Sausage and Cabbage

The title sums it up pretty well, actually...  An unsurprisingly British dish courtesy of The New York Times...

Recipe

1 large cabbage (about 4 lbs, green or Savoy), cored and shredded
2 lbs Italian sausage
butter, salt & pepper

Boil the cabbage in salted water for about 3 minutes; drain and run under cold water.  Butter a baking dish (they recommend 9x13x2) and layer a third of the cabbage, then half the sausage.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and dot with butter.  Repeat with another layer, then top with the rest of the cabbage (and more butter dots).  Cover the dish with parchment paper and tin foil and cook at 300 degrees for 2 hours.  If there's still a lot of liquid, uncover.  Cook another 30 minutes.

Notes

Easy enough!  The cabbage step got a little messy - that's a lot of ruffage to cut and boil (even at about half size)!  Could use a bigger baking dish too, but the old reliable one did the trick:

They recommend serving with crusty bread and mustard, but I found it goes really well over mashed potatoes!

Short Rib Tacos

Another rather extravagant recipe from America's Test Kitchen - totally worth the weekly email, followed by a password reset to get into their website...  This one came from a Mexican-themed set of recipes:

Recipe

Beef

1 1/2 c beer
1/2 c cider vinegar
2 oz dried ancho chiles, stemmed, seeded & torn into 1" pieces
6 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tbsp tomato paste
3 bay leaves
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
salt & pepper
1 large onion, sliced into 1/2" rounds
3 lb boneless beef short ribs, cut into 2" cubes

Slaw

1/2 c cider vinegar
1/2 c water
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 head cabbage, cored and sliced thin
1 onion, sliced thin
1 carrot, grated
1 jalapeno, minced
1 tsp dried oregano
1 c cilantro, chopped

tortillas
queso fresco
avocado
lime

Start with the slaw a day ahead of time.  Whisk together the vinegar, water, sugar, and salt.  Add the cabbage, onion, carrot, jalapeno, and oregano, and toss together.  Cover and refrigerate for up to 24 hours.  Drain and add the cilantro before serving.

So now it's a day later and you're hungry for meat (but not too hungry, still a couple hours to go).  Heat oven to 325.  Combine the beer, vinegar, chiles, garlic, tomato paste, and spices in a dutch oven.  Lay out a later of onion rounds, then place the meat on top.  Cover and cook 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

Now it's 2 1/2 to 3 hours later and you're really hungry!  Once the meat is browned and tender, remove the dutch oven from the, um, regular oven.  Move the meat to a bowl.  Here, ATK recommends you strain out the liquid, discard the onion and bay leaves, add water so you have 1 cup of liquid, blend the solids back in, simmer, and stir in the shredded beef.  I didn't have the patience or a blender, so I shredded the beef, mashed the broth, and scooped a few cups in until the beef had a nice flavory sauce.

Serve the tacos with beef, slaw, crumbled queso fresco, avocado (my addition), and lime wedges.

Notes

It's a pretty long list of ingredients, but somehow the effort required doesn't seem to be proportional.  It helps that you can take care of the slaw in advance, but even the next day, most of the ingredients just get mixed into the pot before adding onion and beef.

The final product is amazing.  As promised, the onions keep the beef mostly out of the liquid so it browns nicely.  The cubes were soft and almost bouncy when I pulled them out at the end!  The slaw is super tasty, and the queso adds a nice salty flavor (I didn't know exactly what to expect from either element, but the first nibble of each made me grin).  It's definitely different from what you think of for beef tacos - ground meat, lettuce, salsa, etc.  But in a good way!

Homemade Sauerkraut

Continuing to keep that jar full of veggie snacks.  Next up was getting in touch with the German heritage with some sauerkraut.

Recipe

1-2 jalapenos
1 head of green cabbage
2 large carrots
2-4 cloves of garlic
salt & pepper

Set aside a couple outer cabbage leaves, and chop the rest thinly.  Slice your garlic and jalapeno, and grate the carrots.

With about a third of the cabbage at once, squeeze the cabbage with some salt, releasing some of the water and making it wet.  Add the rest of the cabbage in stages and do the same.  Then mix in the carrot, garlic, jalapeno and pepper.

Next, the mixture goes in the jars, pressing it in to bring the water level above all the veggies (this may take a while).  Wedge in an outer leaf or two, and add a weight (e.g., shot glass) to keep everything under water.

Finally, everything sits out for at least a week - uncovered, room temperature, making sure everything stays submerged.  Once it's done to taste, you can cover and leave it in the fridge.

Notes

I only gave it that one week.  It's very fragrant for a small kitchen!  Because of the timing, my kraut didn't end up very strong, but it fit very tastefully into sandwiches and other dishes.

The original recipe has you char the jalapenos over a flame - also not very practical for the NYC kitchen.  I was also worried the full recipe wouldn't fit into my one jar.  I shouldn't have - it all mashes down pretty seriously.

Overall, a lot more work than pickling, but an interesting change!