Bangers and Mash

Writing and cooking from: Pittsburgh, PA

Winter is the time of year for comfort food. Warm, creamy meals with gravy. Beef stew. Hearty bean soup. My Mom's chicken and dumplings. Mashed potatoes.

Bangers (or sausages) and mash are a traditional English comfort food.  It's an inexpensive and easy working class dish revived in modern English pubs.

I made this last Friday night because it was simple but heartwarming.  After a long week, my boyfriend and I were definitely ready for some comfort food and this fit the bill.

It's easily adaptable, make it with your own mashed potato recipe and your favorite gravy. I made my mashed potatoes like my Mom does, whipped up with just a bit of milk. I won't share the recipe here because this was my first time making my own mashed potatoes and I put in too much milk. They came out okay, I was happy to eat the leftovers with yesterday's roast, but there are better versions to come I'm sure. I will share the rest of the instructions for making this though.

Bangers and Mash with Onion Gravy

Mashed potatoes, prepared how you like
1-2 sausages per person, preferably traditional English bangers (I couldn't find them so used sweet Italian pork sausages)
2 T butter
1 small sweet onion, chopped fine
3-4 T flour
2 cups milk

Prepare the mashed potatoes your favorite way while cooking the sausages and gravy. The potatoes should cook in a similar amount of time to the sausages.

Cook the sausages (or bangers) in a large skillet. It will take about 20-25 minutes for them to brown and cook through. When they're done, remove the sausages from the skillet and set aside in a covered dish to keep warm. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in the same skillet with the fat and juices from the sausage. Add the onions and saute until soft. Stir in the flour 1 tablespoon at the time and cook into a roux with the fats. Add the milk a little bit at a time, stirring constantly. Allow the gravy to simmer, still stirring, until desired thickness is reached. Serve the gravy over the mashed potatoes and sausages. Enjoy!

Ingredients come from:
Potatoes, Penn's Corner CSA
Italian pork sausage, Whole Foods
Butter, Horizon Organics
Sweet onion, Penn's Corner CSA
Flour, generic, not organic
Milk, Turner's Dairy, Penn Hills, PA

Countdown to Thanksgiving: Spicy Cabbage Soup

Cabbage Soup is an easy dish with origins as a peasant food and a modern history of being used for the Cabbage Soup Diet. Recipes vary from a mostly cabbage, low-calorie version for the diet, to ones that include pasta, eggs, meat, or even cream depending on the heritage of the cook.

This isn’t a recipe my family usually makes for Thanksgiving, although there was usually cabbage on the table. Dad would make red cabbage sautéed with bacon every year. If I’d gotten a red cabbage in my CSA box, I probably would have made some myself because it’s delicious! However, I ended up with a green cabbage so had to come up with something else.

Prepped veggies in the Crock-Pot

It’s starting to get cold, so I will begin to eat a lot of soup. I love it in the winter and after making an initial batch, it’s an easy whole meal or part of a meal with a sandwich on the side. This particular soup doesn’t create much of a meal on its own. I top mine with lots of cheese and crackers. I’ve also cooked an egg into the soup when reheating it.

I have to warn you also, that this soup is very spicy. It would be too spicy for me to eat without some crackers in it. Next time, I think I’ll make it with just one chile. It is delicious and I’ve been happily eating it, but it’s easier to add heat at the table than take it away. If you cook this soup as written, you shouldn’t need to add any Tabasco at the table.

Spicy Cabbage Soup

1 cabbage, shredded or sliced

1 bunch carrots, peeled and chopped

3 bell peppers, seeds removed, chopped into slices

1 medium sweet onion, peeled and diced

2 T parsley, chopped fine

½ T frozen thyme leaves (fresh or dried are fine, too, I had some frozen from early in the CSA seaon)

2 cloves of garlic, minced

2 chiles, stems removed

6 cups water

3 cups chicken broth.

Combine all ingredients in Crock-Pot. Cook on high for 5-7 hours. Remove the chiles before serving. Garnish with cheese, oyster crackers, herbs, and/or microgreens if desired.

Radish Quiche and Cider-Glazed Potatoes

Fall in the city can feel just a little less magical than fall in the mountains. But cooking with in season goodies like radishes, apple cider, and potatoes will bring fall to your dinner table, no matter where you are.

Radish Quiche with a side of glazed potatoes and a glass of Village White from Bet the Farm Winery.

Quiche: an elegant dish usually reserved for brunch. But why not serve it for dinner? There's no reason. The base ingredients are inexpensive just eggs, milk, and the ingredients for a pie crust. Add in whatever you have on hand that sounds good (I recommend cheese in any quiche) and you're on your way to dinner! Serve it with a salad or other side (like my cider-glazed spuds) and you've got a treat that won't ruin your weekly grocery budget. Plus, you can eat the leftovers for breakfast.

Radish Quiche
Adapted from Joy of Cooking

1 bunch cherry belle radishes
8 ounces Ivory lace cheese (can substitute havarti), cubed
1 cup milk
3 eggs
1 small yellow onion, chopped small
pinch salt
9-inch pie crust

Chop radishes, both the roots and greens, and steam for 2 or 3 minutes. Place radishes in bottom of pie crust with cheese. Whisk together other ingredients and then pour over radishes and cheese. Bake 30-40 minutes, until quiche is set and knife comes out clean.

I've been inundated with potatoes in my CSA boxes - every week I get a couple more pounds!!  It's a good thing they last awhile because even someone that loves potatoes as much as I do can't keep up with them. These potatoes taste sweet, but there's only one teaspoon of sugar in them. Other root vegetables like carrots or sweet potatoes would probably do well with this glaze, too.

