Best of the Wurst

How do you like to spend your days off in the winter? If you’re anything like me, you’re happy to enjoy the bit of snow we are getting this year, while taking advantage of the opportunity to savour warming, hearty dishes. A couple of weekends ago in Toronto, while St. John’s got hit with a massive snowstorm we received a comparatively small, but not inconsequential, amount of snow. Knowing this snow was on its way, I was happy to have loaded up on a couple of new sausages from our resident charcutier, Scott. Ingenuity and development are two of our core values at Sanagan’s, and few people embody those as Scott does. He isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, but is constantly working on further developing his recipes and techniques in search of the best possible product. His recent improvements with emulsions and sausages has led to three new (for us) varieties: Montbeliard, Bockwurst, and Knackwurst (or saucisse d’Alsace). All three sausages may be included in the classic Alsatian dish choucroute garnie. Choucroute is a dish without a single specific recipe. Rather, it typically includes sauerkraut, sausages, and a wide variety of other meat/potato/vegetable components. For my version, I used all three of Scott’s sausages, a smoked ham hock, sauerkraut, and Cookstown Greens organic potatoes. It was as easy as it could be to make; essentially braising the ham hock in the sauerkraut with white wine and stock, adding the sausages and potatoes towards the end, shredding the meat from the hock, and serving with lots of mustard. This left me lots of time through the day to enjoy it with my boys and shovel the driveway twice.