It all started with a bag of leftover sauerkraut.

A $3 bag of leftover sauerkraut that I didn’t want to go to waste. So I went out and spent $50 on pork sausages, wine and other accompaniments to make a dish that used sauerkraut as a main ingredient.

(I find myself in this type of scenario quite often it seems. The one that happens quite frequently is not wanting to toss out a $1 loaf of French bread so instead I buy $20 worth of ingredients (onions = cheap; Gruyere = not so cheap) to make French onion soup.)

Each time I opened my fridge, that blue-ish bag of preserved cabbage (made in Germany) kept staring back at me as if taunting challenging me to come up with a recipe, something worthy, to use it in. Not that adding sauerkraut to hot dogs or sausages aren’t worthy because those are some of my favorite ways of eating sauerkraut (especially from the street vendors in New York – but I’ll only pay $1 per dog, nothing more!) – but I wanted something more complex.

And then the recipe that was at the tip of my food subconscious finally broke free. Choucroute Garnie!

Scotch and I first had Choucroute Garnie at Cafe D’Alsace when we lived in New York City on the Upper East Side. Every so often, we would walk the couple of blocks from our studio apartment to this Alsacian beer/wine bar/restaurant.

The place always felt warm and inviting and the food was hearty and heavenly. A place we never left unsatisfied. We’d start off with a drink at the bar choosing from their extensive beer and wine list, eat some hard-boiled eggs that were set out at the bar (okay, that was just me), then move on to one of the banquettes for dinner.

Scotch was always drawn towards “La Moelle,” bone marrow with fleur de sel and country toast. I was always torn between everything that started with a C: confit, choucroute, cassoulet, or charcuterie? Oh, and then there were the tartares and the sweetbreads!

This is basically a meat and potatoes type of dish with the added bonus of sauerkraut braised in wine.

“Choucroute” is French for sauerkraut and Choucroute Garnie is an Alsatian dish (Alsace is a region in the northeast of France bordering Germany) made by simmering sauerkraut with Alsatian wine (preferably a Riesling) and a bouquet garnie of spices – traditionally juniper berries, bay leaves and black peppercorns. It is served with sausages (typically Frankfurter, Strasbourg, and Montbéliard sausages), other charcuterie and boiled potatoes.

I adapted my recipe from Epicurious and Food and Wine so my recipe contains cloves, allspice berries, red apples in additional to the traditional flavorings.

I found these spice bags from Daiso (where everything is 7 dhs = $2) and they are so much more convenient than cutting up cheesecloth and twine. Just throw all the spices into the bag, and flip the top flaps over like a sandwich bag and throw it into the casserole pot. Done.

Makes removing the spices at the end of cooking a piece of cake. I loved the flavors of the Cafe D’Alsace version but I hated picking out the juniper berries from my sauerkraut.

Besides the sauerkraut, I had almost everything I needed in my pantry except for juniper berries, sausages, pork, and wine.

For the meats, I picked up whatever sausages looked good at Waitrose (a Western grocery chain) and some pork belly as well. Because…why not?

The dish was already going to include bacon and goose fat, so why not throw in another artery clogging ingredient? And I just love pork belly.

The sausages I bought for this Choucroute Garnie were Burenwurst, Weisswurst and Bauern Bratwurst.

To make this recipe, I was also quite excited to use my Staub French oven.

It was a birthday present from Scotch a few years ago and I don’t use it often enough. He special ordered it in my favorite color.

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Right, on with the cooking!

To start, I browned a few strips of Oscar Mayer maple bacon in goose fat. I actually had both of these ingredients in my fridge. The maple bacon definitely added a wonderful flavor to the finished dish and I prefer it over regular bacon.

When the bacon was crisp, I removed it from the pot and set it aside on a plate. Next I browned the pork belly in the same pot and when that was done, I set it aside with the bacon.

I used the leftover oil in the pot to saute the onions and garlic for about 5 minutes.

Then I threw in the sauerkraut, apples, wine, broth, bacon, pork belly and the spice bag. The pot was covered and placed in the oven to cook for one and a half hours.

While the sauerkraut-party-in-a-pot were simmering away in the oven, I took the time to brown the sausages in a little bit of olive oil.

These will later be added to the pot at the very end.

I nearly had to slap Scotch’s hands from stealing a sausage:

Me: “Step away from the sausages.”

Scotch: “But they’re calling my name!”

Me: “You must wait and have it with the finished dish!”

Scotch:  “Okay…”

The finished dish was brothier than expected as I got over-zealous and poured in the whole bottle of wine instead of 2 cups. I can’t believe I did that – What was I thinking? I should have saved a few glasses to drink while I waited for the dish to finish cooking.

We were quite impatient to start eating so we just dug in but otherwise, I would have removed all the solids and reduced the liquid down a bit.

I loved the flavors that the juniper and the allspice imparted into the sauerkraut. Every bite was somewhat different and oh-so-satisfying.

Sometimes I would get a bite of maple bacon (Oh Yeah, Baby!) and remember that it was sauteed in goose fat – Double Yeah, Baby! And the red apples had gone all soft and so sweet as well.

Scotch and I served this at a dinner party and among the different sausages – Burenwurst, Weisswurst, and Bauern Bratwurst - we all had our personal favorites.

When I had finished off my Choucroute Garnie, I was dying to lift the plate to my mouth and drink all the remaining liquid goodness of spice-infused Alsatian wine + homemade chicken stock.

