Only one of my new band of brothers is up early enough to see me off: having missed out on the offal feast first time round, Martha is absolutely determined to make it back to Lyon by lunchtime, so we slip out together, while Lucy and Ned are still sleeping, and share an emotional croissant (8.5/10, very voluminous and flaky, but still with that all-important central squidge, and a restrained but quietly satisfying flavour) on the steps of a Dijon boutique. This tender moment is brought to an abrupt end by the rather chic and very disapproving girl who comes to open it up for the day and we go our separate ways, Martha south by bike, me north-east on my final railway odyssey of the trip, heading for Strasbourg on the German border.
Sadly, the Maille mustard emporium is still shuttered as I pass, denying me the chance to ‘savour summer’ with the limited-edition seasonal mustard multipack advertised in the window. It’s a shame, because I think the next four days are going to feature a lot of sausages.
PAUSE-CAFÉ – ‘French Mustard’ n’Existe Pas
Perhaps fortunately, the French are ignorant of the sweet, muddy so-called ‘French mustard’ accredited to them by the British in an ancient act of culinary aggression – though sadly for them you won’t find any fiery English stuff across the Channel either.
Mustard has been cultivated in the Mediterranean since ancient times, and the plant was much-valued in the Middle Ages for its medicinal qualities – French commercial production began in the mid-14th century in Dijon (the Dukes of Burgundy apparently sent mustard out by the barrel to curry favour in the courts of Europe) and it’s still big business in the city today.
Since the mid-19th century, Dijon mustard has been made with verjuice (the acidic juice of unripe grapes) rather than the wine vinegar used elsewhere, though these days it’s often replaced by a cheaper combination of wine and vinegar.
Though it accounts for the vast majority of French production, Dijon does have its rivals: Bordeaux mustard is sweeter and milder, and often includes herbs like tarragon, while Meaux makes a punchy wholegrain variety.
Flavoured mustards, often in delightfully lurid greens, oranges or pinks, are far more common than in the UK – but then France is apparently Europe’s largest producer and consumer of the stuff. Interestingly, though mustard is still grown in France, most seed now comes from the Canadian prairies.
Disappointed, Eddy and I push on with only the briefest of glimpses at the tiled riot taking place on top of the cathedral; like its mustard, Dijon’s architecture will just have to wait. I have trains to catch, connections to make: Dijon to Mulhouse, where the station offers no more tempting lunch options than a packet of salted almonds and a black coffee, but does offer me the welcome chance to slide down another set of steps on my bum, and then finally on to Strasbourg, where everything looks different again: pointier, slate-ier and generally more Germanic.
The all-pervasive smell of hops that hangs over the city this afternoon, however, might be as much down to France’s match in the group stages of the World Cup as Strasbourg’s proximity to the border. My interest in the competition extends about as far as a fromagerie sign I spot urging ‘Allez les Bleus! Bleu d’Auvergne, Bleu des Causses, Bleu de Chèvre, Bleu de Bresse’, but I have a feeling that my next travelling companion, Gemma, currently en route from Paris, is going to want to watch the match, and as she’s had to hire a car to drive her bike here, thanks to the vagaries of the French train system, I feel it would be churlish to deny her this small pleasure.
Meanwhile, I’m excited just to be in Alsace, a region described by Waverley Root as ‘the most foreign in France’, a place whose culinary wealth, according to Joël Robuchon, ‘stems from the union of French and German traditions’ in the form of Parisian chefs and local produce. (German chefs are not mentioned, naturally. Perhaps Robuchon didn’t believe they existed.)
High on the promise of beer and the smell of sausages, I fairly skip up the stairs to our Airbnb for the night, a hippy treasure trove stuffed with everything a traveller could ever want, from a pink velvet skull to a fridge full of vegan cheese, and am cordially introduced to a massive furry cat, which doesn’t seem overly impressed by my overtures. I don’t waste too much time worrying about it, though. Having finally exhausted my mum’s laundry legacy, I have exciting jobs to do before Gemma’s arrival; jobs of the sort that remind me I’m not actually on holiday – washing, getting Eddy’s recurring brake problems sorted at a canal-side bike shop and, finally, a visit to the Tourist Information Centre in search of local colour, where I pick up a promising-looking leaflet in the shape of a cabbage. Le Pic – La Maison de la Choucroute, a family choucroute business that has ‘worked the cabbage for five generations’ proposes a guided tour that sounds right up my strasse – but only with a reservation, and depending on availability.
