Alsatian Choucroute Garnie: The Franco-Germanic Feast

Alsatian choucroute garnie (sauerkraut with meats) is the defining dish of France's Germanic eastern border — a heaped platter of long-cooked sauerkraut topped with an array of smoked and fresh pork products: Strasbourg sausages, smoked pork belly, pork knuckle, blood sausage, and sometimes goose. It is German in its ingredients and French in its refinement — the sauerkraut is cooked with Riesling (Alsatian, naturally), juniper berries, and goose fat rather than simply boiled.

• German Schlachtplatte (butcher's plate — similar sauerkraut-and-meat assembly), Polish bigos (hunter's stew with sauerkraut and mixed meats), Korean kimchi-jjigae (fermented vegetable as the base for