The Wachau Cookbook

LOVE is always one of the ingredients when Christine Saahs cooks - a love for the Wachau, for her guests, and for the region's outstanding natural products. When she quickly darts out to her herb garden to pluck ripe saffron from her crocuses, gives her applesauce the finishing touch with a sprinkle of rose petals or grates horseradish over carp, she always knows why she is doing it: not only to turn her food into something special but also because she wants to give her dishes a vital, invigorating power.

For Christine Saahs, who runs the venerable Nikolaihof, in the Wachau Valley, biodynamic agriculture and foodstuffs have been a way of life for over 40 years. Food is good for the soul, but only when it is truly delicious. And this is precisely what the recipes of Christine Saahs guarantee.

She reveals her long-held secrets for interpreting the classics of Wachau cuisine, and these tips promise perfect results and delighted guests in your own home. Christine Saahs shares something else as well: memories of life in the Wachau and the culinary traditions of this unique region along the River Danube, preserved in her stories about the days of her parents and grandparents and about her own childhood.

Christine Saahs is a chef, farmer and proud native of the Wachau. She loves the sweeping views across what is perhaps the loveliest valley of the Danube. She lives and works with her family at the Nikolaihof, Austria's oldest wine estate, where she has practised biodynamic agriculture since 1971. She takes great pleasure in pampering her guests with the finest of products. Her most recent success - although it cannot be eaten: 100 Parker Points for her Riesling Vinothek 1995.