Grilled Sausages, Broccoli Rabe & Potatoes
I’ve been trying to come up with a funny hook all week to write about this meal and either it was way too obvious and full of boring sexual innuendo (sausage party is so over used too) or it was some inanely long and boring drivel, which like, I get it, that’s the whole point of this blog, but even I was bored listening to myself talk. So, like, I dunno. Here’s some sausages!
I also really need to start making my own sausage. The market was out of the good ones and only had the in-store ones, which, frankly, are not salty enough nor are they well emulsified which is pretty disappointing for a sausage. (Aside: did you know that sausage and salt come from the same root word in Latin? And that salary also comes from there? Latin! It’s not just a dead language! Oh. Wait. It’s deader than the animals in these sausages.) Anyway, the problem with these sausages is that when you cook them the fat pools under the skin and then bursts through leaving the sausages themselves a little dry and mealy no matter what you do with them. But like, my partner wanted sausages, so sausages is what we had. To try to minimize the amount of moisture loss I poached them first until they were partially done so I would just have to get some color on them. Alas, this plan was only partially successfully as they all burst holes squirting liquid fat all over the grill and igniting large flames which required me to constantly move the sausages on and off the grill. But they did have that certain je ne sais quoi of singed food, or to steal a phrase from the Burger King: FLAME-GRILLED.
I’m going to ignore that I just used French and Latin in that previous paragraph and move on…
…on to flavor country that is! (And no, flavor country is not France, and I’d have said Flavortown™ but I hear if you say that three times in the mirror Guy Fieri and Sammy Hagar show up in your kitchen and start making jokes worse than mine. OK. As bad as mine? FINE. THEY’RE BETTER JOKES THAN MINE.)
I also grilled some broccoli rabe and small potatoes. I really like grilling broccoli, but I should have cooked it a little bit longer to get it more charred. As a rule cabbages taste really good when they’re charred and look burnt. Yes, broccoli (and it’s friend broccoli rabe) are cabbages. No I didn’t make the rules. Other cabbages you might have heard of include cauliflower, turnips, small rocks, witches and mustard seeds. I blanched it first and I hadn’t given it enough time to dry off so most of the time it was on the grill it was steaming rather than charring and I didn’t want to overcook it. I did dress it with some fruity olive oil, smoked sea salt, lemon juice and parmesan cheese. The acid and salt help offset some of the inherent bitterness in the broccoli. Of course, you’d think my children were eating my bitter feelings toward their eating habits when they tried to choke down a single bite. I guess no one threw up at the table this time, so I’m gonna take this as a small victory.
The potatoes were also par-boiled, but they dried off better than the broccoli. I put a bunch of garlic, rosemary and vinegar in the water. The garlic and rosemary were for flavor and I think I’ve mentioned before that the vinegar helps keeps the pectins together so they don’t fall apart. I also confitted (confit’ed? cooked in the manner of a confit? slow-fried?) some garlic and rosemary in olive oil, which I then brushed over the potatoes and the broccoli as they cooked. And given the fact that neither of kids vomitted at the table do you think they ate any of the potatoes? LOL. No. They did, however, eat the ever living hell out of the bun the sausages were served in though.