Sunday, March 30, 2008

CSA week 18 - sausage with potatoes and cabbage

Why do people make recipes that produce enormous quantities of food? "Serves four" I get but "serves eight"? Who has eight people to serve on a regular basis? Of course if this recipe explicitly said "serves eight" I would have halved it, but it didn't and I wasn't paying close attention so I'm halfway through my prep before I notice the enormous piles of vegetables accumulating.

On the plus side, there goes half my share in one go and I think it will freeze well. Also, if you poke around the website where I found the recipe, you see that it's specifically intended for slow food/local ingredient cooking; I'd feel like a jerk making it with supermarket vegetables.

So the recipe in question is this one slightly modified from Jessica Prentice's cookbook Full Moon Feast. I used a spring onion (including the green bits) instead of the leeks, dandelion greens for the generic greens, and subbed in a a turnip for one of the potatoes. I considered roasting everything to get some extra flavor but I was concerned about overcooking so I just made sure to get some color on as much of the vegetables as possible before my pan filled up and everything started steaming instead of frying.

I also threw in some Spice House Bavarian seasoning (and some parsley) since I was using bratwurst for the sausage and I wanted to localize the flavors. It could as easily been an Irish dish or Portuguese depending on the type of sausage and the seasonings.

Finally, I used some Greek yogurt instead of sour cream. It isn't emphasized in the recipe, but it really pulls the whole dish together. And pulled together nicely it did, I'm pleased to say, as I've got enough here for at least four more meals. A big pile of limp cabbage isn't much for presentation, but the turnips and red-skin potatoes do add a touch of color.

I served it over spaetzel, but I think the potatoes and turnip were starch enough so that wasn't really necessary. It's a shame my lighting was so bad on that photo, it looks like I managed to pretty up the plate, but you can't really see it. Ah well.

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