We have been braising fiends this year, and we’ve begun to make inroads on some of our larger roasts, which means leftovers. Of course, the great thing about braised meat is that it’s better the next day, after the flavors have had a chance to really meld and settle in. Last weekend we pulled out a pork arm roast and braised it on a bed of cabbage, onion, and sauerkraut flavored with paprika, caraway and beer. It was pleasant enough the first night, but lunch the next day was when it really shone.

I had made a batch of buttermilk-caraway dinner rolls (from our go-to baking book for such things, Mary’s Bread Basket and Soup Kettle), which were wonderful eaten hot out of the pan with butter, but were also delightful split, toasted, spread with mustard, and turned into little pork-and-cabbage sliders. A pile of cornichons and a glass of Pacific Rim Riesling completed a rather dreamy lunch.

And because we made a truly enormous amount, I had those sliders again yesterday (maybe today, too). And for dinner last night, I threw together this interesting noodle dish. Some fresh shredded cabbage, sauteed in olive oil until well browned, tossed with some of the leftover braised pork, and mixed with cooked gemelli pasta and doused with Frank’s hot sauce. It came out well, with a sort of spicy Asian-fusiony sort of effect. I liked it.

We got our first snow this weekend, with a vengeance! Saturday was breezy and cold, and a light snow fell all afternoon, but then it really picked up overnight and by Sunday morning we had a good 5 inches on the ground. Too bad I had to go to work on Sunday – fortunately I have a very short commute.

But at least I had Saturday at home, and it was a good one. We picked up our Christmas tree in the morning from a local tree farm, and I was able to spend the afternoon in the house, making a batch of caramels, decorating the tree, and putting together a choucroute garni for dinner. It simmered away quietly in the oven, perfuming the house with the scent of cabbage and pork, while we fussed about with stockings and ornaments.

My version of choucroute garni varies a bit, but I have never once followed an actual recipe. I pull out some rather vague instructions from a couple of cooking classes, maybe glance at Tony Bourdain’s version (the intro to which begins, “Oh, steaming heap of pork!”) and proceed to generally ignore all of them. Here’s how this particular batch came to be:

I sliced some bacon into lardons and sauteed them until they released their fat, then I add a sliced sweet onion and most of a head of shredded cabbage. This all cooked down together and got a bit browned, then I added a bay leaf, a large pinch of caraway seeds, a jar of Fahrmann’s sauerkraut (drained but not rinsed) and half a bottle of Bass beer. I let that simmer until the beer was almost gone, then I added an entire kielbasa sausage, cut into bite-size pieces, a small container of chicken stock and most of the rest of the beer, poured the whole mess into a Dutch oven (which I should have started it in in the first place), covered it, put it in a 350° oven and left it alone for about an hour and a half.

By the time it came out of the oven, the cabbage and onions had braised into complete tenderness and the flavor of the sausage and sauerkraut had melded into everything. We ate big scoops of it with a slightly sour multigrain bread and stoneground mustard. I was going to cook some potatoes but I completely forgot. I also opened a northwest Riesling that I thought would be perfect, but it was maybe a touch too flowery to be an ideal match. Still, we ate and drank by the newly decorated tree with snow falling outside and felt that all was well.