Turkey sausages with cabbage and fennel recipe

People ask me all the time for more recipes that are Fast!  No, faster!  And easy!  I understand the challenges that people face when pulling together a weeknight meal, whether they are parents or not.  However, we need to put some time into our cooking.  I haven’t figured out yet how to make something in no time that’s worth eating.  But this sausage and vegetable dish is my idea of fast food.

I buy precooked sausages from Applegate Farms, which don’t contain spooky ingredients like nitrates or nitrites (hooray, no carcinogens!).  Slice up some cabbage and fennel and you’ve got yourself a quick and easy dinner.  Make extra and toss it with pasta the next day, just save some of the pasta cooking water after you drain it if you need to moisten the sausage dish up.  If you have a favorite sausage that is not precooked, I would slice it or remove the meat from the casing and sauté that first.  Remove it from the pan, sauté your vegetables and put the sausage back in.

If you haven’t cooked with fennel before, it has a fresh, licorice undertone and perfectly complements the fennel seed that is usually present in most sausages.   I use red cabbage here for color, for the extra phytonutrients that come with it and the higher C profile than green, but you can certainly use green cabbage if that’s what you have handy.  Cabbage is part of the cruciferous family of vegetables – a group that I encourage you to incorporate regularly into your diet.  These include all the cabbages and kale, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and bok choy.  These vegetables contain some potent anti-cancer compounds called sulphurophanes.  Cabbage also contains some cholesterol-lowering benefits as well as loads of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory nutrients.  It is also relatively inexpensive, to boot.  What are you, in love with cabbage or something? Well, maybe I am!


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turkey sausages with cabbage and fennel recipe
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Serves: 6
 
Ingredients
  • 2 Tablespoons unrefined, cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 Tablespoon fennel seeds (optional)
  • 1 large onion, halved and sliced thinly
  • ½ red or green cabbage, sliced thinly
  • 2 fennel bulbs, tops removed and bulbs sliced thinly
  • Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 8 nitrate-free, pre-cooked sausages, sliced on the diagonal as small or large as you prefer. I cut each link into 4 or 5 slices.
  • ⅓ cup dry white wine
Instructions
  1. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the fennel seeds and stir until fragrant, about 3 minutes.
  2. Add onion, cabbage and fennel. Season with sea salt and pepper and sauté until just tender.
  3. Add sausages and cook until heated through.
  4. Add white wine to deglaze the pan. Cook until wine evaporates. Taste for seasoning and serve immediately.

 

Onion-braised grass-fed beef brisket recipe

 

grass-fed braised beef brisket|pamela salzman

Let me come right out and say that I don’t like to promote the consumption of too much beef for several reasons.  In our house we eat beef about three times per month, and when I make it I plan for about 3-4 ounces per person.   Furthermore, I only purchase GRASS-FED beef.  Call me old-fashioned, but I am a firm believer that if you are going to eat animal protein, then it should be an animal that was raised in a natural environment with a diet that is also native to that species.  With respect to cows, that means cows that graze in pastures eating GRASS.  There is plenty of research supporting the notion that grass-fed beef – compared to its confined feedlot counterpart – is lower in fat and contains cancer preventive, fat-burning properties.  Grass-fed beef also contains higher amounts of Omega-3 fats and is generally raised without the use of antibiotics and hormones.  It is almost like making a choice between eating a fit and happy animal which has eaten a health food diet, and eating a stressed out, overweight animal which was fed fast food its whole life.  If you need more convincing, please read Michael Pollan’s fantastic book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

There’s also the heavy environmental impact of raising cattle, which is less severe with grass-fed beef, but still a discouraging consideration.  That said …

Beef is a very warming food, more appropriate for the colder months, and it becomes even more warming when cooked with onions.  Brisket is a very tough cut that needs long, slow braising to help tenderize it.  If you like your brisket so soft that you don’t need a knife to cut it, this recipe will not disappoint.  The meat shreds easily and melts in your mouth.  Best of all, the house will be filled with a wonderful, warm aroma.  But do plan ahead since cooking this the day before helps to develop the mélange of flavors.  Really, the only way you can screw this up is by letting it dry out.  Lastly, be aware that brisket shrinks tremendously once it has cooked.  A 6-pound brisket fed a class of 12 women with enough for two of my kiddies to enjoy it as an after-school snack.


4.5 from 4 reviews
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onion-braised grass-fed beef brisket recipe
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Serves: 8-12
 
Ingredients
  • 1 5-to-6-pound grass-fed beef brisket, preferably first cut
  • 3 Tablespoons olive oil
  • ¾ teaspoon sea salt plus more for seasoning
  • ¾ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper plus more for seasoning
  • 3 large yellow onions, peeled and cut into ½-inch pieces (about 5 cups or 3 pounds)
  • 2-3 large garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 teaspoon paprika
  • 3 medium tomatoes, if in season, peeled, seeded and coarsely chopped (optional)
  • 2 cups water
  • 1 cup red wine (or use all water)
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
  2. In a dutch oven or other heavy baking pan large enough to hold brisket, heat 1 tablespoon oil in oven 10 minutes. Pat brisket dry and season well with salt (I used about 4 teaspoons) and pepper on the top and bottom. Roast brisket in pan, uncovered, 30 minutes.
  3. While brisket is roasting, in a large heavy skillet cook onions in remaining 2 tablespoons oil over moderately high heat, stirring, until softened and beginning to turn golden. Reduce heat to moderate and cook onions, stirring occasionally and reducing heat if necessary, until deep golden, about 20 minutes more. Stir in garlic, paprika, salt, and pepper and cook 1 minute. Stir in water and wine and bring to a boil. Spoon onion mixture and chopped tomatoes over brisket and bake, tightly covered, 3 ½ hours, or until brisket is tender. (Check pan every hour and if necessary, add more water.) Remove brisket from oven and let cool in onion mixture 1 hour.
  4. Remove brisket from pan, scraping onion mixture back into pan, and chill, wrapped in foil, overnight. Spoon onion mixture into a 1-quart measure and chill, covered, overnight.
  5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Discard fat from onion mixture and transfer to a blender. Add enough water to the blender to measure 3 cups total. Blend until smooth.
  6. Slice the brisket against the grain as thick or thin as you prefer. In a large ovenproof skillet heat gravy until hot, add brisket and heat in oven 30 minutes. Or you can continue to heat on the stove, covered until heated through.