Don’t make this recipe unless you’ve got a crowd on the way, or you’ll end up eating way too many slices of this addictive, potato sausage focaccia. Don’t say I didn’t warn you when you have to loosen your belt buckle. Seriously, if you’ve never had the combination of potatoes on pizza or focaccia, you’re in for a treat. Years ago, I posted a recipe for Jim Lahey’s potato pizza, and it’s delicious but a whole different texture – thinner and crispier. This recipe is thicker and uses potatoes that are cooked, along with sausage and mozzarella cheese. Are you salivating yet? Well, let’s get started first by making a very shaggy dough. I start it the night before I bake it, allowing the dough to rise slowly in the refrigerator overnight until it’s more than doubled in size and looks bubbly like this:
Then I punch it down using a silicon spatula (hands are good too).
Then plop it into a buttered and oiled baking sheet. Don’t try to spread it out now or it will fight you. Let it rest for an hour or more and then come back to it.
It will have spread part way all by itself. Using your fingers dipped in some olive oil, spread it out to the edges of the pan and make dimples in the dough.
After an hour or more, it will rise further in the pan like this:
Spread some cooked potato slices, and bits of raw sausage on top, along with a drizzle of olive oil, minced rosemary and some sea salt. Place it in a preheated 450 degree oven for twenty minutes, then remove from the oven and sprinkle on some grated mozzarella. Bake it for another ten minutes, or until the cheese is melted and browned on top.
It will be hard to resist, but wait a few minutes to cut into it.
Or not.
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2½ cups lukewarm water (from 105 degrees to 110 degrees)
2 tsp. honey
4-5 cups flour
1 Tablespoon kosher salt or 5 teaspoons table salt
6 Tbspns. extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for hands
1 large baking potato
1 link of Italian sausage
a few tablespoons minced rosemary
kosher or coarse sea salt
butter to grease the pan
1 cup grated mozzarella cheese
Instructions
Whisk the ¼ oz. envelope of yeast with the honey and 2½ cups lukewarm water (temperature of water can be from 105 degrees to 110 degrees)
Let the yeast sit for 10 minutes or so to see if it activates in the water.
If it doesn't look creamy or foamy, your yeast is dead.
Start adding the flour and salt, adding only 4 cups to start.
Add more flour if needed, but what you want is a shaggy dough, with no streaks of flour.
Put 4 tablespoons olive oil in a large bowl.
Transfer the dough to a bowl, turn to coat the dough, and cover with plastic wrap.
Chill the dough in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours or overnight.
If you're in a hurry, let the dough rise at room temperature.
Meanwhile, boil the potato in water until it's cooked nearly all the way through.
Don't let it cook past that point since it might fall apart in the water.
it's actually better if you slightly undercook the potato.
Let the potato cool, then peel and slice it thinly.
Generously butter a 13" x 9" baking sheet, for thicker focaccia, or a 18" x 13" rimmed baking sheet, for thinner, crispier focaccia.
Dump the dough into the pan and let it rise a second time before trying to stretch it out to fit the pan.
After it has risen another hour or two, grease your fingers with olive oil and spread the dough across to the corners of the pan, dimpling with your fingers.
If you want a thicker focaccia, you can let it rise another ½ hour to an hour.
Otherwise, slice the potatoes and layer them gently over the focaccia.
Sprinkle with salt and rosemary, and spread pieces of sausage all around.
Drizzle with a little more olive oil.
Bake at 450 and check after about 20 minutes.
Add the grated mozzarella and bake another ten minutes or until browned on top.
Some days you just don’t feel like fussing too much but want a good, home-cooked meal. This one, that takes just a half hour’s time from start to finish, fits the bill perfectly. In addition to Italian sausage, I choose to add fennel, one of my favorite vegetables, plus small Yukon gold potatoes, red peppers and onions. Everything gets tossed into a sheet pan, drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted at 450 for 30 minutes. I was inspired to make this after seeing a post from my friend Stacey, who used cabbage with the sausage, which also works really well. Feel free to use cabbage, fennel, peppers, mushroom chunks or even Brussels sprouts. They would all taste great with the sausage.