I take the leaflet up to the desk and make the mistake of kicking off in French. Madame peers at the cabbage as if she’s never seen it before, as if guided tours of the fermented cabbage factory aren’t big business in these parts, though that surely cannot be, and agrees that yes, it seems they do tours but no, she doesn’t know when; I should probably call them and ask. It seems she’s not going to do the legwork for me, so back in the laundrette, watching my Lycra spin – a sight that never fails to gladden my heart – I phone and am 60 per cent sure I’ve managed to arrange a tour for tomorrow, though the machine’s on a spin cycle and the lady on the phone speaks so rapidly that I might just have agreed to buy a metric ton of choucroute instead. Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, I think, tucking the cabbage away for safekeeping.
Practical matters almost sorted, I have time to pop into the Museum of Alsatian Life, a fascinating rabbit warren spread over three tottering old townhouses arranged around spacious cobbled courtyards. Cutting to the chase, I ask the lady on the desk whether the museum has any artefacts pertaining to choucroute. It’s the second time I’ve surprised someone with a cabbage-related question in as many hours, and she has to think for a while. There might be a cabbage grater in the kitchen displays, she says finally, and maybe an old jar.
Such rare treasures seem to more than justify the price of admission, and I set off at speed, startling a guard who’s propped his phone on an antique butter churn to watch the football, and locate something unlabelled which may or may not be a grater. Either way, it’s got nothing on the lobster cake tin in the next room, or the Christmas cookie cutters in the shape of pigs, and definitely pales into insignificance next to a carved stone lintel decoration featuring two lions fighting over a pretzel. On the strength of my 20-minute whip round, I think I’m going to like Alsace.
With a final surge of Germanic efficiency, I even manage to purchase some special-edition World Cup cans of 1664, which, we discover, once Gemma has stopped weeping with gratitude at my generosity, fit perfectly in the bottle cages on her bike. With them safely wedged in place for later, we repair to the nearest bar to watch the second half of France versus Peru, but even she admits the match is a bit dull (I mean, obviously it is, it’s football), and we quickly abandon it in favour of videos of Wilf spreadeagled on his back on her dad’s favourite chair, snoring loudly. In fact, so entertaining is this footage of His Majesty that I almost forget our dinner reservation at Chez Yvonne, a winstub traditionelle that comes recommended by J. Meades – ‘years since I’ve been there, of course, it’s probably awful now’.
PAUSE-CAFÉ – The Wine-Snugs of Alsace
Winstubs – a word that literally translates to ‘wine-snug’, ‘the tub’ or ‘living room’, being the place in Alsatian houses that was heated throughout the winter – are, as wikipedia.fr so winningly describes them, ‘coquettement rustique’ establishments, often low-beamed and cosy, usually patronised, Cheers-style, by regulars. Some French claim that the winstub is a purely Alsatian institution, as opposed to the biertubs favoured by the area’s new German masters after the annexation of the region in 1870, but in fact, such bars are common in gr
ape-growing regions on the other side of the border, too.
The food is always hearty, old-fashioned stuff: quenelles of freshwater fish, cheese tarts, piggy stews, braised tripe, marrow bone salads and sausages, all served with piles of sautéed potatoes, with cakes and pastries made with local fruit to follow. As Travel + Leisure magazine puts it, ‘A restaurant with the trappings of a winstub but that serves roasted langoustines with vanilla butter is not a winstub. Just as, sorry, choucroute garnie … served in a place with valet parking and crystal chandeliers will never be a plat de winstub.’
