Alsatian cuisine is in a league of its own! Our valentine dining experience was a fine example of the plentiful and creative preparation of pork, the Alsatian way. Alsatians are known for their pork sausages, smoked meats, pates, and general usage of just about every cut and piece of the animal. Cochonnailles is the name of the six course meal that we reserved at the mountaintop monastery Mont Saint Odile.
A six course meal just about anywhere in the world will fill you up, but a six course Cochonnailles meal will humble you. We celebrated the occasion with my wife’s parents and brother making it a fun family outing. The meal started off with a rich soup…a blood sausage soup called Kuttelsupp. I’ll have to admit that I had never tasted blood sausage or soup until coming to France. It’s a brown soup that has a smooth, medium consistency. It’s not something that the America palate is accustomed to eating but it is a rich and tasty dish. I’m a veteran now and love it. 
Course two was called Plat campagnard which consists of both fresh vegetable salads and charcuterie. The charcuterie is pork prepared in a number of different ways and served cold. This course included black sausage (saucisse noir), liver sausage (saucisse de foie), head cheese (fromage de tête), black forest ham (jambon de la forêt noir), and country pate (pate de compagne). The accompanying vegetable salad was a shaved carrot salad with a light vinaigrette dressing, slightly acidic and tangy to balance the fatty, cold pork. Next up was a lemon sorbet with Marc Gewurztraminer poured overtop. The Marc Gewurztraminer is the Alsatian version of grappa, a grape based liquor. The sorbet and little hit of liquor gave us a second wind.
At this point in the meal, I’ve had two bowls of soup, a full plate of heavy pates and cold cuts, and a sorbet with a little Alsatian love on top. All of this came before the principal meal, the real star of this meal, choucroute royal. Choucroute is a royally delicious assortment of pork goodness including: lewerknepfle, tranches de lard fumé, tranches de lard frais, saucisses de Morteau, petits jambonneaux salés crus, saucisses de Strasbourg, boudin noir, and knack d’Alsace. I’ll rely on the picture to translate the ingredients. I tasted every type of pork and some of the mild sauerkraut that comes with it.
We’re all stuffed to the gills but there are still two more dishes to come. Fortunately we had several hours of time over which we could enjoy the meal. A meal of this sort would not be French if there was not a cheese plate. Our servers brought a three foot wide wicker tray with numerous wheels and blocks of cheese. The final dish was desert. I had a slice of apple pie and my wife had a sorbet with cherries and real whipped cream on top. A nice finish to a thoroughly enjoyable meal.