Stacey also made a mustard sauce that paired well with the sausages, so I followed her lead. I didn’t use the soy sauce the recipe called for, but it was delicious anyway with just the other ingredients. Even though we’re just two people at dinner these days, I always cook at least five or six sausages. We normally finish all the vegetables, but there are always a couple of sausages left over that make great lunch sandwiches the next day. Forget corned beef and cabbage that’s boiled to death — this is so much better – and a dish you’ll want to make again and again. Beer optional, but highly recommended.
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If there’s a holiday or special occasion in my household, ravioli are bound to be on the menu. They’re my husband’s favorite pasta, conjuring childhood memories of helping his mother by pressing a fork into the edges of each pillow of dough to help secure the filling.
But when I thought about making them last week to help my dad usher in his 99th orbit around the sun, I realized I’d never really blogged about the basic ravioli in tomato sauce that is the hands-down favorite in my family. I’m here to correct that now, with this bountiful platter of ricotta and parmesan cheese-filled ravioli. I sometimes deviate slightly and add greens to the traditional cheese filling (spinach, swiss chard or even the wild greens I forage for in the spring and freeze) and I’ve included that in the recipe below. Whether I add the greens or just fill them with the cheese, they disappear from the platter before you can say abbondanza.
Let me show you how I make them and hopefully get you inspired. If you take it in steps and make the sauce ahead of time, it won’t seem so daunting. I usually make a big pot of sauce with meatballs and sausage every couple of months, and freeze enough for four or five meals. It’s easy to pull a container from the freezer and just concentrate on the pasta-making itself. For the basic meatballs and sauce recipe, click here.
The dough can be made a day or two ahead of time too, and stored in the refrigerator in plastic wrap. I used to make it the old-fashioned way, by forming a mound of flour, then making a well, adding the eggs, and kneading it until smooth. But years ago, I started using the food processor to do most of the work, and haven’t looked back since. You still have to knead it a little when you remove it from the food processor, but it’s very little labor compared to doing it all by hand. It does need to rest at least a half hour before you proceed to roll it out and shape it into ravioli.
You can roll it out by hand with a rolling pin if you’re a purist (or a masochist), or you can get one of these hand-cranked pasta machines. I’ve had mine for 50 years (yea, I’m old) and it still works great. I keep it at the shore house for when I’m inspired during the summer.
The rest of the year, I roll out the pasta with the attachment to my KitchenAid mixer, which makes things go a lot quicker.
I have the filling all ready to go though, before starting to roll the pasta. Make sure to drain the ricotta a few hours or overnight. I have used cheesecloth, or even coffee filters to hold the ricotta, with weights on the top. You’d be surprised at how much water comes out. And I always buy the full-fat ricotta cheese. Don’t skimp on the calories here please. The filling in the photo contains wild greens, but as I said, you can omit the greens and just go with the cheeses.
Here’s another nifty tool that I started using a few years ago. It makes much more uniform ravioli, plus you won’t be likely to have ravioli with too much dough around the edges, as you might if you formed them by hand. But this too, is totally unnecessary, and in some ways, the hand-formed ones have a certain nostalgic charm, bringing back more vivid memories from my childhood, as I watched my mother shape them at the kitchen table.
Here you can see what to do when you make the ravioli using the form. I generally spray the form first with PAM, or brush lightly with oil. Then you place a sheet of the dough over the form, add a spoonful of the filling, wet the edges of the dough with water, and place a second sheet of pasta over the filling.
Press down carefully, starting from the center, to eliminate any air bubbles. Cut off the excess dough from the edges, then flip it out, and cut between each raviolo.
You’ll have perfect, uniform ravioli this way.
Alternately, if you don’t have the ravioli form, place a sheet of dough directly on your counter or board, add dollops of filling, and moisten between the filling with a brush of water, before adding a second sheet of pasta and helping it to adhere.
Then press down gently to eliminate air bubbles, and use a rolling cutter, or a knife, to cut between the individual ravioli.
