Saturday: Choucroute Garni

Our original plan for yesterday was to have make a nice beef roast with red wine a la Marcella Hazan.

Then I saw a stand with fresh sauerkraut (mmm, oxymoron) at the market. I, of course, had to buy some of that. There's no way to have sauerkraut without including some sort of smoked pork product, so at the Coop I picked up a smoked ham (from three beautiful choices of types of smoked ham... I was in pig heaven).

Then I saw saucisson Vaudoise on sale, and that seemed like it would also go really well with sauerkraut. So I grabbed one. Andrea tried to suggest that I should get the sausage or the ham and not both, but I wasn't having any of that. I did allow common sense to intervene a little bit and switched plans to make choucroute garni instead of the pot roast. So I refrained from buying the beef roast; that dish will have to wait (not too long though!).

At that point I felt quite righteous about my restraint, so I also picked up a piece of salted pork belly.

For the choucroute iteself, I followed the basic recipe from Bourdain, though I used a Swiss chasselas (from Yvornne) instead of riesling. I cooked the saucisson Vaudoise in one piece on top of the sauerkraut, ham, and pork belly.

Served with some fresh parsley, boiled potatoes, and grainy mustard, I hardly need to say how good this was.

As a completely superfluous vegetable side I also did a gratin from some leftover chard stalks (recipe from Hazan).

There was a green salad.

The wine was a Pouilly-Fuisse from Georges DuBoeuf. It should have been an Alsatian Riesling, but since I had already tainted the choucroute with a foreign wine, I felt safe continuing the wrongness. It's a nice wine. :-)