Choucroute

From time to time, Simenon sends Maigret out for a choucroute in some café or brasserie that he knows. And from time to time, BH buys a jar of the stuff from Sainsbury's - which sometimes sits there for months, sometimes not. On the present occasion not, with a new-to-us brand of the stuff - with added carrot - from Poland. Seemingly via the people of Newman Road, Croydon at reference 1.

Gmaps confirms their presence among a collection of large white sheds, tucked between Purley Way and the railway line.

I didn't know how one was supposed to cook the stuff, and the bottle did not say. But I had top left rather than bottom right in mind and the recipes turned up by Bing suggested steaming rather than boiling. There was also talk of rinsing to get the salt down a bit.

In the event, I peeled some small, hard onions with plenty of bite left in them. Segmented them and started them in a little butter. Added about 300g of coarsely chopped saucisson from Bastides out of Waitrose; the ones that seem to be shrinking with the rising prices, so 300g was one and a half of them.

Pour off the liquor from the sauerkraut and dump it in a collandar. Rinse under the cold tap. Leave to drain for a couple of minutes then add to the onion and sausage. Put the lid on and set the heat to two out of six. Simmer for maybe ten minutes.

In parallel, prepare some mashed potato (involving a little more butter) and some leeks.

On the plate. It did rather well, with the bland vegetables nicely complementing the power of the salt and saltpetre - this last having probably been included in the saucisson. And the sauerkraut still having a bit of bite to it, unlike the rather soggy stuff I remember from the Wolesley, back at reference 2.

On the other hand, looking at the snap there this morning, maybe that recipe has its points too, rather different from that above.

We did two thirds of this one on the first day, so I took the last third the day following, with BH confecting herself a cottage pie from the leftover mash and some cooked mince she happened to have in the freezer. The sauerkraut reheated rather better than I was expecting.

Rounded out by some baked apples, cooked with brick dates from Grape Tree.

Not a very healthy lunch with all that butter, salt and sugar (in the baked apples), but not something that we do that often, so hopefully we will not come to grief on this account. But I did think afterwards that I could have used some pork tenderloin, instead of the saucisson. Maybe next time.

PS 1: on the first day, bread was going on in parallel, and the rising went a bit astray, despite it being a lot cooler outside than it had been. The second rise was quite short, but still a few  minutes too long, its speed having caught me out, possibly the result of a slightly longer first rise than usual. I feared collapse when I put the loaves in the oven, but all was well in the end, and are eating well, even if the loaves were a little scarred by their experience, as snapped on exit from the oven above. Batch No.778.

PS 2: moving on from Maigret, on Tuesday evening, we watched the first half of a remarkably rubbishy offering from Prime, 'Sherlock Holmes and the Angels of Vengeance', to be found at references 3 and 4. So far, it looks very low budget indeed - but still rather dear by our standards at a fiver or so. Notwithstanding which, a pleasant rest from the likes of Eastwood's 'Mystic River', free with Prime, of the evening previous.

It is also the case that the subtitles are both present and more or less word perfect, which is a plus for BH. Subtitles are often pretty rubbishy too, often being computer generated without the benefit of touching up by hand.

PS 3: while at reference 5, I find that for the first time, for me anyway, the leader of Reform has strayed from being unpleasant to being evil. A bit grim that so many people find him attractive. From which I associate to the National Front of old.

References

Reference 1: https://www.polishspecialities.com/en/.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/02/to-cheese.html.

Reference 3: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt37454302/.

Reference 4: https://angelsofvengeancemovie.com/.

Reference 5: Minister condemns riots after UK rightwing leaders call for ‘rage’ over student killing: Home Secretary says violent scenes in Southampton ‘completely unacceptable’ after Nigel Farage urges probe into police handling of case - Anna Gross, Rachel Rees, Robert Wright, Financial Times - 2026.

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