You don’t really need to make the fork indentations if you’ve sealed between the layers of dough and pressed down properly, but my husband likes this job, and it’s a little more “insurance” to keep the ravioli from bursting open when you cook them in water. By the way, after they come to an initial boil in the water, lower them to a simmer, since a vigorous boil could also cause them to rupture.
With the leftover scraps, I roll out the dough again, but the more you add the leftover scraps together and reroll them, the tougher they get. So I cut them into small “quadretti” to use in soups, where the texture is less important.
I made the ravioli last week to bring to my dad, who lives about an hour away, with his wife. (I also kept a bunch for my husband or there would have been mutiny). My dad was recovering from some dental work and could eat only soft foods, but it was also part of my gift to him to celebrate his birthday. It’s hard to fathom that he was born nearly 100 years ago — the year Warren Harding was inaugurated president of the U.S.; the year Babe Ruth achieved 139 home runs; the year of the first Miss America contest in Atlantic City; and the year that the police in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, issued an edict requiring women to wear skirts at least 4 inches below the knee! Until the pandemic, he was still occasionally playing golf and beating guys much younger than he. I hope I’m as nimble and sharp-witted when (and if) I get to be his age!
I love making pasta, I love maintaining family food traditions, and I love my dad.
I hope you make ravioli for someone you love too.
It’s a win-win for everyone — including you, especially if you give yourself a big serving!
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1 pound whole milk ricotta cheese, drained overnight if possible
1 cup parmesan cheese
a few sprigs of parsley, finely minced
optional - ¾ cup chopped spinach or wild greens, or broccoli rape, cooked and squeezed tight of liquid
salt, pepper
nutmeg
FOR THE PASTA:
1½- 2 cups flour, adding more as needed
pinch of salt
3 eggs
Instructions
Mix the ingredients for the filling. If using frozen spinach, don't cook it. Let it thaw, then squeeze all the liquid, or as much as possible from the spinach. If using wild greens or broccoli rape, cook in water until tender, then drain, cool, and squeeze out all water possible. Mince and mix with other filling ingredients.
For the pasta, blend everything in a food processor. It's best to start with less flour and add more as you need, since it's much more difficult if you have too much flour and not enough liquid. Blend everything until the dough comes together in a ball. If it's too wet, add more flour. Knead a little more on a floured surface until it's very smooth, like a baby's bottom. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rest at least a half hour.
After it has rested, roll it through a pasta machine, starting with the thickest setting and ending up about two settings short of the thinnest setting. Try to roll it out so that you have an evenly long piece of dough that will fit across your ravioli form. If you're not using a ravioli form, just lay out the dough on the counter, drop about a tablespoon of filling, evenly spaced across the dough, then cover with another layer of dough. Spread a little water with your finger, along the edges, to help the sealing. Starting from the middle, press down on the spaces between the ravioli, working out to the edges. Using a pasta/pastry crimper (or a knife if you don't have one), crimp the dough between the filling, then separate the ravioli, and use a fork to crimp along the edges, ensuring the ravioli don't open when boiled.
When cooking in the boiling water, lower the temperature so that the ravioli just come to a low simmer, or low boil. If they boil too vigorously, you risk bursting the ravioli.
Fazzoletti (the Italian word for handkerchiefs) is a pasta I’ve been wanting to make for a long time, after eating it years ago at Le Virtù, a favorite Philadelphia restaurant. I finally got in the fazzoletti-making mode a couple of weeks ago and decided to channel fall flavors, with sausage and mushrooms in the sauce. But to kick it up a further notch, I added saffron to the dough. Saffron is expensive here in the states, but a little goes a long way. It’s a lot less expensive in Italy, and it’s much fresher if you buy it near the source (Abruzzo is famous for its saffron from Navelli). So whenever I’m in Italy, I buy saffron, whether in a pretty little ceramic container, as I bought in Santo Stefano di Sessanio, or in paper packages, that you can find in any supermarket in the country. One of my very favorite ways to use it is in the classic risotto alla Milanese, a recipe I wrote about here.
