Across the Rhine, Sauerkraut Is Even Sweeter

[Guest guest]

This is a wonderful mouth-watering article on sauerkraut that was posted to

the chapter leader list. Who knew there were so many kinds? And mixed with

so many different animal foods or cooked in wine or beer? Yummmmmm....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/05/dining/05CHOU.html?ex=1105938494 & ei=1 & en=3

7cea0efdbcaec26

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Across the Rhine, Sauerkraut Is Even Sweeter

January 5, 2005

By R. W. APPLE Jr.

STRASBOURG, France

IN the colder months my mother put sauerkraut on the table

once a week. And why not? It was cheap, filling,

nutritious, easily stored and true to the culinary heritage

of German-American families like ours. " It will put roses

into your cheeks, " she would tell us kids, and we believed

her. We relished every bite.

But it tastes foul, you protest. It smells. It gives you

heartburn. Not, I can assure you, when my mother made it,

lavishing as much attention on those heaping bowls of

steaming preserved cabbage as she would have paid to a

prime T-bone or a fine partridge, neither of which appeared

very often chez Apple during the Depression.

Sauerkraut, I discovered years later, uses an alias in

France. There it is called choucroute, and there it reaches

its apotheosis, chiefly in Alsace, the province just across

the Rhine from Germany. There it is milder because it is

rinsed, then cooked in wine (or occasionally beer), and

there it is far more richly embellished.

It is also more copious. Seasoned with cumin seeds, bay

leaves, coriander seeds and juniper berries, simmered

slowly with sliced onions, veal stock and local white wine

(preferably a fruity yet bone-dry riesling), crowned with a

half-dozen assorted sausages and sundry other porky tidbits

- a couple of slices of ham or a smoked pork chop or a few

rashers of bacon or a pig's knuckle, or maybe all of the

above - it would stymie a hungry stevedore or an N.F.L.

tackle.

Choucroute garnie, the whole shebang is called. Only the

Alsatians would dare call such a parade of pig products a

" garnish. " It is, of course, a peasant dish, but if the

cabbage is cooked just slightly crunchy, neither acidic nor

watery, neither fatty nor greasy, and if the sausages are

not too pink (a sure sign of excessive nitrates), it is as

noble in its own way as foie gras, another of the area's

traditional gastronomic delights.

" A first course is not necessary, " one Alsatian restaurant

comments with enviable understatement on its menu, but few

of its customers pay any attention. The people who live in

these parts are France's acknowledged, uncontested Big

Eaters.

The classic meal in a Strasbourg winstub or wine bar like

the Muensterstuewel, a handsomely converted butcher shop,

or Chez , where Jacques Chirac and Helmut Kohl once

dined together sitting elbow to elbow with the neighborhood

regulars, consists of headcheese or an onion tart, an epic

choucroute and a gooey, spectacularly stinky wedge of

Münster cheese produced in a Vosges mountain valley.

Steamed (or occasionally mashed) potatoes come with the

main course, lest anyone forget that the origins of this

feast are Teutonic, however much the subtler techniques of

La Belle France have softened its rough-and-ready nature.

Alsatian winemaking records go back more than 800 years,

and most Alsatians drink white wines with their choucroute,

either the refined local rieslings or the spicier, more

aromatic gewürtztraminers. They are served in special

glasses, unique to the area, with clear bowls and green

stems.

But some local trenchermen prefer a stein of draft beer,

and because most of the big French brewers, or brasseurs,

are based in Alsace, including Kronenbourg and Mützig,

their Paris outlets, called brasseries, have always

specialized in Alsatian food. So when you tumble out of the

Folies-Bergère and repair to the Brasserie Flo, or head for

Bofinger after the opera, or meet friends at Lipp for a

hearty feed on Sunday, as Pierre Salinger often used to do,

your best bet may well be choucroute. (Contrary to its dire

reputation, it makes a delicious, readily digested

late-night meal.)

For grand occasions the Alsatians douse choucroute with

Champagne and call it choucroute royale. For variety they

serve it with liver dumplings or frogs' legs or smoked

goose or even fish; several restaurants in the region offer

it with salmon, and the world-famous Auberge de l'Ill, a

sumptuous Michelin three-star inn south of Strasbourg,

numbers among its specialties choucroute with velvety

smoked sturgeon.

Michel Husser of Le Cerf, a two-star family-run roadside

establishment west of Strasbourg, demonstrates choucroute's

versatility as well as anyone. He mingles textures and

flavors to thrilling effect in a gratin of oysters and

choucroute: warm Marennes d'Oléron sitting atop tart little

heaps of crisp, creamy fermented cabbage.

It may sound weird, but it tastes great, as does his

luxurious take on choucroute garnie. He stews freshly made

choucroute in duck fat for two hours or more with an

innovative mix of spices that include cloves and serves it

with tiny cinnamon- and nutmeg-flavored blood sausages, a

slice of gently smoked pan-fried foie gras and succulent

bite-size morsels of suckling pig edged with chewy

crackling.

Something similar to choucroute has been eaten in Europe

since ancient times. The Küchenmeisterei, a 15th-century

German-language cookbook, mentions salted cabbage. In the

17th century, says the British food writer Sue Style, the

local monks ate it regularly, as did the grand families of

Strasbourg, for whom it often formed the centerpiece of

gala Sunday lunches as well as wedding feasts.

