Chocolate with salt

A TV show reminded me of that dish and pulled me right back into my childhood. I just love this sour cabbage soup and I haven't eaten it for over 5 years. Unbelievable.
It's winter in Namibia and although we have a very mild winter this year, I'm still in the mood for winter dishes like soups and braised meat.
We got hold of smoked pork cheek that week and I was wondering anyway, what I will do with it. Traditionally, the polish cabbage soup is cooked with pork ribs, but you can use smocked pork cheek like me or bacon.
And I actually was planing on cooking a lentil soup, what might happen in the next weeks, or a pea soup, but then we watched the already mentioned TV show, where a Polish woman invited for a dinner party and she introduced her guests to her polish roots and traditions. My husband looked at me and wondered about the sauerkraut soup and I promised him, he would love every spoon of it.
The woman in the show served the soup in a small bread like in my picture. In Poland we traditionally serve a sour dough based soup called żurek in such bread bowl, but I like the idea and would say it's good for any hearty soup. Especially if you're one of the persons, who love to dug their bread in a soup, you will love that invention; apart from the very nice presentation of course.
I cooked my soup a day prior, because it tastes better in my opinion, if it stands for a while.

After breakfast the next day I started with the bread. I found the recipe for the bread here (in Polish language). It's a very nice blog, I really like to look in from time to time, especially if I need a reminder of how to cook some of our traditional food.
The bread turned out nice and went well with the soup, but I think I would go for a sour dough bread next time. The reason is just, that I really like the combination and I missed somehow the sour dough taste. But that's just me.
A warning beforehand though: if you're not polish, you're most probably not used to eating cabbage or sauerkraut. That means, the soup will not be easy to digest for you, even with the marjoram and caraway seeds, so rather try the soup on a Saturday for lunch first and check out how well you cope with the cabbage.

Ingredients 

For the soup

3,5 l water or good vegetable stock (then you can skip the soup greens)
600 g sauerkraut (sour cabbage)
1 bunch soup greens (celeriac, carrots, parsley, onion, Maggi herb)
2 bay leaves
1 tsp marjoram
1 tsp caraway seeds
3-4 allspice corns or 2 tsp ground allspice
250 g smoked pork cheek or bacon or ribs
1 small onion
2 medium carrots
4 medium potatoes
3 tbsp tomato paste
salt and pepper

For the bread bowls (3 x 300 ml)

525 g white bread flour
200 ml lukewarm water
7 g instant yeast
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
3 tbsp oil (e.g. canola)
1,5 tsp salt
1,5 tsp sugar
egg white to brush on

Preparation process of the bread bowls go to

Preparation of the soup

Bring your water with the soup greens or vegetable stock to boil. If you cook your veggie stock from scratch, you can either leave the soup greens whole and take them out later or dice them and eat them with soup. In that case, you can leave the two additional carrots out and just add the potatoes.

Meanwhile put the cabbage in a big sieve and wash it under cold running water, by stirring with your hands, in order to get the acidity out. Otherwise, the soup turns out extremely sour. Taste the cabbage from time to time, till you feel the strong acidity gone. Chop the cabbage a bit and add it to the stock.
Season with bay leaf, marjoram, caraway seeds and allspice.
Cut 1/3 of the  pork cheek or bacon in cubes and put aside. Add the rest as a whole to the soup.
Reduce the heat to low.
If you decided for the ready veggie stock or to leave the soup greens whole, wash, peel and dice the carrots and potatoes. The cubes should be around 0,5 cm small. Put them into the simmering soup. The acidity of the cabbage will prevent the vegetables to overcook.
You can also first cook the vegetables in your stock till they're soft and add then the sauerkraut. It's up to your taste, I like the firmness.
Heat a pan and fry the cheek/bacon cubes, till the fat almost completely dissolved and the meat is crispy and golden brown. Take the meat cubes out and add them to the soup. Keep the pan with the lard for the next step.
Chop the onion finely and fry till golden brown in the remaining pork lard. Add it also to the soup.
Cover the pot partially and let the soup simmer on the lowest heat for at least 2 hours. Stir in the tomato paste.
Take the pork cheeks/bacon/ribs out, remove the fat and cut the meat in small cubes, then put them back into the soup.
Now season with salt and pepper to taste. Be very careful with the salt, because of the saltiness of the pork cheek/bacon/rib.
The soup is now ready to eat, but you can leave it in a cool place till next day, as I did.

Preparation of the bread bowls

First dissolve the yeast with the sugar in the lukewarm water. Let it stand for approx. 5 minutes, till the yeast starts to foam.
Put the flour in the bowl of your mixer and combine with salt. Add the yeast-water mix, the egg and yolk and the oil and knead till the dough is nice smooth.
Leave covered to rise for approx. 40 minutes, till the dough doubles in size.

Divide in three equal parts and take a small amount of each dough apart. Form a loaf  each and a little ball for the handle. Stick the ball to the top with a few drops of water. Put aside to rise for an other 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 175°C (without fan).

Brush each loaf with the egg white. You can add a little bit of water to the egg whites, that makes it easier.

Put in the oven and bake till golden brown. All recipes I read,were talking about approx. 30 minutes, my breads were in for 45.

Take the breads out and leave to cool.

Cut very carefully the tops out and remove 2/3 of the insides. The rest you can carefully press towards the edges. Then brush them with the remaining egg white and put them into the oven for an other 5 minutes. This process prevents the soak of the bread.

Reheat the soup, season again if necessary and fill carefully into your bread bowls.

Enjoy!