The dough is made with OO flour, the gold standard when making pasta, with its fine, soft grain and high gluten content. I added two of the small glassine envelopes of saffron to the dough, after dissolving it in a tablespoon of warm water. And yes, you can taste the saffron in the pasta, although it is subtle. Dump everything into a food processor, leaving some of the flour aside because when you’re making an egg/flour pasta, it’s much easier to add more flour to a wet mixture than add more eggs to a dry pasta mixture. Feel free to mix it on the countertop, but you’ll need a lot more muscle. Even with the food processor, take it out and knead it on the counter, adding more flour if it’s too sticky, and kneading it until it’s as soft as a baby’s bottom. Cover it and set aside for at least a half hour, which gives the gluten time to relax and do its thing. It’ll be much easier to work with as a result.
This is the amount of pasta I made using the recipe below. As you can see, I made about a dozen fazzoletti, that each measured 4″ x 4″, plus a lot of pappardelle that I plan to use in a separate recipe. Of course, you can always buy packaged pasta, or even fresh pasta in the refrigerated section, but you’ll have a hard time finding fazzoletti pasta, and there’s nothing quite so delicious as home made. I had a few scraps left over and cut them into thin spaghetti that I’ll most likely use in chicken soup.
The sauce comes together quite quickly, with some olive oil, herbs, sausage, shallots and mushrooms, all cooked in one pot.
Lift the cooked fazzoletti from the boiling water directly into the sauce, letting some of the water come along with it. Stir and mix everything together gently so you don’t rip the pasta. Add more of the pasta water, if needed.
Serve on a large platter, sprinkled with a drizzle of olive oil, some parmesan cheese and minced parsley.
Wait till you bite into this toothsome, yet silky pasta with these complementary flavors. If you’re like me, you’ll have a hard time stopping at one bowl.
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A few weeks ago, my friend Lilli dropped off a piece of this savory tart in a “quarantine package” that also contained some of her biscotti — a recipe I posted more than a decade ago in the early days of my blog. It’s my favorite biscotti recipe of all time. Lilli hails from Salerno and is one of the best home cooks I know. Anytime she makes something, it’s always a hit, including this delicious tart. I made it myself over the weekend and my husband and I loved it. I can’t wait to make it for my Italian chit-chat group, when we can once again meet face-to-face for a “chiacchierata.”
The tart is easy to make, especially if you use a packaged pastry as I did. I chose to use puff pastry, but a regular pie pastry would also work just fine. Start by boiling a couple of large potatoes. Peel them, mash them with a fork and add some parmesan cheese and a beaten egg.
Remove the skin from some Italian sausage and fry, then drain of any residual oil.
Crumble the sausage into the unbaked shell. You could choose a round tin, or pie plate if you prefer.
Cover with shredded mozzarella cheese.
Then take the potato mixture and using two teaspoons, place dollops on top of the mozzarella cheese.
Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, on the bottom rack of your oven, then turn on the broiler for a couple of minutes until the top is nicely browned.
Slice and serve with a salad for a complete meal. Or cut into smaller slices and serve as an appetizer.
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Line a standard tart pan or pie tin with the pastry.
Chill in the refrigerator while making the rest of the recipe.
Boil the potatoes until tender and peel. Cut into chunks and place in a bowl, then mash with a fork. Beat the egg and when the potatoes have cooled a bit, add the beaten egg and the parmesan.
Remove the casing from the sausage and break into pieces and fry in a bit of olive oil, cooking thoroughly.
Drain the cooked sausage.
Crumble the sausage into the pastry shell, then cover with the mozzzarella cheese.,
Using two spoons, place dollops of the potato mixture over the sausage and cheese until the whole pan is covered.
Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 45 minutes, then place until the broiler for a couple of minutes until nicely browned.
Be careful not to stray and check on the broiler in a couple of minutes or you may burn the top of the tart.