Chez Yvonne, which has been going since 1956, when the eponymous Yvonne Haller bought and rebranded the less catchily named S’Burjerstuewel, is the most famous winstub of the lot. Jonathan’s right that it’s no longer in her hands (she sold it in 2001 after 47 years at the helm, and died in 2014), but it remains a favourite with French celebs, designated ‘une belle addresse’ for solid, authentic cooking by the famous red guide. In his memoirs, the late president Jacques Chirac recalls dinners there with his German counterpart Helmut Kohl: on the menu after his election in 1995, ‘as well as confirmation that France would join the single currency’, were snails, brawn, sausage, calf’s head and plum tart, washed down with beer, white wine and Pinot Noir.
No choucroute, apparently, though Chirac was a fan, once telling a journalist who asked him if he was leftist, ‘But of course, I eat choucroute, and drink beer,’ as if that was proof beyond doubt of his socialist credentials. In fact, after tasting the wines put on for a Franco-German summit in Chez Yvonne’s upstairs room in 2004, Chirac pronounced them excellent, and then demanded a beer. Corona was the ‘plus gourmand de tous les présidents de la Ve République’s’ favourite, apparently.
Yvonne has also played host to more recent dignitaries, including Nicolas Sarkozy (impatient to eat and get on the road), Ségolène Royal (took the time to eat three courses and even have a chat), Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Alain Juppé – it’s basically politico central, though not on this particular Thursday evening when the whole city is out watching football and celebrating a peculiarly French affair known as the Fête de la Musique. We trip over several small children marking this national festival of public music-making by playing the recorder in the street as their proud parents look on, and one middle-aged couple awkwardly dancing to hip-hop in an otherwise empty street.
Behind the red-and-white chequered curtains, Chez Yvonne, with its dark wood settles and tasselled sconces, is a place where it is forever November – an excellent time of year to load up on lard, washed down with a bottle of Pinot Blanc, served in goblets with fat green stems like spun caterpillars.
Gemma kicks off with my favourite Alsatian onion tart, so I take one for the team by ordering a foie gras crème brûlée for the simple reason that it sounds completely revolting, though the reality proves disappointingly innocuous – the kind of thing that Chirac, that man of the people who once claimed 15,000 francs in expenses for foie gras, probably ate for breakfast during Lent.
The main event, of course, is the choucroute garnie, which features a liver faggot, a piece of pork knuckle, a slab of bacon and three types of sausage – smoked, Strasbourg (which looks a bit like a frankfurter) and black pudding – on top of a pile of surprisingly mild fermented cabbage. It’s oddly comforting – instead of the sharpness that I was expecting, the cabbage has a mushy vegetal sweetness, which sounds disgusting but somehow isn’t. In fact, it’s the perfect foil for the pigfest on top.
Like the poule au pot down in Pau, or the cassoulet, I’m beginning to understand that provincial French cuisine is a subtle, if rarely delicate, beast, and it’s taken some time to realign my palate to its hidden depths. What can appear old-fashioned, even bland, actually has quiet charm in spades.
We finish with two scoops of a delightfully floral granita made with late-harvest Gewürztraminer wine served in the same little metal dishes we used to get arctic roll in at school, and waddle into the night, pausing only to embarrass ourselves on the way home by throwing some authentically inelegant Anglo-Saxon moves to ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’ in a square packed with more restrained revellers.
Choucroute (based on the Chez Yvonne recipe)
Choucroute is surprisingly simple to make yourself (see below) but is also widely available online – avoid the pickled or pasteurised stuff sold in jars in supermarkets, as this is often very sour indeed (and you lose the health benefits too); look for ‘live’ and ‘raw’ sauerkraut or choucroute instead. Note that if you’re making it yourself, you’ll need to leave it at least 3 weeks before use.
You don’t have to use Riesling in the recipe below, though you will have enough wine left over for a couple of glasses as you cook: any dry, fairly fruity white will do if the only stuff you can find is prohibitively expensive. The black pudding is likewise optional. Replace it with another sausage if you prefer (or leave them out altogether; there will still be plenty of meat to go around if you aren’t Alsatian).