Cider-Glazed Potatoes
Adapted from Glazed Root Vegetables in Joy of Cooking

2 cups fingerling potatoes, cut into thick rounds
2/3 cup vegetable or light chicken stock
1/3 cup Dawson's apple cider
2 T butter
1 tsp. sugar
pinch salt

Simmer all ingredients, covered, until potatoes are tender. Uncover and stir mixture until liquid thickens to a glaze.

Celebrating the 10/10/10 Global Work Party

 Today, for 10/10/10, I’m offering something a little different. Today is the Global Work Party in a collective effort to face climate change. The event is sponsored by 350.org with millions of participants worldwide. In honor of this day, I’m going to highlight ten examples of what’s in season here in the Pittsburgh, PA area along with a round-up list of recipes from around the world featuring the same foods. Maybe some of these are also in season where you’re from. If not, find out what is, cook with it, and share your results with us!

1. Apples - My favorite food this time of year and a fantastic place to start with dessert and on home turf…after all, what could be more classically American (or maybe cliché by now) than Apple Pie? If you’re a visual learner, take a few cues from Alton Brown in his video on making a Super Apple Pie complete with Applejack in the crust. Not that ambitious? Don't worry, I don't have time either. Here's a simpler recipe from the NY Apple Association.

2. Beets - Okay. I'll admit it. I don't love beets. But some people do and they're a nutritious superfood, so I'm going to keep trying them. Perhaps with a culinary jaunt to Eastern Europe. Pickled, pureed into soup, roasted, or raw beets are popular throughout this region. I hope to someday discover a beet soup that I like if only for the fabulous pink color that you'll get from recipes like this one for Barszcz Zabielany.
3. Garlic - While I'm content to make batch upon batch of garlic bread, some of you might want to try something new. How about a versatile, Middle Eastern Garlic Yogurt Sauce? I'm thinking of putting it on toast to approximate garlic bread...but I hear it goes better with pita chips, as a sandwich spread, in kebabs, or as a dipping sauce for veggies and chicken.
4. Green Beans - These Asian Green Beans will supposedly convert the vegetable-reluctant.
5. Onions - African sweet potato pancakes get double points for using onions and another in-season ingredient (the sweet potato).
6. Pears - While I'll be featuring my own pear cookie recipe later this week, it's not about that today. So how about trying a taste of France with Pear and Blue Cheese Tarts?
7. Potatoes - Get a last taste of summer with Argentinian Potato Salad.
8. Pumpkin - South African Pumpkin Fritters can be a dessert or savory side dish depending on your final adjustments.
9. Tomatoes - It doesn't get simpler (or more delicious) than an Italian Tomato and Mozzarella Salad.
10. Butternut squash - I'd never thought of pairing butternut squash with vanilla ice cream until I read this recipe...and now I'm desperate to find out if the compote would go well on some. Read the recipe for Doce de Abobora and share what you might serve this dish with.

Sweet Potato Salad

Potato salad - the cool, soft, mayonnaise laden concoction served alongside all number of summer favorites like hot dogs, not dogs, hamburgers, and grilled chicken. If you're like me you've got a favorite recipe (Mom's), but like to try all those new and interesting potato salads in vogue these days (like Pesto Potato Salad with Green Beans). It had been so cool here that I'd been figuring potato salad season was over. I was contemplating soups. And then, on Friday, when I was going to make a Peanut and Sweet Potato Stew, it was ninety degrees. Despair, dismay, I love stew, the sweet potatoes were getting wrinkly, I don't have air conditioning so I can't fake fall, I can't stand my apartment any hotter than it already is or a warm-your-insides meal...

But then - flash! Potato salad. Oh sweet deliciousness! Perfection. I boiled my sweet potatoes, but them in the fridge and started contemplating recipes. It would be a bit different from potato salad with white potatoes of course, but I wasn't feeling the sweet versions with apple slices and nuts. I wanted something more akin to Mom's potato salad, but without the pickles. Something about the combination of sweet potato and pickle just didn't sit right with me.  Ultimately, I ended up with a simple but delicious recipe:

Ingredients:

3 medium sweet potatoes, boiled, peeled, and cubed
3 T candy onion, minced
1 small green bell pepper, minced
2 T mayonnaise
Dash of salt

Boil the sweet potatoes until tender. Peel before or after boiling as you prefer. Chill potatoes in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

When the potatoes are cool, add all the other ingredients and stir. Usually, I'm a big fan of rough chopping and calling a dish rustica, but when it comes to potato salad it's best to take the time to chop your veggies small for even flavor. Recipe serves 3.

While it's not the prettiest dish, (the final product looked a little like baby food and I couldn't get a good photo if it) it is delicious. I served it with some fish I picked up at Trader Joe's, but it would pair well with anything that usually keeps your potato salad company on the plate.

Simple but delicious oven roasted vegetables

When an eggplant presented itself in my CSA box last week, I had a hundred different ideas running through my mind at once: grilled eggplant, eggplant parmesan, lasagne, mixed vegetable sauté over pasta…more recipes than I could ever make with one eggplant.

Ultimately, I decided on the easiest recipe I thought of:

Roasted Eggplant with Potatoes and Onions

Ingredients:

1 medium eggplant
3 medium redskin potatoes
1 small to medium red onion
Olive oil
Salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Wash eggplant and slice into thick rounds then lay them on a cookie sheet. Wash potatoes thoroughly and slice into rounds – they should be thinner than the eggplant, but not too thin. Layer potato slice alongside eggplant. Peel onion and cut into quarters, divide some slices and layer then between the eggplant and potatoes. It’s ok (even encouraged) to let multiple slices of onion roast stacked together. Sprinkle with salt. Drizzle with olive oil. Bake until vegetables are tender – 20 to 35 minutes depending on your preferences for doneness.

Ready to go in the oven:



Serve with your favorite summer main dish or be a vegetable nerd like me and eat the entire tray as your dinner.