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.

We haven't had fish for quite a long time, beside the tuna wrap lately. It's funny however, that I didn't categorise it as a fish dish right away. Anyway, let say it like that, we haven't had a proper fish dish for a long time and last time we were shopping I got hold of kingklip again. I really like the fish, as it has a white flesh with firm texture and a slightly sweet taste. It's native to South Africa (and Australia and New Zealand,  but is also found on the costs of Argentina and Chile). It's a member of cusk eel family and is also known under that name in Europe and southern America ( source: Seafoodsource.com ).

The idea for the dish came up, because I had cabbage left and I thought, there was once a dish with fish and cabbage I used to make back in Germany. And then I remembered, that it wasn't cabbage after all but creamed sauerkraut. The recipe for the creamed sauerkraut I used here is from the famous German chef Johann Lafer and I found it here (in German language).

I was actually planning to make that dish with bacon. Unfortunately I realised too late, that we don't have bacon in the fridge. But if you have some at home, I would highly recommend to fry your kingklip wrapped in bacon, as it's not only complements with the creamed sauerkraut but also with the fish. If you try it out with bacon, please feel free to leave a comment of what you thought about it.