1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (21 page)

Some of the softest and most unctuously irresistible pâtés are the rillettes based on pork, duck, goose, or rabbit, the meat simmered for hours in its own fat until it disintegrates into threads (
rillettes
) to be packed in crocks, chilled, and then spread onto rounds of toasted bread.

The best charcuteries also display a glittering array of aspic-captured meats that may include the wonderful
jambon persillé
, softly cooked ham that simmers in stock and white wine along with herbs, garlic, and a pig or calf foot to add the desired glassy gel. Scooped out of big bowls, the sunny parsley-flecked aspic and tender pink ham combine for an ethereal effect, almost as lovely to see as to taste. The jellied meat and cartilage of animal heads, feet, and tails—pig, lamb, calf, and ox—are equally seductive and generally pretty well perfumed with garlic.

Sausages hang everywhere, among them the classic dried versions—
saucissons secs
—we call salami or cervelat. Perhaps the best and finest of these is the
rosette de Lyon
, from the city considered the mecca for charcuterie: a dark red, medium-size pork, garlic, and pepper-spiced winner. Like all nicely chewy dried
sausages, it should be very thinly sliced. Wild boar sausage is similar in size and texture, but with a more vibrant flavor. There is one type of rose-pink
saucisson à l’ail
that is meant to be poached, and another that is dried and ready for slicing. The tripe sausage andouille is also ready to eat, with a strong, almost feral appeal.

Among the sausages meant to be cooked and served hot is a smaller tripe-filled cousin of andouille—
andouillette
—that is grilled or fried with a sauce. (Neither should be confused with the Cajun andouille, which has nothing to do with tripe.) The chubby little
boudin noir
is a black sausage, also known as black pudding, prepared most traditionally with pigs’ blood, but for which beef blood is now used in the U.S. due to health restrictions. Either way, it is a dark, velvety, and spicy treat most delicious when grilled and served with mashed potatoes.
Boudins blancs
, looking like little white frankfurters, are a much milder affair made with poultry and perhaps also veal and pork.

Jésus de Morteau
is filled with roughly chopped pork and closed at one end of its casing with a wooden peg. The mild sausage, often poached in a red wine such as Beaujolais, is a specialty of Alsace, the Jura, and Switzerland.

As you might guess, there are also many types of cooked and cured raw hams on view in charcuteries, none more highly prized than the
jambon de Bayonne
, a lightly smoked and salted beauty that is a specialty of the southwest Basque country around its namesake city.

Let us not forget the cute little bread-crumb–coated, ham-shaped mounds called
jambonneau
, made of the shoulder or hip knuckles of pork. A bone left sticking out on top suggests a whole mini-ham that needs only to be sliced to be enjoyed.

Traveling food lovers who’d like to try these many delights can gather a meal at a charcuterie and take it out to a park bench—or, more comfortably, sneak it up to their hotel room. It’s a very good idea to travel with a fork, knife, and spoon, and maybe even a few paper plates, just in case the shop does not offer utensils and hotel management is not willing to comply.

Where:
In Biarritz
, for superb Bayonne ham: Didier Carrère, a stall in Les Halles, tel 33/5-59-22-13-01,
halles-biarritz.fr
;
in New York
, for rosette de Lyon, Salumeria Biellese, tel 212-736-7376,
salumeriabiellese.com
.
Mail order:
Olympic Provisions, tel 503-894-8275,
olympicprovisions.com
(search french sausage); D’Artagnan, tel 800-327-8246,
dartagnan.com
(search charcuterie).
Further information:
The Art of Charcuterie
by Jane Grigson (1991);
The Oxford Companion to Food
by Alan Davidson (1999).
See also:
Italian
salumi
;
Wursts to Walk With
.

In almost every one of the many countries where stuffed cabbage is a favored dish, whatever the ingredients and seasonings, it is comprised of various fillings placed in individual cabbage leaves that are then rolled and steamed or baked. In Provence, especially around the town of Grasse, traditional cooks have another take altogether. Known in the local dialect as
sou fassum
, the dish involves a high-wire act that is beautifully demonstrated in the 2013 French film
Haute Cuisine
—stuffing and cooking a whole head of cabbage.

The favored cabbage for this is the bright green, crinkly Savoy, whose soft leaves can more easily be spread apart to be stuffed. Blanched first if it seems stiff, the cabbage is gently opened, and the innermost core of small, pale leaves is eased out. The core is finely chopped, to be added to a stuffing that includes ground meats such as pork, ham, veal, or crumbled pork sausage, alone or in combination, along with onion, garlic, tomatoes, and dark green leaves of Swiss chard. The stuffing is seasoned with nutmeg, mace, hot pepper flakes, thyme, savory, rosemary, and oregano.

