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Updated: October 22, 2022 @ 10:42 am
October is the perfect month for sausages with sauerkraut and apples. Use fully cooked smoked sausage to cut down cooking time.
October is the perfect month for sausages with sauerkraut and apples. Use fully cooked smoked sausage to cut down cooking time.
“The Enigma of Room 622” (Harpervia English translation from French by Robert Bononno, 2022) is a new mystery thriller by Swiss novelist Joel Dicker. Dicker trained as a lawyer as a fall-back career, but had always wanted to be an artist or writer. Part autobiography, part counterespionage novel, his new work is a frame story told by a writer named Joel, who is staying in room 623 at the Hotel Verbier near Geneva, Switzerland, to recover from the death of his longtime publisher and from a writing slump.
An homage to Dicker’s real life publisher, Bernard de Fallois, the mystery takes off when the writer observes that room number 622 has been replaced by number 621A. He meets Scarlett, a beautiful young woman also staying at the hotel, and together they look into the mysterious room numbering. What they find is told between the past and present revolving around a corpse, an influential Swiss banking family, and the transition to a new bank president following the death of its head, Abel Ebezner. The transition is controversial because Abel does not name his son Macaire as the next head of the bank.
That an Ebezner will not lead the family’s 200-year-old company is compounded by the fact that 15 years earlier Macaire had traded his shares in the bank bequeathed by his father to an insidious businessman, Tarnagol, making him a member of the board. When P-30, the counterintelligence agency, assigns Macaire the task of murdering Tarnagol to prevent the destabilization of Swiss banking, the story takes a surprising turn. All the while Macaire’s wife is planning on leaving him for his business rival, Lev. At this juncture we are only halfway through the plot twists in this engaging thriller, but even at almost 600 pages, the novel flies by toward an unexpected ending.
The rich of the novel dine at several real restaurants in Geneva, among them Roberto’s, an Italian restaurant, and Brasserie Lipp, the over 100-year-old institution founded by Leonard Lipp, a refugee to Paris from Alsace-Lorraine. The Lipp menu is full of German-style comfort foods similar to the recipe here. October seems right for this dish.
Sausages with Sauerkraut and Apples
1 package fully cooked chicken sausages or kielbasa
1 large yellow onion
1/2 teaspoon thyme
2 tablespoons European butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 15 oz. can good quality sauerkraut, drained well
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup chicken broth
3 firm cooking apples, sliced
1 bay leaf
German sweet hot mustard for serving
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium-sized Dutch oven, cook onion and sage in one tablespoon butter until golden, about 10 minutes; remove and set aside. Add olive oil to pan and brown sausages, turning to each side; set aside. Add onions back to the pan with sauerkraut, and put sausages on top. Add wine, chicken broth and bay leaf to pan. Cover and transfer to oven. Bake for 30 minutes. While that is cooking, melt butter in a large skillet and sauté apples until just tender, about 8 minutes. When ready to serve, transfer sausages and sauerkraut to serving platter. Place sautéed apples on the side. Serve warm with French bread and German mustard. Serves 2-4.
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