A fantastic, and fantasticly easy, recipe that, save S&P, uses just three ingredients: sausage, cabbage and butter. A hell of a lot of butter. The best part is, this is an inexpensive dish that feeds many and tastes decadent. I love it.
I found the recipe on the New York Times Cooking site, but it comes from “Good Tempered Food,” by Tamasin Day-Lewis, who credits Jane Grigson for the inspiration.
Chop and parboil cabbage.
Layer it in a dish:
Dot the cabbage with sausage and butter:
Cover with parchment and foil:
Cook for two hours. It comes out like this. Silky cabbage, brown and crunchy sausage. Rich buttery flavor.
Sausage and Cabbage
Salt
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 pounds fresh sweet Italian pork sausages or bulk sausage
1 large green or Savoy cabbage, about 4 pounds, cored and thickly shredded
Freshly ground black pepper
Crusty bread and mustard, for serving.
Heat oven to 300 degrees. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and butter a 9-by-13-by-2-inch baking dish. If using sausages, remove casings and discard them.
Place cabbage in boiling water, cover, and let water come back to the boil. Uncover and boil for 3 minutes. Drain cabbage in a colander and run cold water over it to stop cooking.
Put about 1/3 of the cabbage in buttered dish and cover with 1/2 the meat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and dot with butter. Repeat, ending with a final layer of cabbage, and dot top with butter.
Cover dish tightly with a layer of parchment paper, then top with a lid or a layer of aluminum foil. Cook for about 2 1/2 hours, until cabbage is soft and sweet, and top is lightly browned. Sausage chunks will remain pink in the center.
Yield: 6 servings.
