying, because the idea that the meat has pores that need to close first is a misconception, that’s nonsense,” he explains. And he immediately clears up another half-truth: “It’s also not true that meat when you order it ‘rare’ is still bloody. That’s cell fluid with the muscle pigment myoglobin.”
For the risotto, he now fry the mushrooms in the same pan in which he previously fried the bacon. He then adds them to the risotto, followed by very finely grated cheese, which binds even better, and butter.
While the risotto is resting for a moment, but must never be boiled, he dries the meat with kitchen roll and then fry it. “It has to be completely dry so that it has a frying crust.” Once it’s browned, he puts it back in the oven to finish cooking. Like the vegetables that come from Rönninger’s garden, the venison is virtually a local commodity. “There are an incredible number of deer running around up on the Schwanberg,” he explains. The Schwanberg is an extension of the Franconian Steigerwald, and so Rönninger concludes razor-sharply: “This food here is a Bavarian version of risotto.”
However, he would never cook something like that at home because his ten-year-old son and his wife don’t like deer. He hardly ever cooks at home because he spends all day in the kitchen anyway. In general, he is an undemanding eater: his favorite food is buttermilk, “that’s my breakfast and my dinner.” He is already a role model for his son: “He cut up a lobster when he was eight and will become a chef too.”
Venison with wild mushroom barley risotto, figs and bacon beans
Ingredients (for 4 people)
1 large saddle of venison or 2 shells of venison
4 sprigs of rosemary
6 espresso beans
125 g pearl barley
125 g vegetable or chicken stock
100 ml white wine
olive oil
100 g Butter
150 g grated Parmesan (or Pecorino)
250 g wild mushrooms (probably frozen) or chanterelles or mushrooms
4 figs
250 ml port wine or strong red wine
80 g cane sugar
Cinnamon stick, thyme, 1 allspice grain
80 g Butter
1 tbsp dark balsamic vinegar
if necessary some starch for binding
150g green beans
8 slices of bacon
Preparation of risotto
Sweat the pearl barley in plenty of olive oil. Deglaze again and again with wine and stock until the liquid is used up, adding water if necessary if the risotto is still too thick. Fry the mushrooms and finally fold in the parmesan and butter.
Reh
Season with salt and pepper. Fry and then let it sit in the oven at 75 degrees in a bowl with rosemary, butter and espresso beans for 12 to 15 minutes.
Figs
Cut the figs crosswise. Cook a broth from caramel sugar, wine, 1 sprig of rosemary, thyme, allspice seed and cinnamon stick. Bring the broth to the boil and let the figs steep in it for 15 minutes. Remove the figs. If necessary, mix 1 tablespoon of cold water with 1 tablespoon of starch to bind and add, but do not bring the sauce to the boil afterwards. Add the cold butter in pieces, but do not stir, otherwise there will be lumps would.
Bean Rolls
Clean and blanch the beans. Season with salt, pepper and a little savory or rosemary.
Place 2 slices of bacon with overlapping fat edges lengthwise next to each other and place ¼ of the beans in the middle. Then roll up the beans, fry the rolls in the pan until crispy and then lay them flat on a board. Separate each roll into three parts with the knife. Then place the parts on their interfaces and serve standing up.
