cold night, warm friendships, hot stove

Even as a dainty chicken salad with tiny baby vegetables whispers "Spring! "Spring!" some dishes insist that that you make them in cold (freezing! damp! gray!) weather.
Right before the weekend, the spirit of Julia Child popped by for a glass of the house red, and suggested "Cassoulet? Boeuf Bourguignon? Coq au vin?"
"Julie, dear," I whispered, "what about a lovely old-fashioned Choucroute Garnie à l'Alsacienne?"
A satisfied smile glimmered in the air and vanished, and I got to work.
You might think this means tying on an apron, preheating the oven, finding the juniper berries... Hah. What the recipes don't tell you about this dish is the secret ingredient. The secret ingredient here, as in all good food, is shopping. It's essential to use fresh raw sauerkraut - this is available in ethnic butchers, specialty food stores sometimes, charcuteries or equivalent, pork stores. I get my supplies from Schaller & Weber, which is about a mile uptown from Flintstone Towers, and is one of the last remaining traces of old Yorkville.


I always love the counterman's expression when I lead off by requesting 12 pounds of sauerkraut. This amount, plus sausages and roast meat, usually feeds 8 or 10, but has fed 12 or 14....
Choucroute Garnie means garnished sauerkraut. You "garnish" it with a couple dozen sausages. I bought 10 Weisswurst (white veal sausage with parsley flecks), 10 raw Bratwurst, 5 Knockwurst. The counterman called a colleague to come and watch. Another traditional ingredient is smoked porkchops. These are expensive - compared to the sausages - and generally get tasted, not consumed, and so over the years when I'm making a vat of sauerkraut for company, I also make a roast loin of pork. So I stopped at the butcher counter and took care of that, too. Fortunately there was an empty cab right outside the store. The countermen and the butcher lined up on the sidewalk and waved goodbye.
Other essentials - potatoes, carrots, onions, cream, butter - had been ordered and were waiting when the sausages, the kraut and I arrived home.
Oh, and I also picked up a handful of anemones. Some were still in bud, so they went into warm-ish water right away.

Julia tells you to rinse the brine off the sauerkraut, but it wasn't until I got to watch one of her old television programs that I understood what she really meant. You drain the sauerkraut, run cold water through it in a colander, dump it into a vat of cold water, swish around, and repeat. Once more with feeling, and then, having washed, you wring. Truly - you pick up the kraut by small handfuls and squeeze the water out, and then you re-fluff the little lumps. Not my favorite activity, but necessary. Julia, of course, had unseen helpers doing the squeezing and fluffing for the tv program. Not that I'm complaining.
Once that's done, the fun begins. Sliced onions and carrots are cooked in butter with little bits of pork, when they're soft the kraut is added in and mixed up, and wine and broth are added, to the depth of the kraut.

Spices, including peppercorns, juniper berries, parsley, bay, go in, too,  wrapped in a bit of cheesecloth and buried in the kraut - this is important because otherwise you risk someone biting on a peppercorn or whatever. Having one package means you just remove one thing when the kraut's done.
So, bring the whole thing to a simmer on top of the stove, cover the kraut with buttered baking paper, cover the pot, and into the oven for 4 or 5 hours. This is plenty of time to get the roast pork and mashed potatoes ready.

Mashed potatoes are not traditional with this dish, the conservative approach calls for boiled potatoes, but I live with a man who pounces on any excuse, however slight, to get me to make mashed, and company while nice goes home at the end of the evening. You do the math.
Et voilà, the sausages, which get browned and then poached for a few minutes before being added to the kraut.


And, of course, there's plenty of time to set the table, leaving plenty of room for the food.


The "garnished" platters are a warming sight to behold!




I thought we'd have plenty of leftovers and I wouldn't have to cook again till maybe Tuesday. Doesn't look that way. Oh, well. Summing up, there was beer, there was wine, there was dessert, there was coffee, there was congenial company and good talk...
And the next cold snap could be tomorrow... after all, it snowed today.

22 comments:

  1. While I am a BIG fan of comfort food on cold days, you have lost me today. I grew up eating sauerkraut and bratwurst (exotic in Australia at the time) and didn't view it kindly then or now. The wine, the dessert, the congenial company would have had to suffice me.

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    1. Hi, The Elephant's Child, good friends are always welcome here! But I can't resist pointing out that after the mad de-brining and the long slow braise in wine and broth, even kraut-haters have been won over.