Whether it’s a good French baguette or hefty Italian bastone, I love a good loaf of bread, and don’t need any extra incentives to eat more. But this one is irresistible and can weaken my resolve to consume fewer carbs. It’s an easy-to-make stuffed bread treat that’s a kissin’ cousin to pizza. Your family and friends will love it (unless they’re gluten intolerant). With a glass of wine and a side salad, it was dinner for me and my husband last night. We could have eaten the whole thing by ourselves, but we stopped before we became truly gluttinous. You don’t have to make it in a Christmas tree shape, but that certainly does make it festive for the holidays. You could simply make it in a circle or wreath shape, or in a square format. I started out with frozen pizza dough – about a one pound package. Of course, you can make your own dough, if you’ve got the time and inclination. But there’s enough going on at this time of year, that I take short cuts when I can find them.
Start out by rolling or stretching the dough to a rectangle that’s about 6 inches by 16 inches. Have cooked sausage (1 large piece of Italian sausage, with the casings removed — crumbled and cooked in olive oil.) and some shredded mozzarella cheese nearby. Cut the dough into 16 pieces. You’ll need 15 for the actual tree, and one for the stump.
Press the piece of dough into a square shape and into the center of each piece of dough, place a small bit of the sausage and some of the cheese. Pinch the ends together firmly to seal. Make sure none of the filling is visible or it will leak onto the baking sheet.
Arrange the balls into a Christmas tree shape, pinched ends underneath, with the stump (which you have also filled with cheese and sausage) at the bottom.
Brush with beaten egg and bake in the oven. As soon as it comes out of the oven, brush with the garlic-infused olive oil, sprinkle with parmesan cheese, parsley and bits of tomato to decorate. Serve immediately.
Bet you can’t eat just one!
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mozzarella cheese, about 2 cups shredded, or 1 large ball
1 cup cooked Italian sausage, crumbled and cooled
1 egg, beaten
⅛ cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic
¼ cup grated parmesan cheese
a few sprigs of parsley, minced
marinara sauce, optional
Instructions
Roll out the pizza dough into a rectangle, about 6 inches by 16 inches long.
Cut the rectangle in half lengthwise, then cut each rectangle into 8 pieces.
Flatten out each piece of dough into a square shape, then holding a piece of dough in your hand, stretch it a bit to accommodate a piece of sausage and a bit of the mozzarella cheese.
Pinch the dough together, enveloping the filling inside the dough, shaping it into a ball.
Place on a silicon baking mat, parchment paper or on a greased cookie sheet.
If you're making a tree shape, you'll need 15 pieces, plus another one for the stump.
If you're making a circle shape, make as many as will fit on your cookie sheet.
After filling the dough, place on the Silpat mat, with the pinched side facing the baking sheet, making sure the dough balls touch each other slightly.
Beat the egg and brush a little of the beaten egg over the dough balls.
Bake in a preheated 15 to 20 minutes or until golden.
While the dough is cooking, gently saute the garlic cloves in the olive oil.
Drain the garlic, retaining the oil.
Brush the oil over the dough, and sprinkle with the grated parmesan cheese and parsley.
Decorate with bits of chopped tomato or roasted peppers.
Serve immediately, with marinara sauce, if desired.
Rachel Roddy, a Rome-based cookbook author and columnist for the British newspaper The Guardian, has been inspiring me for years, especially after the publication of her book – “A Kitchen In Rome.” I’ve worked my way through many of the recipes, but haven’t made this one – for sausage and cabbage cake – until now. I don’t what took me so long, since it’s pretty quick to put together and elevates pedestrian cabbage rolls to company-worthy fare. It all starts with this beautiful Savoy cabbage, a vegetable that, aside from being highly edible, deserves to be in a still life painting.
Remove seven of the largest and unblemished leaves and blanch them for a couple of minutes, patting them dry after you’ve rinsed them in cold water.
You need to quarter the remaining cabbage, and blanch them for five minutes too.
In a buttered 8″ cake tin, place the largest and prettiest leaf.
Layer in the other six leaves on top of the bottom leaf.
Push the sausage meat firmly inside the cake tin, using your hands to help conform to the shape of the pan.
Fill in with the rest of the cabbage, then fold in the overlapping leaves and press firmly. Dot with butter and place in a 350 degree oven for an hour.