Low in calories, rich in potassium and calcium, it is an

excellent source of vitamin C, which is why mariners like

Captain Cook carried barrels of the stuff on their

expeditions. Like limes, it helped to keep the dreaded

scurvy at bay and thereby made much longer voyages

practical.

Much of the best choucroute consumed in France comes from a

village called Krautergersheim, which is surrounded by

fields of a choice variety of cabbage called quintal

d'Alsace. Idling along a pretty back road one day a few

years ago, admiring the mistletoe in the trees and the

storks in their nests, my wife, Betsey, and I came upon

signs heralding the " Capital of Choucroute. " The boosters

needn't have bothered; the pungent aroma in the air made it

clear how the village earned its living.

Preservation, not flavor, was the name of the choucroute

game in the days before canning, refrigeration and

freezing. Just as cheese preserved milk and pickles

preserved cucumbers through the crop-poor winter,

choucroute offered a way to enjoy a green leafy vegetable -

and its indispensable vitamins - on the long, dark, bleak

days when the fields are draped in snow.

Production at companies like Wagner begins about the first

week of September or before. The green outer leaves are

peeled from the heads, which can weigh up to 15 pounds. The

white inner leaves are finely shredded and layered with

salt in crocks or barrels, then left for three or four

weeks until fermentation begins. The kraut is best when

still young and crisp; if it has turned yellow, it is past

its prime.

" Sometimes it is necessary to add a little water, " as Ms.

Style explains in her authoritative book " A Taste of

Alsace " (Hearst Books, 1990), " but generally the lactic

acid released by the action of the salt on the sugars in

the cabbage is enough to cover and to preserve it through

the winter. "

All September long, festivals are held to celebrate the

arrival of the choucroute nouvelle. Geispolsheim's comes

first, then Meistratzheim's, then sbach's and then, at

month's end, Krautergersheim's.

When Betsey and I returned to the region for several days

late in 2004, I called an old friend, Hugel, whose

family has produced some of the region's greatest wines

since Louis XIII. A bluff, charming man of 80, he

immediately suggested lunch at an unpretentious little

place called Au Bon Pichet in the market town of Sélestat.

You can't miss it, he said: " it's right in the middle of

town, in the Place du Marché aux Choux " - the Cabbage

Market.

Naturally I ordered choucroute, which came to the table

white and sweet smelling, deliciously adorned with smoked

bacon, cured bacon, breast of pork and two kinds of

sausages: knackwurst and cumin-flecked Montbéliards.

Naturally, we sampled Hugel wines. And naturally, talk

turned to choucroute, then and now.

" My grandparents made their own, " said Mr. Hugel's wife,

Simone. " There was one rabot, a kind of plane used for

shaving the cabbage, in each village. Now we buy it

ready-made, in vacuum-packed plastic pouches, from the

butchers. We eat it only when it's cold out, like oysters,

in the months that have r's in their names. "

Even then, Mr. Hugel added, " we eat it only once a month,

less often than we eat pasta, I guess. " Prosperity and more

frequent foreign travel have changed habits, but tradition

thrives in Alsace, one of the most fervently folkloric of

the French provinces. Choucroute remains the symbol of the

region and the long-standing French-German traditions that

set it apart from the rest of France.

You can't escape from it, in the villages or in Strasbourg,

the regional capital, which is the sixth largest city in

the country and one of three capitals of the European

Union. This has been a crossroads since the medieval era,

as its name suggests (strasse meaning street in German).

The politicians and diplomats who congregate here throng

its restaurants, from the temples of haute cuisine to the

bistros, and they eat a lot of expense-account choucroute.

A favorite of mine is Chez , a winstub hole in the

wall paneled in dark wood, with gingham curtains and

paisley tablecloths. Haller has retired, but the

staff is still joviality personified, the choucroute is

still tempting and the wines, whether ordered by the bottle

or the half-liter pitcher, are unfailingly satisfying.

Another evocative spot is the Maison des Tanneurs, a

restaurant installed in a half-timbered building dating

from 1572, full of odd angles and creaking floorboards. It

is among the most picturesque structures in Strasbourg's

most picturesque neighborhood, known as Petite France, with

flower boxes overflowing with scarlet geraniums that are

reflected in the placid waters of the little River Ill just

underneath them.

It serves choucroute in all sorts of combinations,

including one garnished with particularly well-made

weisswurst, mild white veal sausage. Appropriately, or at

least so it seemed, we devoured ours looking at a still

life of cabbages.

I'm a hefty fellow, seldom at a loss for appetite, but I

couldn't get through the choucroute strasbourgeoise at the

Maison Kammerzell, a Gothic showplace fitted out with

antique murals, wood sculptures and heavy leaded windows

and owned by the self-crowned King of Choucroute,

Guy-Pierre Baumann. It came to the table, a daunting

platter with no fewer than eight kinds of hot, glistening

meats clinging to the sides of a perfect Alp of cabbage,

accompanied by waxy, perfectly boiled potatoes.

" This we recommend for normal appetites, " the waiter said

with a straight face when he saw me blanch. " If you're

hungry, there are larger versions.`

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg

Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leader, Mid Coast Maine

http://www.westonaprice.org

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heart disease) is the greatest scientific deception of our times.” --

Mann, MD, former Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt

University, Tennessee; heart disease researcher.

The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

<http://www.thincs.org>

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