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  2. We live only an hour from the alsace,so this is what we eat when we got to strassburg.
    Looks yummy!

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    1. Hi, Ina, I've had some of the finest meals of my life in and near Strassburg, and Himself still says we have to get back to Illhausern. Soon.

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  3. I LOVE sauerkraut and its accompaniments! Absolutely love it. Have made it myself, but nobody quite lusts over it the way I do (more for me!). Your dishes are beautiful.

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    1. Hi, Sulky, thanksI I find it irresistible and am usually full by the time I get the platters to the table!

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  4. oh Fred - this looks awesome! It is so funny - I was just thinking of Julia as I was waking up with am and bam - there she is whispering in your ear!!!

    I have never made this, but you have inspired me!

    I must tell you - I am besotted with your "footed" serving dish - that is beyond whimsical and you know how I love me some whimsy!!!!

    Have a wonderful day and I am sure you had a wonderful dinner with a spread like that!

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    1. Hi, WMM, Julia hangs around here a lot. If you do this dish, see if you can get hold of the DVD with the sauerkraut show first for the prep demonstrations, it's what makes the difference between this and the crap that goes on hot dogs.

      The dish with feet is an oldie but a goodie from Anthro. Naturally, I ordered it the minute it appeared on the side, and it was immediately on back-order. But as you see, it did get here.

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  5. Wow WFF, that is a cabbage fit for a king. I like sauerkraut in small doses as well as those gin-y juniper etc. flavours; and would love a visit to Alsace. But all the pork, sausage etc. not my thing. Guess that's why folk who come round here have to content themselves with coq au riesling and, hopefully, gemutlichkeit. Smiling at Julia's squeezing and fluffing crew, the stories they'd tell.

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    1. Hi, GF, at least one of Julia's TV crew has written a memoir of those days. Haven't read it, reluctant to risk learning about feet of clay.

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  6. I love choucroute garnie . . . Mr. Hex loves everything in the seasoned/cured meat department but won't touch the kraut. You are brave to make it for a dinner party! Sounds like there were a number of dinner parties in the blogosphere last night.

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    1. Hi, Hexicon, at this point the Sauerkraut project is kind of like Thanksgiving, I've been doing it so long that I'm fine with it as long as I don't have to change the menu or the shopping list. I guess it's the loooong winter that's getting everyone around the table. And not a moment too soon.,

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  7. Sauerkraut and pork chops are one of my favourite combos! I never rinse the sauerkraut, but saute it lightly in oil, and add loads of freshly ground black pepper.

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    1. That sounds good, Rose! The rinsing followed by the long slow braise in stock and wine has got Himself spoiled, I wouldn't dare change the method now.

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  8. How wonderful to be visited by Julia's spirit! This all looks sooo good even though I am not any where near the cold. Old hippies make sauerkraut back home, and I feel a bit queasy to try their versions. What a lovely table as well.

    I devote part of my brain to the memory of the day I spent in Cambridge with her. I also can say "butter" better than Meryl, although I can't do anything else MS does. Obviously!

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    1. Thanks, Lane!
      Aahh, butter.
      I just read that olive like is good for the cuticles. Thinking butter might be bettah.

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    2. that's olive oil. Autocorrect is not playing nicely today.

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  9. Yummy! It looks a bit like Octoberfest but I always think Octoberfest when I see sauerkraut. Bring on the beer!

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    1. hi, xoxo, we actually put out beer (and beer glasses) and a nice Riesling, and the only one who went for the beer was Himself. Go figure.

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  10. That is all my faves - love that kind of comfort food well made. And btw I am loving that pot with the cute legs. How did you watch Julia on TV. I don't think we ever got her in NZ - for us it was the Galloping Gourmet! (Graham something or other?)

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    1. H, AboutLastWeekend, Julia Child was on public television in one version or another of a cooking show from the mid 1960s to the late 80s or maybe even the 90s. DVDs about, and there are still old tapes being passed around. Here's a link to s source for the earliest shows, which are my favorite. Enjoy!

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  11. WFF, I am one of those awful vegetarian/celiac people that you would not enjoy inviting- rightly so. However, I love sauerkraut, and fresh sauerkraut with a sharp cheddar and fresh black pepper is one of my favorite dishes, and with a simple potato and carrots to balance the acidity, I would be delighted. I love your dishes!

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