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February 13, 2005
Choucroute
If you feel like eating a big Sunday dinner when it's cold out, but don't feel like working hard to cook one, choucroute may be what you want to make. Michel and Colette like it, so it's what we had today at noon.
Traditional recipes for choucroute have you start by frying sauerkraut in onions and lard. That makes it unnecessarily greasy.
I start at least two to three hours before we want to eat by covering the bottom of a heavy pot with sauerkraut, topping that with an onion stuck with cloves, a few cumin seeds, a bay leaf or two, juniper berries, cracked peppercorns, coriander grains like the ones you'd use to make pickles, and a little bit of thyme. Then I layer on peeled carrots, potatoes, pieces of salted or smoked pork, and any sausages that can cook for the duration, like saucisses de Montbéliard. To top it off, I shake on some dry garlic and wet the whole dish down with Riesling. Not too much Riesling, but enough that it won't all evaporate while you cook the choucroute.
The trick is to cook it covered, slowly enough and long enough that the potatoes and carrots are done when most of the wine has evaporated. Some recipes have you add lots of wine and broth as well. Those cooks may be preparing their vegetables on the side and finishing the choucroute with the top off. Otherwise they'd be cooking the vegetables to mush and ending up with the whole dish swimming in broth.
If you like, add a tablespoon or two of butter 30 minutes before it's all done. 5 minutes before the end, put some knacks on top. The kids are more likely to eat something like a hot dog anyway. For large quantities in big heavy pots, you can turn the heat off when you've added the knacks.
Make sure you have both mustard and horseradish as condiments.
Some people put out pâté or sausage as a starter, but that's overkill. I served a starter salad of tomatoes, lettuce, and corn, topped with a few scallops cut into slices and fried quickly in a hot pan with almost no oil. I shouldn't have used corn. Flavor's too strong. But I'd run out of the palm hearts I wanted to use and didn't have much lettuce. Scallops work well on a salad with malt vinegar dressing. It all goes well with good Riesling.
Plan a light desert.
Posted by Mark at February 13, 2005 03:12 PM