Leberkäse (Leberkässemmel)

Leberkäse is Bavarian counter food first: butcher shop, market hall, football afternoon, quick lunch standing up with mustard on your fingers. A Leberkässemmel is the slice cut thick and tucked into a crusty Semmel, a small white roll, with sweet mustard. No liver. No cheese. Das ist kein Bierzelt, it's a butcher's loaf done properly.

The regions argue over the name and the meat. In Bavaria, Bayerischer Leberkäse is the smooth pink loaf without liver; outside Bavaria, the food rules have often expected liver in anything simply called Leberkäse, so Fleischkäse, meat cheese, becomes the cleaner name. Im Norden anders, im Süden anders. In Austria you'll see Käseleberkäse with cheese cubes, and that is its own thing. Here I cook the Bavarian slice for the Semmel.

The technique is not baking. The technique is the cold cut. Pork, beef, fat, salt, spice, and crushed ice have to become a tight paste without warming above about 10C. Cold fat chops into the meat protein and binds; warm fat smears, leaks, and leaves you with a crumbly loaf sitting in grease. Keep the bowl cold, work in short bursts, and trust your fingers. If the paste feels cool and sticky, you're right.

Then bake it until the top blisters brown and the centre is cooked through. Slice it thick, put it in the roll, mustard on the bread, and stop decorating. Schön ist, was schmeckt.