This month's They Go Really Well Together (TGRWT) flavour pairing was chocolate and caraway, and I decided to join in (hence this post being written in English).
I immediately thought of sauerkraut, and combining it with chocolate intrigued me, if not only for the reason that it seemed so "wrong". A quick search for chocolate sauerkraut turned up a lot of results for chocolate sauerkraut cake, even an entry on blog.khymos.org which I'd missed entirely. This at least gave me some hope that it could work out.
I started out with a basic Norwegian sauerkraut recipe:
1 kg cabbage - finely shredded
2 green apples - peeled and thinly sliced
1 tbs butter
t tsp salt
1 tbs caraway
1.5 tbs vinegar 7%
1.5 tbs sugar
2 dl water
With the butter in the bottom of the pot, the cabbage and apples are layered with salt and caraway in between. The water and vinegar is added, and is then left to simmer for about 1.5 hours. When it's done sugar, vinegar and salt is added to taste.
I drained the sauerkraut and divided it in two, one for each of the two chocolate sauces I made. I wanted the sauce to be thin so that the final product would have a texture similar to that of normal sauerkraut.
I decided to first try a simple sauce made with water, cocoa powder and sugar (60 mL, 8 mL and 4 mL). Since this sauce was very watery it had the texture I was originally looking for, but the taste was (quite predictably) very boring and became overpowered by the sauerkraut.
The next sauce was made by melting semisweet chocolate in olive oil. The sauce had a very smooth and pleasant texture, and it nicely coated the cabbage shreds instead of it all running to the bottom of the bowl.
Results
The water/cocoa powder sauerkraut was quite bland, and the cocoa sauce did nothing more than distract from the sauerkraut. Nor did I notice very much going on between the cocoa and caraway. The dish had the same texture as regular sauerkraut, which was what I aimed for, but it turned out to be a bad idea.
The chocolate olive oil sauerkraut worked much better. As the sauce coated the cabbage shreds, the initial taste was very chocolatey with a nice caraway aftertaste. I could clearly taste that the two ingredients go really well together. The texture wasn't too bad either, but I wouldn't call the dish a success. The cabbage itself didn't work well, and for a dish consisting of little more, having the cabbage work against you can't be described as much other than a failure. It was an interesting failure however, and I'll be sure to try the chocolate sauerkraut cake!
