Cured & Smoked Pork Hoks With Sauerkraut And Steamed Baby Potatoes.

The day after Boxing Day (26th December) is also festive. In fact all the days between Christmas and New Year's are festive. We were invited over to my cousin's home for lunch way, way on the other side of town (1 hour by car including traffic). I promised to cook for them Pork Hocks with sauerkraut and steamed baby potatoes. As previously posted on December 19th, I smoked the hocks so all I needed was to buy the sauerkraut and baby potatoes and I was....
 in business.  Before leaving home I prepared the sauerkraut as follows:
You will need:
-  1.5 kg untreated sauerkraut. I mean just plain pickled thinly sliced cabbage.
-  1 handful of juniper berries.
-  2 Tbsp. whole black pepper corns.
-  1 bottle of dry white wine.
Method:
-  Before leaving my home....
-  Use a large diameter but shallow saucepan with cover, add the sauerkraut put on medium heat, and untangle the pressed sauerkraut to make it fluffy.
-  Add the juniper berries and the pepper corns.
-  Add some water.
-  Bring everything to a boil, then start adding the whole bottle of wine.
-  Bring again to a boil again, let alcohol evaporate, cover and simmer for 10 minutes.
-  The idea here is to keep the sauerkraut still crunchy.
So we packed everything and left home to go to my cousin's.  As soon as we reached there we put the hocks on using a pressure cooker.
For the hocks:
-  Put all three hocks in the pressure cooker, add all the herbs and spices kept for the cure, added a little water, closed her up and one hour later the hocks were ready and falling off the bone!
For the potatoes:
-  Put the baby potatoes skin on in another pressure cooker with water, a chicken cube, and 10 minutes later they were ready.
-  The sauerkraut was heated using a couple ladles from the hocks juice.
Everything was then arranged on the huge round platter as shown:

Before Pressure Cooking

After Pressure Cooking

Serve with lots of beer, and pickles.
Enjoy!
Stelio