samedi 17 septembre 2011

On the other hand, if it's good enough for Brigitte . . .

Well, if you wanted to make a blog piece about cabbage look interesting, I figure you'd use a bit of ingenuity too . . .

I was looking for a snappy intro for my pet choucroute recipe, and promptly discovered that BB was at one time famous for a kind of beehive hairdo, randomly piled up on the top of her head.

It was known as la choucroute, due to its supposed resemblance to a pile of finely-chopped cabbage à la mode Alsacienne.

That's not, on the face of it, terribly complimentary so I figure that any cabbage patch doll gags are seriously out . . . particularly as Madame Bardot remains to this day a pretty tough cookie.

The more observant among you will have noticed that I cunningly selected a pic of BB not wearing la choucroute. This is purely because it was free . . .

Choucroute is, of course, the French take on sauerkraut, which doubtless stems from the German habit of wandering into Alsace-Lorraine and staying there for 70 years or so.

The region remains to a large extent bilingual; though it's an old joke that if you ever receive a letter from that part of the world, it will be full of mistakes, because everyone there can speak both French and German but can't spell either of them.

Being as the snappy intro has now rambled on long enough to be in danger of becoming floppy, I'd better get on with the recipe . . .

Strictly-speaking you ought to make choucroute using proper fermented and preserved cabbage. The problem is that they don't stock it all the year round in deepest SW France so my version is a dodge to solve the problem.

*Select your favourite bits of pork: I use chunks of shoulder ham and two smoked sausages, together with a couple of pork chops or the same weight of belly pork. It's another good way to reduce the French pork chop mountain, but belly pork is tastier, though you should remove the bones. Thick bacon would be great if you can get it.

*Peel about eight small potatoes and cut into two or three pieces. I love red potatoes for this because they stay firm without being hard.

*Fry an onion and three cloves of garlic in oil, in a cast-iron casserole. I like to use huile de noix (walnut oil), but olive or sunflower is fine.

*Add your meat and continue to fry until the pork is white. Chop up or pierce the smoked sausage, because that lets the fat and juices out into the whole dish.

*Chop as finely as possible half a cabbage. Add this together with a vegetable stock and a mug of water. Add a couple of good sloshes of vinagre du vin aromatisé de noix (walnut vinegar).

*Add a teaspoonful of paprika, a third of a teaspoonful of nutmeg, several sprigs of marjoram leaves, fresh if possible, flourish of freshly-ground black pepper and salt to taste.

*Cover and bring to boil, reduce heat to a simmer. You can simmer vigorously until potatoes and cabbage are cooked, say 20-25 minutes. Serves 3-4.

*But . . .

I think it's better to leave the casserole on a low flame, add a touch more water and leave it to cook for about an hour while you nip down to the CafédeFa for a couple of beers before dinner.

That's what we did, naturally . . .

1 commentaire:

  1. Your eloquence ALMOST persuades me to try this - a dish which I particularly disliked on trying it in an Alsacian restaurant. But I do like cabbage, so I may give your version a go.

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