This is was a quasi French Alsatian dinner night. When I received no answer from Suzette at around 4:30 p.m. I assumed that she would be late for dinner, so I took four chicken sausages out of the freezer to thaw (fresh made at Sunflower Market, $1.99/lb. on special), two Mild Italian and two Basil Chicken.
At around I finished work and fetched a head of green cabbage from the garage fridge and sliced it in halves and then sliced one half into long strips and put the sausages in a large pot of water to cook.
Finally Suzette called around to say she was on her way home, so I then heated 1 Tbsp. each of olive and grape seed oil in a large iron skillet and put the cabbage slices in and then added 1 Tbsp. of ground cumin, ½ diced brown onion (Pro’s Ranch Market 5 lbs/$.99) and five slices of chopped up chopped up dehydrated apple. After that had cooked a few minutes I put enough water in a large pot to float the four sausages and put the pot on at medium heat to cook.
I then checked my stock portfolio because Apple announced its first dividend and a large stock buy back aggregating $45 Billion today and good sales of its new I Pad over the weekend and found that AAPL was up $15.00 to a new high at over $600.00 per share and my portfolio had increased over 17% year to date for 2012. A great day in the stock market for me and as the commentators say, an NBA dominated Day (Nothing But Apple) in the day’s financial news.
When I got back to the stove, the cabbage had scorched a bit on the bottom, so I turned down the heat to medium and added 1 cup of water to the cabbage and covered the pan with a wok lid.
Soon after I sat down to watch the news at around Suzette walked in after a 12 hour day at work dead tired or scorched also.
Since she did not want to work on an elaborate dinner we decided to steam the bag of green beans I had bought at Sunflower Market. I asked Suzette to season the cabbage and she offered to finish the sausages. So she added apple vinegar and sugar to the cabbage to taste and we plucked and stemmed the ends off the string beans and started water in the steamer and heated it to a boil and threw in the beans and got a skillet out to sauté the sausages. I removed the sausages from the pot of water and air drained them and slid them into the skillet and after a minute to let the water logged sausages expel some of their moisture, I added a bit of olive oil to the skillet and Suzette turned the heat up to medium high under them.
After a few more minutes of turning sausages to brown them over medium high heat and cooking the cabbage at a low heat and steaming the beans, we were ready for dinner. So I fetched two beers (Costco Kirtland German style beer 24 for $18.99) and opened bottles of horseradish from Trader Joe’s and Grey Poupon Dijon mustard and put them all on the table. We then each plated two sausages, some braised cabbage and ½ of the string beans.
We were watching Rachel Maddow’s documentation of the removal of highly enriched uranium from Mexico
This recipe illustrates that you can improvise and create a pleasing dish. I did not have my usual fresh apple to add to the cabbage, so I chopped up dehydrated apple slices and added them. They caramelized and gave the cabbage dish a slightly different, pleasing texture and taste than fresh apple, which tends to simply disintegrate into a mush. So the cabbage dish this evening had a more complex taste and texture with its bits of caramelized onion and apple sautéed with the cabbage. I liked it, kind of like cabbage Muesli. Very Alsatian, I imagine.
Bon Appètit
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