I first tried the recipe for choucroute garnie from a big paperback cookbook called Great Dinners from Life, by Eleanor Graves. I remember the first time I tried it, in my kitchen in Ronkonkoma, to serve at dinner where Kathy and Alan were our expected guests. It was fussy but delicious. One thing I remembered was wondering why the choucroute was cooked as long as it was, and why the bacon had to be blanched first, and over the years, I made some changes which I think better represent today's tastes in food, both in terms of technique and choice of ingredients.
I have to speak about brands here as well. You know I am obsessed on the topic of Hellman's mayonnaise and to a lesser extent, Heinz ketchup. At the same time, I have no problem using store brands for certain items when I feel quality has not been compromised. When it comes to the individual sausages for this dish, I have previously chosen the Usual Suspects - brands like Hillshire Farms, Johnsonville, or Hebrew National. I think, though, that this is one of those dishes where the meats should shine, and after many years of using those familiar brands that are, for this dish, "just okay", I would like to recommend you try the brands I am recommending today, and see if you don't enjoy this dish even more. Some of them are pricier, I admit. But worth it.
The choucroute:
4-14.4 oz cans Bavarian style sauerkraut, drained (Silver Floss brand)
4 tablespoons butter
1-12 oz package of bacon, cut into one inch pieces
4 carrots, thinly sliced
2 large onions, halved and thinly sliced
Bouquet garnie: thyme sprigs, bay leaf, 6 peppercorns, 2 large cloves peeled garlic, lightly cracked; place in a small piece of cheesecloth and tie closed with kitchen string
1/2 cup gin
1 cup chicken or beef stock
1 cup white wine or 1/2 cup each white and red wine
1/2 cup water
The garnie:
1- 2 to 3 pound smoked pork shoulder butt (Freirich brand)
1- 1 pound ring Polska kielbasa (Hillshire Farms)
4 beef knockwurst (Boar's Head)
4 cooked bratwurst (Boar's Head)
Additional seasonings and cooking fats are indicated by underlining within the body of the recipe
Allez cuisine, y'all:
Over medium heat melt the butter in a large heavy deep pan. Add the bacon and raise the heat to medium high. As the bacon cooks, use a wooden spoon to separate the pieces. When the bacon has rendered a good deal of fat and is about half cooked, add the onion and carrots. Season the vegetables with kosher salt (not too much, as the ingredients are all salty), coarse black pepper, a touch of sugar, smoked paprika, and a small amount of cayenne pepper. Cook over medium heat for about ten minutes until the onions have softened, bit are neither browned nor mushy.
Squeeze out most of the remaining liquid in the sauerkraut, and then stir it into the bacon-vegetable mixture in the pan so that each strand of sauerkraut is coated with some of the fat. Sprinkle some caraway seeds over the sauerkraut and stir them in.
Pour in the gin, stock, and wine, and water and bring to a boil. Transfer the sauerkraut to a very large casserole dish, cover tightly and bake in a 325 degree oven for 2 hours.
In a large deep pot, place the smoked pork shoulder butt (leave the netting on) and cover with water up to one inch above the pork. You can just cook the pork in water, but I like to add bay leaves, some garlic cloves, peppercorns, smoked or regular Tabasco to taste, and a heaping tablespoon of beef bouillon granules. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cover. Simmer about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Remove from the water and let cool slightly so that you can handle to remove the netting. Also, about 1/2 hour before the pork will be done, add the kielbasa to the pot and simmer with the pork. At the same time, in a large pan, melt a couple of tablespoons of butter, with a drop of olive oil added, and slowly brown the knockwurst and bratwurst on all sides, and when done take off the heat and set aside. This will bring everything to completion at about the same time.
To assemble the dish:
Remove the casserole from the oven, remove the bouquet garnie and discard. Stir the choucroute. Arrange slices of the pork shoulder, the kielbasa ring, and the knockwurst and bratwurst on top of the choucroute. If you like you can cut the kielbasa and sausages into large chunks or let your guests do so as they serve themselves.
This dish screams out for some sort of rustic potato side dish. Baked, boiled, oven-roasted - you can't go wrong with any of them. Mashed - utterly sublime as an accompaniment. I really want to be able to make potato dumplings, but in their absence, I plan on serving potato gnocchi that I did NOT make from scratch, boiled, drained, and served with shallots sauteed in butter.
I love bread with dishes like this, and I sort of imagine thick slices of chewy, crusty rye bread with caraway seeds, or a Jewish corn bread, or pumpernickel. Lots of sweet butter. For drinking, offer iced tea (this is the south, after all), beer, and some more of the wines used in the cooking. My white wine was a pinot grigio and my red was a cabernet sauvignon. Just happened to be what I had open in the house, but you can always plan ahead.
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