A ball of the savory mixture is placed in the hollowed-out heart of the cabbage, and the remaining stuffing is carefully, neatly pressed between all the other leaves, working from the center out. The stuffed cabbage is then gathered up in a ball and firmly wrapped in cheesecloth. (Around Grasse, a string bag is kept on hand purely for this purpose; it’s known as a
fassumier
, hence the name
sou fassum
, meaning “under the string bag.”) The next step is a gentle, almost imperceptible simmer in strong, beefy stock on the stove for several hours, or, for an even richer result, a braise in the oven with bacon or a pig’s foot, root vegetables, and herbs.

Once cooked, the cabbage is unwrapped, briefly drained, and then presented whole. Cut into thick wedges and typically anointed with a light tomato sauce, it releases its mouth-watering aroma of meat and herbs and is best complemented by a glass of the delicate local Bandol rosé wine.

Further information and recipes:
Simple French Food
by Richard Olney (1992);
Elizabeth David Classics: French Country Cooking
(1980);
nytimes.com
(search chou vert farci).

With its lavishly ruffled, silky puckered leaves, the dark silver-green savoy cabbage is the most delicate member of the diverse
Brassica oleracea
family; the stiffer and more common green, white, and red cabbages are well suited to many preparations but lack the refined gentleness and pliability of those exuberant heads of savoy.

More fragile and requiring less cooking time, Savoy has a nutty flavor that is less over-poweringly cabbagey. Once lightly blanched, its soft leaves easily absorb the pan juices of braised meats and game. In Germany,
wirsingkohl
is a fall favorite when cooked with pheasant or quail, sometimes with the addition of kohlrabi, a first cousin in the brassica family (see
listing
). In France, where the cabbages originated in the Savoie region of the Western Alps, the florid heads are stuffed with ground pork and seasonings (see
listing
). Around Milan, Italy,
verza
is a necessary addition to the authentic winter hot pot dinner that is
cassoeula
(see
listing
). Because it has a soft leaf, savoy cabbage does not hold up too well once cooked, and so should be served as soon as possible. Raw and salted until wilted, it makes an especially ethereal coleslaw.

Tip:
When selecting savoy cabbages, look for firm, dark-green outer leaves; avoid any heads that have been too closely trimmed down to white leaves or that show any rust-spotting or brownish areas of dampness.

While Alsace is widely known for the pungent cabbage-based sauerkraut that is choucroute, the region is also home to the beloved turnip-based variation,
choucroute de navets.
Known in the local dialect as
Süra Rüawa
(sour turnips), the dish is the subject of its own festivals in and around the town of Krautergersheim.

The autumn specialty begins in mid-September, when long white turnips are harvested and finely slivered to resemble vegetable spaghetti—think slivered cabbage. Scented with bay leaves and piney juniper berries and layered into barrels with lots of coarse salt, the turnips are weighted down and left to cure for about five weeks. When a veritable confit, the mixture is rinsed and cooked in the style of sauerkraut; it is enriched with pork fat, white wine, onions, perhaps garlic, and the sprightly accents of juniper and black peppercorns. The pungently pickled result is earthy, temptingly chewy, and a perfect foil for
schifela
, the Alsatian roast smoked pork shoulder—or as the basis of the classic
choucroute garni
, mantled with garlands of sausages and cuts of pork.

To prove that everything old can indeed seem new again, some of the most creative Alsatian chefs working in the U.S. intermittently feature
choucroute de navets
on their menus, inevitably to be congratulated by critics on their inventiveness.

Further information and recipe:
homepreservingbible.com
(search sauerkraut turnip).
Special event:
Fête de la Choucroute, Krautergersheim, France, September, tel 33/3 -88-95-78-78.

Hearty fare for a cold winter day.

An iconic winter dish, Alsace’s
choucroute garnie
takes its name from the silky, teasingly pungent sauerkraut that is its base—but that base is hardly the whole story. First, those fragrant mounds of salt-pickled cabbage are infused with flavors of duck or goose fat, onion, garlic, caraway, juniper, bay, and the region’s dry white riesling, plus a final shot of kirsch. Then comes a stupendous slew of “garnishes”: smoked and fresh pork and beef sausages, smoked pork loin and shoulder, and meaty slabs of bacon. The ultimate version also requires slices of smoked or pickled beef tongue; pigs’ knuckles, ears, and tails; and airy calf or pork liver dumplings. Poached and then briefly sautéed with onions, these dumplings are the crowning glory of the Choucroute Royale that is served every Saturday
at lunch in the folksy Chez Hansi in Colmar.

A standard on the menus of French brasseries (originally brewery-owned taverns featuring foods especially complementary to beer), the same lusty array is known as a
Schlactplatte
, or butcher’s plate, across the border, in the German province of Swabia. In Switzerland it is a
Bernerplatte
, named for the city of Berne, just next door to Alsace. Or there’s
choucroute à la Juif
, the version prepared by the kashruth-observing Jews of Alsace, who substitute fresh and pickled cuts of beef and beef sausages for pork. Last but not least is
choucroute des navets
, another much-loved Alsatian version made with turnips (see
listing
).