Ale-Braised Duck Sausage

Sticking with the colonial cookbook, although this one had a distinctive French theme to it...

Recipe

1 lb duck sausage
1 large onion, sliced thin
1 medium shallot, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tbsp butter
2 cups dark ale
1 tsp mustard
1/2 cup demi-glace

Cut shallow diagonal slices into the sausage and bake at 350 degrees for 5 minutes (if pre-cooked).  Meanwhile, cook the onion, shallot and garlic in a skillet with the butter, high heat for a few minutes.  Then add the sausage, then the ale to deglaze, scraping up bits from the pan bottom.  Cook at medium about 10 minutes, until the ale reduces to just coat the pan.  Remove the sausage and keep warm.  Add the demi-glace and mustard and cook about 5 minutes until reduced by half.  Serve over the sausage and whatever other elements you like.

Outcome

To be honest, this did not look promising at first.  I had trouble finding duck sausage, and when I did it was raw, not pre-cooked.  And I have no real idea what demi-glace is - I didn't copy that page of the recipe.  Then the big onion I had on hand was... really gross.  But I winged it - baked the sausage a while longer, used a small (backup) onion, and said forget that French demi-glace nonsense.  I also had some extra broccoli so I tossed that in there.

After all that, I was definitely pleased with how it turned out.  The end result was really rich and flavorful.  The sausage I used had, like, duck, duck liver, other animals, lots of good stuff.  Without the totally-avoidable complications, it's actually a pretty simple meal - all I had to buy was the sausage and shallot (although the beer I had on hand was more of the pale ale variety).  Served over cous cous.  Delicious and looking forward to leftovers!