With Jean-Jacques Seymour in town from France, and Jim having a craving for pig parts - we decided to do a choucroute night at our house.You can read the wikipedia entry, but I'll do my best to explain the dish. It's essentially Alsatian for sauerkraut, but it's the 'garni' part that's important - usually various sausages, ham hocks, bacon (kind of), and salted porks.
Of course, the french would have long debates as to which pieces of said pig are true choucroute - but it's a pretty simple dish. Choucroute, along with andouillette, is what I call the "Idiot Savant" dishes of french cuisine.
Most Americans would find french cuisine to be very refined, inventive, and very, very good; but every now and then they throw in dishes that they just absolutely love across the country and at the same time make an American want to hurl.
Anyway . . . to make a choucroute takes some time (like 4 hours in the oven). So Jim, JJ, and myself ran home from work, threw it together (not hard, but there was some onion and potato chopping). Thank God for automatic ovens that can be pre-programmed.
We also made an onion tart - another interesting story, since I had no recipe - and drank about 8 bottles of wine between the 8 of us - oops (and it was a school night).