The first time I made this dish, I boiled some potatoes to serve as a side dish but personally, I didn’t think the dish needed any and could have done without them. Maybe in the future I’ll roast the potatoes in goose fat .

The second time I made this dish, I didn’t bother with the potatoes and just served it with a side of asparagus. I love meat but I also love vegetables.

Even though it seemed like a lot of meat at first, we devoured it all pretty fast with just a little bit of leftovers for Wee Scotch the next day.

Now, what to do with the remaining goose fat…

 

I didn’t realize that Chinese New Year is tomorrow! That means Chinese New Year’s Eve is tonight!

Eek – I feel so out of touch with holidays, living in Dubai, and this one really snuck up on me.

Traditionally, my mom would prepare a lavish meal at home for Chinese New Year’s Eve but now that my parents are empty nesters with all three of us daughters scattered across the globe, my parents will celebrate over at my grandma’s house instead.

Maybe it’s the weather (dark, gloomy, windy, and a chilly 60°F in Dubai), or the thought of not having family and friends around to celebrate this very festive holiday, but I’m feeling a little homesick.

I can’t really muster up the energy to prepare anything special for Chinese New Year tonight so Scotch and I are just going to order take-out from Da Shi Dai. I’m craving dumplings, soup, noodles and wasabi prawns.

I keep forgetting that as a married person now, it’s my responsibility to dole out lai see or lucky money. At least the task isn’t too difficult here in Dubai since I only know one (half) Chinese family.

While I waited for Scotch to come home from work so that I could start satisfying my craving for Chinese food, I decided to make a few more batches of Chinese egg cakes (aka Chinese egg waffles, egg puffs, eggettes, or “Gai Daan Jai“) to snack on with Wee Scotch.

This isn’t a traditional snack to have during Chinese New Year but I just felt like making them.

Since my original post of making Hong Kong Egg Cakes using a custard base (milk and eggs), I’m since found and adapted from this site a much easier recipe that actually tastes like what I remember of Cecilia Tam’s famous red stall of Mosco Street!

With this recipe, I just throw everything into my Kitchen Aid stand mixer, turn it on and voila! Batter done. No need to heat up milk nor temper eggs to make custard, etc., etc.

I’m sure time erodes taste memories, but I really do feel that this recipe resembles what I remember from my childhood days.

The texture is perfect – crunchy around the edges and I love nibbling all the crispy bits that surround each puff before moving on to the soft middle – and with each bite, I am transported back in time, smiling at nostalgic memories.

A few weeks back, I had whipped up a couple batches to experiment with altering the ingredients and found that using either tapioca starch, potato starch, corn starch or custard powder worked just fine. However, using custard powder did give the eggettes a richer vanilla taste since custard powder is essentially vanilla-flavored corn starch.

For those experiments that didn’t use custard powder, I doubled the amount of vanilla extract (or essence) from one teaspoon to two teaspoons.

I think the most essential ingredient for the batter to taste right is evaporated milk. I had never used evaporated milk before and I was curious as to the different brands. I decided to try a few of them…just for fun. And was glad that I did.

The best tasting batch I found was made using Rainbow “Gold.” I think it gave the eggettes a richer, fuller flavor. Even the label reads: “Richer and Creamier.”

I tried omitting vegetable oil from the batter but that wasn’t a huge success as the final product came out a bit dry.

I also made batches pitting vanilla extract versus vanilla essence. Perhaps it was all in my mind or I’m just biased in thinking that anything with alcohol tastes better because I thought the batch with vanilla extract tasted better than the one with vanilla essence.

However, vanilla extract is not available in the UAE as it contains alcohol. I have a precious stash of two bottles that I hope will last me until the next out-of-town visitor arrives to replenish it.

I just love my Nordic Ware egg waffle pan from Williams-Sonoma! Just before I pour in the batter, I apply a thin layer of vegetable oil with a pastry brush. If you own one of these pans, be sure to wash it when it’s submerged under water so that you don’t end up a soaking mess like I did and a soft-bristle brush like this IKEA one works great for getting out all the dried-up batter from the crevices.

Using the pan, it took some practice to get consistently crispy edges and for my electric stovetop, here’s what worked: pre-heating the pans for 5 minutes using heat level 4 (my stovetop has heat settings 0 to 6), then reducing it to heat level 3 just as I poured in the batter. Two minutes on one side – Flip – two minutes on the other.

So it would seem that for my oven, heating it at a higher temperature helped create the crispy crunchy edges that I love and then reducing the temperature down a notch prevented burn-age. You’ll have to experiment with your gas or electric oven to find the equivalent settings.

I’d like to share with you my secret for successful food photography.

And that would be a napping baby .

Halfway through taking photos for this post, Wee Scotch woke up (early, I might add) from his nap and since he was crying, I didn’t want to leave him alone in his crib.

Although I firmly told him not to touch any of “Mama’s” camera equipment nor food, the little rounds of eggettes were just too tempting for a two-year old. Especially since he knew exactly what they were, having been my special taste tester for all the experimental batches.

After he devoured half my set-up, I turned my attention to photographing the inside of an egg puff. Wee Scotch had a whole bag of eggettes in his hand but somehow he just couldn’t resist snatching the one that was in my fingers.

It happened so fast that I didn’t even know it was happening. Wee tyke.

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!

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