I placed the pan inside another pan in case some juices spilled out during baking. as you can see, the top layer gets a little browned. Not to worry – that’s going to be the bottom when you serve it.
See, when you flip it out, it gets all show-offy, pretending to be a miniature oak tree. (Be sure to flip it onto a plate over the sink because a lot of hot, watery juices will spill out).
I served it with a plain marinara sauce, but a cheese sauce, or a béchamel sauce would be right at home here too. Wine optional. No, revise that. Serve with a good glass of dry red or white wine – and some crusty bread.
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about 1 pour very lean, well-seasoned sausage (without casings)
Instructions
Remove 7 of the largest, handsomest outer leaves (discard any that are discolored or damaged) and wash them carefully.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add the chosen leaves.
Wait for the water to come back to a boil, then blanch the leaves for 2 minutes.
Use a slotted spoon to remove the leaves and drain in a colander in the sink, rinsing with very cold water to fix the color.
Drain them well and spread them out flat to dry thoroughly on paper towels.
Set them aside.
Cut the rest of the cabbage into quarters and bring the same water back to a boil.
Cook the cabbage quarters in the boiling water for 5 minutes, by which time the leave should be tender but the stems still firm.
Drain the cabbage, rinse with cold water, drain again, and squeeze out any excess water.
Cut away the hard central stem and separate the leaves into a bowl.
Dress them with olive oil and fennel seeds and season with salt and pepper.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. and grease an 8-inch round shallow ovenproof dish with half the butter.
Choose the largest and best-looking leaf from the 7 you have set aside and place it in the bottom of the dish.
It should cover the base and come up the sides. (Mine didn't)
Arrange the other 6 leaves so that they cover the sides of the dish, fanned out, overlapping a lot and hanging over the edges.
Using a third of the seasoned cabbage, make a layer at the bottom of the dish and cover with half the sausage, pressing it down so it molds into the dish.
Repeat the process, ending with a third layer of cabbage leaves.
Press everything into the dish. Fold and bring in the overlapping leaves to cover the top and make a neat packet.
Dot with the remaining butter and bake for 1 hour.
(Readers please note, Ciao Chow Linda used half of the cabbage and all the sausage here, and finished with the other half of the cabbage, ending with folding the overlapping leaves. )
Remove and allow the cake to stand for 5 minutes before inverting a serving plate on top of the baking dish and turning out the cake.
Be careful, and do this over the sink, as there will be hot juices.
Maybe you’re “turkeyed-out” after the Thanksgiving holiday, but not me. I didn’t have the traditional bird on the big day. Instead, I was tempted by too many other offerings at Commander’s Palace, a landmark restaurant in New Orleans. My husband and I spent a few days in New Orleans during the holiday week, visiting relatives and expanding our waistlines. (Those of you who follow me on Instagram saw photos of lots of the food we ate, plus the wacky hats and costumes people wore at the racetrack on turkey day). We ate so many delicious meals at so many wonderful restaurants each day, recommended by my husband’s son and wife, who moved there from New York a couple of years ago.
As much as I love dining out, I also missed the smells and tastes of a good old-fashioned turkey dinner. So after returning home, I restocked at the grocery store yesterday and made a scaled-down version of a Thanksgiving meal for the two of us last night. Instead of a full turkey, I bought a boneless turkey breast and stuffed it with a sausage/dried cherry/pecan stuffing. It was a lot easier to prepare than you’d think (and way easier than cooking a whole turkey) and would make a great meal for company around the Christmas holiday too.
Start out by preparing the stuffing. I used a mixture of bread cubes, cooked and crumbled Italian sausage, dried cherries soaked in rum, toasted pecans, eggs, plus some fresh herbs and spices. If you don’t like dried cherries, use whatever dried fruit you like – cranberries, apricots, or figs for instance.) Don’t like pecans? Then use walnuts, pine nuts or hazelnuts instead.
This is the turkey breast I bought. It was about 1 1/2 pounds and when stuffed, could easily serve four people (maybe five, depending on appetites). Make sure you buy a breast with the skin still attached.
