KEY POINTS:
One of the most heart warming dishes ever invented to get rid of all the extra winter cabbages in the garden is sauerkraut or choucroute, in other words, cabbage that has been shredded and left to ferment.
Well, you don't just shred it and walk away hoping wild yeasts will capture it - it's quite a process.
Germans are mad for it, in fact when I was making this for my friends the other day, the man who came to fix my heater fell into paroxysms over the unmistakable smell. His mother had a German friend who used to make it and invite everyone over.
If you've never had sauerkraut with all the pork, sausage, potato and mustard trimmings, you will have to add yet another dish to your 'can't live without it' list.
You don't make choucroute for one - you make it for many - it's a sharing, beer-or-riesling-drinking kind of a meal.
You can sauer the kraut yourself but most people don't - there is nothing like fresh soured cabbage but tinned or bottled will do, although it will never have the same crunchy consistency. In the old days cabbage cutters travelled from village to village, knocking on doors and offering to shred the cabbage.
Once shredded, the cabbages were washed and dried then packed tightly in a barrel in layers with juniper berries, peppercorns, bay leaves and rock salt.
A cloth was put on top of the last layer, then a piece of wood slightly smaller than the opening of the barrel, then a weight.
The barrel was put in a cool place, such as the basement, for about a month, during which liquid would be released and the cabbage would ferment but not rot. You could keep taking cabbage from the barrel all winter, sprinkling the exposed surface of the remaining cabbage with salt.
Whether you have fresh choucroute or tinned, you still have to rinse it well in cold water, then squeeze it out and rinse again, before cooking with it.
The onions are fried in goose or duck fat (available from specialty stores) but you could use pork fat or butter. I always keep a store of duck fat in the freezer for such occasions - you can buy it at specialty food shops.
Take my advice and regard this as your opportunity to get some duck fat in once and for all - the unctuousness is incomparable.
How long you cook a choucroute is a contentious issue - some say an hour-and-a-half and some go as far as five and even up to 12 hours in old recipes.
After eating a choucroute which is quite rib-sticking, I imagine you would fancy something that is all sweetness and light like, for example, a honey souffle. But I know deep within me that you are not going to put yourself to the trouble of souffles and I noticed there are lots of good pears in the shops at the moment so maybe you could stretch to pears poached in honey, gin and juniper.
- Detours, HoS