Serves 4–6 depending on greed
2 tbsp goose fat
1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped
4 cloves
4 juniper berries
¼ tsp black peppercorns
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 bay leaf
500g pork belly
1kg smoked gammon (soaked if recommended)
550ml Riesling (or any dry white wine will do)
4 small black puddings (or enough of a larger one for 4)
4 German-style sausages
12 small waxy potatoes
For the choucroute (or use 1kg ready-made)
1 large white cabbage, c. 1.5kg
1–2 tbsp salt
1 tsp juniper berries, lightly crushed
If you’re making the choucroute yourself, core and finely shed the cabbage and put it into a large bowl. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of salt and begin to massage the cabbage vigorously between your fingers, almost as if you’re rubbing fat into flour, until it begins to weep liquid. Continue until when you press down there’s a significant amount of liquid in the bowl. If it’s not releasing much, try adding a little more salt, but be careful not to overdo it (taste it to check).
Pack the cabbage and liquid down into a large, clean fermenting jar, add the juniper berries and weight down. Leave in a cool place for at least 3 weeks, then begin to check it; once it’s done to your liking (it should be mildly tangy, a flavour that will only become more pronounced the longer you leave it, so this is very much up to your personal taste), it’s ready to use. (For more practical information about different fermenting vessels, I’d suggest going online.)
Once you’re ready to cook, heat the fat in a large ovenproof casserole dish over a medium-low heat, and cook the onion until soft and golden. Meanwhile, lightly crush the spices and drain the choucroute. Taste the choucroute – depending on how long you’ve left it (or the brand you’ve bought), you may wish to rinse it first if it’s very sour and you don’t like that.
Stir the garlic, bay leaf and spices into the onion and fry for another minute or so, then add the choucroute and stir well to coat with fat.
Push the pork belly and gammon down into the cabbage, then pour over the wine. It should cover, or almost cover, the cabbage – if not, top up with water.
Bring to a simmer, then cover, leaving the lid slightly ajar. Turn down the heat, and simmer very gently for 2 hours 10 minutes, turning the meat after an hour. If you have enough room, at this point, you can add both types of sausage and cook for another 20 minutes – if not, cook them separately. I generally bring a large pan of water up to the boil, add the sausages, then cover, turn off the heat and leave for 25 minutes. In that case, cook the choucroute for 2½ hours in total, then test the meat: it should be tender.
While the sausages are cooking, peel the potatoes and cook them in salted, boiling water. Once the choucroute is ready, push them and th
e sausages in, take off the heat, cover and leave to sit for 5 minutes before serving with plenty of Dijon mustard.
The following morning, Gemma watches me hoick myself into my Lycra with an expression I translate as ‘Jesus, what have I let myself in for?’ The cat is less coy, turning tail and meowing angrily as I attempt to charm it into joining us for the breakfast our host has left of wholesome seeded bread, fruit and green tea. Either my Marmite has put it off, or it’s noticed the tiny willy one of us has added to the already rather lewd blackboard in the kitchen,* along with our grateful thanks for the hospitality.
I collect Eddy from the bike hospital, laughing merrily with the mechanic at the bizarre configuration of British brakes (like I have any idea which lever operates which brake, and would know what to do with that information even I did), and skip town. I haven’t told Gemma exactly where we’re headed; I want to be well out of range of the Europcar depot first, but as we leave Strasbourg behind, passing obvious attractions like the Abattoir Café without stopping, she begins to ask awkward questions about where we’re going. West, I say vaguely, waving at some hills in the far distance.
We pick up a picnic in a supermarket in Duttlenheim well stocked with spätzle (a type of Germanic pasta), beer and heavy black breads, and wind on increasingly narrow roads through pretty villages with high, stepped gables and floral windowboxes, until we get to Krautergersheim, and I can contain my excitement no longer – a sign proudly declares this tiny place (population 1,751) to be the CAPITALE DE LA CHOUCROTE. ‘Ah,’ says Gemma, not sounding terribly surprised at this turn of events. ‘Would you like a photo?’
One More Croissant for the Road Page 23
