Phrases emanating from our household this evening included
"Ummmghppphhh", "Please don't make me laugh, I'm breathing through my ears as it is..." and "Oh go on then, just one more sausage – and cancel all tomorrow's meetings, would you?"
Invite your seven heartiest mates round for supper and give them
this:
Ingredients:
- 2lbs good quality sauerkraut
- 1 pint strong chicken stock
- A bottle of Budvar (or similar lager)
- 2 large onions, sliced
- 3 fat cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- 3 not-too-fat carrots, sliced
- A dozen or so juniper berries, lightly crushed
- Salt, pepper
- The juice and spices from a jar of pickled cucumber (or a couple of>tablespoons of white wine/cider vinegar and some chopped dill weed but the cucumber juice works so well it's worth buying a jar specially...)
- 6 rashers streaky, smoked bacon made into lardons
- 3 rashers belly pork
- A selection of German sausages...see method for suggestions
Method:
Wash the sauerkraut in a colander very well to rid it of the brine. Drain. While it's draining, fry the bacon until crisp, remove from the pan, fry the belly pork, cut into chunks, until browned on both sides and then fry the onion, garlic and carrot in the resultant fat. Put the sauerkraut into a large, ovenproof dish, add the juniper berries,
the beer, chicken stock (hot), the cucumber juice or vinegar, the fried belly pork mixture and season. Go lightly with the salt, but generously with the pepper. Cover and cook on GM4 or equivalents for a minimum of two hours,
turning the heat down to GM2 and continuing to cook for a further two hours.
It is worth making the cabbage base the day before and giving it overnight to relax, phone a few friends etc, then re-heating the next day with your choice of sausages in it.
For this quantity of sauerkraut I used 8 Bratwurst, grilled until brown before being added to the cabbage, 4 Bockwurst, 2 Bierwurst (the plastic skin taken off before adding) and one of those Polish sausage rings cut into chunks. All the meats were buried in the sauerkraut and the dish returned to the oven the next day and cooked again for two hours on GM4. These sausages are quite readily available in most large supermarkets these days, but if not any half-decent delicatessen will have supplies. Before serving, check the flavour and add a little salt if necessary – the sausages you choose will determine how well-seasoned the dish becomes when they're added.
Serve with plain boiled potatoes to which need only be added salt, pepper and butter at the table, so that guests can mash the potatoes on their plate to aid the soaking up of all the gorgeous juices. This will serve 8 people handsomely.
Some recipes call for caraway seeds and no juniper berries, this is a matter of choice. Other recipes substitute cumin seeds for caraway – again, the choice is yours.
We drank Cherry beer with it and how we hadn't tried this excellent drink before is a mystery to us both, but if it doesn't appeal, then drink lager or a crisp white wine. Talk among yourselves – I'm going for a little lie down.
