Sausage-Cabbage Melange

Pulled out some sausage last night for breakfast today and tomorrow, but ended up making eggs and mushrooms poached in tomatoes with a side of hash browns, so had some extra sausage to use. Came up with this, adapted from Bruce Aidell's Complete Sausage Book (Amazon link here).

Recipe:

Sausage-Cabbage Melange
Serves 4

1/4 c butter or bacon fat (I used butter)
6 oz fresh sausage (any kind of pork sausage would be fine)
2 carrots
1 md onion
1 sm head cabbage
3 lg garlic cloves
2 bay leaves
1-1/2 c stock or strong broth
1T dried thyme
3T tomato paste
1T Vietnamese chili garlic sauce (or to taste)
2T sour cream
salt and pepper to taste (I didn't need any)

Crumble or dice sausage. Dice carrots. Slice onion thin. Quarter, core (save core to use in a veggie scrap salad) and thinly slice/shred the cabbage.

Assemble your mis en place. The mis en place picture above shows everything except the butter and sour cream, ready to go. Things that will be added at the same time are binned or mixed together.

Melt the fat over medium heat in a 4- to 6-quart saucepan with lid. When fragrant, add the sausage and saute 3 minutes. Add the carrots and onions. Mix them in, cover, and cook 10 minutes. The onions should be limp and may show some color.

Add the cabbage and garlic and bay leaves. Stir in. Cover and cook 10 more minutes, stirring once or twice.

Add the stock and stir to deglaze until you are sure no tasty bits remain on the bottom of the pan. Add the thyme, tomato paste, and chili garlic sauce. Cook, covered, 10 minutes more.

At this point you can turn the heat down to low and leave it for up to an hour, until you are ready to serve.

When you are ready, turn the heat up and reduce the liquid, if needed, to a medium-thick sauce-like consistency. Bring the pan off the heat and wait for it to stop simmering. Stir in the sour cream. Serve hot. Picture below shows one dinner-sized serving.

Eating notes: When we saw what 1/4 of the output was (see the picture above), we thought that there is no way this would be enough for dinner, and that we'd certainly be back to the pot for the rest. But it was the opposite. I had to give some of mine to Phil because I couldn't eat it all, and even so, I felt more full than I can remember feeling in a very long time. Even as I blog this my stomach is a bit, well, comfy. It's an extremely filling dish.

Also, it's a dish that would lend itself to creativity, especially in terms of the protein and spice. Nutmeats or liver or instead of sausage; spicy sausage instead of mild; coriander or cumin instead of chili-garlic; all (and probably lots of other combinations) would have been interesting and good.