Ofen Suppe (Oven Soup)

One of my favorite souvenirs from a vacation is not necessarily a thing, but an idea. This is a soup we were served in the beautiful Dresden home of the lovely Ulla Weber and her mother Elisabeth, close friends of Ellen's parents. I was handed a spoon and invited to sample the contents of a pot before we left for a day of sightseeing in the city.

It was sweet and sour, rich, tomatoey, and full of meat and veggies. It's basically things from cans, with the addition of pineapple (yes, pineapple) and meat. I think the version we had contained beef. It was one those things that you just have to taste without thinking about it too much. It was totally delicious. It was somehow familiar, but I don't remember having anything like it before. Served with white asparagus salad and bread, it was a nice ending to a long day.

In order to more or less replicate it, I found a couple recipes on line, and made a version more or less combining these two:

Ofen Suppe

Oven Soup

I used:

about 1.5 pounds of pork steak, trimmed of fat and bone, and cut into small pieces
1 yellow onion, finely diced
about 2 cups finely diced fresh pineapple
2 8 ounce cans mushrooms, drained
2 6 ounce cans tomato paste
1 can green peas
1 29 ounce can tomato sauce
1 32 ounce container beef broth
1 bottle of chili sauce
about a cup of Heinz ketchup
a heaping tablespoon Madras hot curry powder
about a half cup of finely diced jarred cherry peppers
about a cup of heavy cream

Brown the pork pieces in a little butter. The recipes don't say to do this, but we know browned food is far tastier than unbrowned food. I also salted and peppered the batches of meat as I went. I sauteed the onion. Then I dumped everything into a slow cooker (I didn't see why I couldn't use this option). I deglazed the pan with some of the tomato sauce and broth, too, and added that.

I let it go in the slow cooker for about 4 hours stirring occasionally, and it smells wonderful. I'm not sure I want to know how much sodium and fat are in it, but it really doesn't matter. It's a pretty close approximation.