Something for the Pomicklack in all of us

[muckefuck]

The results are in and the verdict is: Best. Bigos. EVAH. So good to know that all I need do to reproduce this success is:

1. Have monshu make red cabbage according to Mimi Sheraton's traditional recipe.
2. Have Miss Cleveland make choucroute garnie with top-quality sauerkraut and sausage.
3. Reuse the sauerkraut to make our own choucroute garnie a week later with smoked meats from Paulina Market.
4. Combine the twice-cooked sauerkraut and red cabbage with more meat and simmer it for an hour or two each evening over three successive days.

I think what I'm saying is that this particular benchmark may be one we're unlikely to hit again. So to make sure we don't forget it too soon, I've gone and frozen half of the result for later consumption.

Miss Cleveland's monstrous casserole (which he singularly forgot to take back with him after visiting us again on Saturday) also contained plenty of potatoes that I fished out with the intention of doing something else with without being sure what. Then as I was reading bigos descriptions I came across the tip that it's often served with mashed potatoes and hit upon the idea of making colcannon--something I'd always avoided because the idea of marrying mashed potatoes to boiled cabbage has always sounded about as appealing as mixing rice pilaf with potter's clay.

But then I belatedly learned (a) that cál can mean either "cabbage" or "kale" in Irish, and colcannon is often made with the former and (b) I really like kale. My technique was a bit unusual: I chopped up the cooked potatoes and sautéed them in kielbasa drippings, then used the same pan to sautée the kale with garlic before chopping it finely and adding it to the warm potatoes mashed with a little butter and milk. So, again, not something that would be trivial to duplicate, so hopefully it didn't make that much of a difference in the final reckoning.

It's a good pairing: the bitter-savoury flavour of the colcannon acts as a foil to the sweet-sour richness of the bigos. (I expect there'd be even more of a contrast if I hadn't been using potatoes originally cooked with sauerkraut.) Still, I think maybe next time I bring out the bigos, it will be with the savoury bread pudding I'm planning on making with the stale sprouted wheat bread that I shredded and froze on New Year's.