Here’s what it looks like when you flip it around. Obviously, it’s too thick to stuff this, so you have to do a little prep work. It’ll take you only five minutes to complete.
Slice the breast parallel to the counter surface, so that the meat opens like a book. It’s still too thick at this point, so use a mallet (first cover the meat with plastic wrap) and pound it flatter.
This is how mine looked after pounding, and sprinkled with salt and pepper. Be mindful that the skin that was on the meat before you started pounding it, will now be on only a small part of the meat after you’ve pounded it. Here you can see it sticking out at the bottom of the meat. So when you start rolling it up, start from the side that doesn’t have the skin.
Spread the filling around the surface and dot with a little bit of butter.
Roll it up, starting with the length of meat that doesn’t have any skin attached to it. You’ll want the skin to end up on the outside, so if you started with rolling up where the skin is, you’ll have the skin inside the meat, which you don’t want. I hope that’s not too confusing.
See, the skin is right where it should be when you flip it over.
Tie it up well with butcher’s string so that it stays together when roasting.
Then season with with salt, pepper, paprika, some thyme and rosemary (the fresh herbs actually burned midway through the roasting, so I’m not sure I’d do that again). Scatter some onions all around, then pour in some white wine (I would have added some chicken broth too, but I didn’t have any). Drizzle some olive oil over the onions and the meat and roast at 400 degrees for about 50 minutes, or until a meat thermometer registers 150 degrees. Actually, when the thermometer reads 140-145 degrees, take it out, since it needs to rest about ten minutes and the temperature will continue to rise a bit when it’s resting.
Remove the twine and slice.
Enjoy! Happy Belated Thanksgiving. Hope you had a wonderful time with family and friends.
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Is there anyone out there who hasn’t eaten kale? Who is still a kale hater? Let me help convert you.
In the last few years, kale seems to have become the poster child for healthy eating.
The benefits of eating kale include not only its high fiber content, but it’s also rich in nutrients and low in calories. Check out more of the health benefits on this website here.
I admit I was late jumping on the kale bandwagon, and the only kale I grow in my garden is the lacinato or Tuscan kale (sometimes called dinosaur kale), which is called cavolo nero in Italian and is typically used in the Tuscan soup ribollita (recipe here).
This dish of beans, sausage and kale is something I normally make with swiss chard or escarole, but I decided to try it with kale instead. While I still think Swiss chard has a sweeter taste, kale is perfect for this recipe since it stands up well to the longer cooking time required for the beans and it reheats without any loss of flavor. In fact, reheating only improves the taste.
I used these beans I bought from Gustiamo.com – fagioli del purgatorio – and loved them. These didn’t need presoaking and maintained their shape even after reheating. They’re native to Gradoli, a town in Lazio. The name “purgatory beans” dates back to the end of the 1600s, when they were boiled and dressed with olive oil and salt, and eaten as part of a meatless meal for Ash Wednesday, called “pranzo del purgatorio.”
Even though it’s summer here, I’ve made this dish a couple of times because of all the kale growing in my garden. It freezes beautifully too, though, so make some for one of those cold winter nights when you don’t want to cook.
I’ve used my kale in a couple of other ways this summer too.
Maybe I’m the last person on this planet to try kale chips. I was inclined to dislike them, but everyone I served these too (and me too), thought they were delicious. They’re really easy to make and they’re a healthy snack alternative. I used a recipe from Ina Garten, aka, The Barefoot Contessa.
Pull out the center rib from the kale, then spritz with some good olive oil, a shake of salt and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for about 10 to 15 minutes.
They’re crinkly and taste kind of like parmesan cheese. Without the cheese, I’m not sure I’d be sold on kale chips. But this platter disappeared quickly.
The other kale dish that was a hit was this kale salad. You don’t need a bonafide recipe. Just chop some raw kale, add some corn shaved off the kernels (I cooked the cob for about three minutes first ), then I chopped some carrots and parboiled the bits for a few minutes. I added some red onion, toasted hazelnuts and chopped shishito peppers from my garden, but you could use red peppers or any vegetable you like. Parmesan cheese shavings were tossed in too, then the whole thing was mixed with an easy-to-make dressing of mayonnaise thinned with lemon juice – an idea I got from my buddy Marie, of Proud Italian Cook.
