An intro on German food and my first cooking class

I did it, I finally started! No, not a diet but giving cooking lessons.
My first attempt at it took place the past weekend with a group of fellow Couch Surfers and we concentrated on German food. Being living in Bonn since more than 5 years now, I think I owe this country some gastronomic interest. I haven't been eating traditional German food very often in these years, mostly because there aren't many restaurants around here that serve this kind of food. German food is mostly a homey kind of food, mostly had for dinner with free flowing bier; the kind of food that Gordon Ramsay will push on a nearly failing restaurant in one of his rescue missions. The food around here is instead mostly Italianised, or Turkish at times; naturally we got our Japanese, Chinese, Thai and now also Tibetan joints but you know these places, they all end up having a shared menu across Europe.
Germany is mostly known for 3 ingredients that make up a typical meal: potatoes, pork and sauerkraut. If French cuisine is a majestic ode to eggs, I believe the German one is to potatoes. Mastering them means mastering two of the main ingredients in our pantry (wheat is mostly exploited in Italian cuisine I believe).

TGRWT #18: Plum and blue cheese: Reconstructed Plum Tatin with Blue Cheese Butterscotch sauce and Lavender

The food blogging event “They Go Really Well Together” (TGRWT) was initiated by Martin of the Khymos.org blog in April 2007 to explore unusual flavour pairings suggested by the theory of the key odorants.
As we know, each food has a specific aroma and taste; this means that they release chemical compounds that either fly off to our nose (generating then their aroma) or they are detected directly by our taste buds (creating then their taste). These compounds are called odorant compounds and create all the fine nuances often found for instance, in wines or teas.
Successful food combinations have fascinated chefs since ever since no real scientific or objective reason has ever been found supporting this or that pairing. Lately a new theory has been proposed that hopes to shed some light onto this topic: if two foods share one or more key (major) odorants it might be that they go well together and perhaps even complement each other.
Every month, in order to test this theory a couple of ingredients are chosen, presented in a blog and given to the public to test via the use of new or already established recipes.
This month has been the turn of Aidan of “Aidan Brooks: Trainee Chef” blog to make the choice and this was: Plums and Blue Cheese.

This is my trial in exploiting this pairing in a dessert dish:
Reconstructed Plum Tatin with Blue Cheese Butterscotch sauce and Lavender.