It made a refreshing lunch and I didn’t have to feel guilty about that piece of cake I ate following the salad.
1 bunch of lacinato kale chopped (I used approximately eight cups, but you don’t have to be exact)
1/2 pound Italian sausage
1 cup dry fagioli del purgatorio beans (or another small, white bean, but you’ll probably have to soak them ahead of time, unlike the fagioli del purgatorio beans)
2 cups water
1 parmesan cheese rind
herbs of your choosing – I used fresh parsley, thyme and oregano
salt, pepper to taste
hot red pepper flakes
roasted red pepper or bits of chopped tomato (optional)
Remove the casings from the sausage and place in a saucepan, covered with water. Simmer for about 15 minutes, then remove the sausage and slice, but retain the water for later use. In another pan, sauté the onion and garlic in the olive oil until softened. Add the kale to the pot and the water leftover from cooking the sausage. Let the kale cook down for about five minutes (with the lid on), then add the beans, the sausage, the water and the parmesan rind to the pot. Don’t add the salt yet, or the beans will toughen, but DO add the pepper, the herbs and the red pepper flakes. I sometimes add a small amount of chopped tomato and/or roasted red peppers. Let everything simmer with the lid on for about one hour, or until the beans are tender. Keep checking and add more water if necessary. When everything is cooked, add the salt. If it’s not “soupy” enough to your liking, add more water.
It’s great served with grilled bread that’s been rubbed with raw garlic and olive oil.
By this time of year, if your garden is like mine, you’ve already ripped out the last vestiges of any edible plants. Before putting the garden to rest for the winter however, I harvested the remaining kale and put it to good use in this soup, especially welcome now that cold weather is upon us. It’s got everything you need for supper in one bowl – protein (sausage and white beans); vegetables (kale and tomatoes) and carbohydrates (potatoes). I cooked it all in this brand new Le Creuset pot (more about that at the end.)
The kale I grow is lacinato kale, sometimes called dinosaur kale or cavolo nero in Italian, where it’s commonly used in ribollita. But you can use any kind of kale you’ve got, or use Swiss chard or spinach, for that matter. It all depends on your taste and what’s available to you.
It’s ready to eat after about 45 minutes of cooking on the stove. Add a couple of slices of bread and sit down to a satisfying, filling and nutritious meal.
Now about that Le Creuset pot. Mine was discolored and more than 40 years old. After reading on Adri Barr Crocetti’s blog about how the company replaced her old, stained pot with a new one, I thought I’d contact them too. I did, and they replaced mine with the beauty you see above. (Merry Christmas!) They aren’t kidding when they say their product has a “lifetime limited warranty.” If you’ve got a discolored, but otherwise non-chipped or damaged Le Creuset pot and want to contact them, call the company’s toll-free number at 1-877-418-5547 or email them at Consumer-Services@LeCreuset.com.
1 cup sliced small potatoes (like fingerling potatoes)
1 15 oz. can small white beans, rinsed (about 2 cups)
1 bunch of lacinato kale (about four cups chopped)
1 cup diced tomatoes
red pepper flakes, to taste
3 or 4 sprigs fresh oregano (or 1 t. dried oregano)
salt, pepper
optional – another cup of water
Sauté the sausage links in a pan smeared with a small bit of olive oil and cook through. Remove the sausage from the pot, add the 2 T. olive oil, the onion, celery and garlic and cook until softened. Slice the sausage and put it back in the pot, adding the wine. Bring to a boil and add the chicken broth and the rest of the ingredients. Let everything come to the boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for about 45 minutes. Add another cup of water if the soup is too dense for you, or if you want to stretch it a bit. Remove the parmesan rind before serving.
Fill in with the rest of the cabbage, then fold in the overlapping leaves and press firmly. Dot with butter and place in a 350 degree oven for an hour.
