Place sausages on a shallow pan - a jelly roll pan is ideal. Cook until evenly browned and cooked through - about 20 minutes. Remove from pan, cool slightly and slice into 1" pieces. Set aside.
In a large heavy-bottomed skillet, melt butter and sauté shallots and garlic until shallots are translucent. Add greens and a small amount of water to cover the bottom. Season with salt an pepper, and nutmeg if desired. Cover and let cook until greens are wilted.
Add sausages to skillet. Heat through and serve.
Notes
This is a great easy-to-make meal for those days when you want maximum impact for minimum effort. Serve with a side of fruit sauce or compote and you've covered all the flavour bases. You could also halve some cherry tomatoes and toss them in right before serving. We rarely eat potatoes anymore, but this would be delicious with mash on a rainy day.
We prefer to use bratwurst with this recipe, but you use whatever sausages you like best.
By Nissa Gadbois
At Home With the Gadbois Family http://gadboisfamily.com/
Seriously gals, if your husband is French-Canadian, as mine is, this one thing may just be the best thing you do for your marriage: learn to make tourtieres. And I’m here to help you with that. And if your husband isn’t French-Canadian, I’m pretty sure that he’ll still love this pie.
A tourtiere is a meat pie. And there are as many ways to make meat pie as there are memeres (grandmothers) to hand down the recipe. Traditionally made with just ground pork, I prefer a mixture of pork, veal and beef. It makes a very tasty and tender filling. Tourtiere can be served at any meal – as the main dish, or as a side dish. It is beautiful for breakfast, and lovely with a garden salad for lunch. At Christmas, we serve it as a side dish. And then again at Easter. Here’s the one I make:
Tourtiere (makes 2 pies)
3 lb. ground meat (1 lb each pork, veal, and beef)
3 lb potatoes, peeled, boiled and mashed (reserve some of your potato water)
2 onions, chopped
salt and pepper
1-2 T poultry seasoning
2 tsp. ground cloves
Impossibly Flaky Pie Crust (or your fave recipe)
Sauté onions in a bit of oil until quite soft, add the ground meat and spices. Cook until the meat is done. Add your potatoes and mix well, adding potato water if needed to keep the mixture smooth. Set aside to cool completely.
Impossibly Flaky Pie Crust
The trick of the crust is to keep it COLD until you bake. People will tell you that you can’t get a flaky crust with butter. Totally untrue. Keep it cold, and you’re golden. I use my fingers to flake my butter and still get a fantastically flaky crust. If that idea scares you a little, get that butter near freezing and grate it in order to get small, blend-able bits. You can absolutely use a gluten free AP flour mix for this. Gorgeous. Divine. No worries about tough crust – ever.
2 1/2 c. butter, cubed or shredded
6 1/4 c. flour
2 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 c. ice water
Mix all of the dry ingredients together really well. You want something that looks like wet pebbly beach sand – the kind of stuff you could pack into a pail and make a castle with. Now add your ice-water (leave the ice cubes out!). Mix by hand or with an electric mixer until the whole lot holds together in one big piece. Divide dough in half and form each into a disc. Wrap in plastic wrap or butcher paper and place in the coldest part of your fridge while you wait for the filling to cool completely.
Preheat oven to 450° F Cut each disc in half and roll out to fit your pie plate. Line two plates with dough, then fill right to the top with your meat filling. Roll out remaining dough to top your pies. Brush water onto the edge of your bottom crust so that the top will stick right down. Flute or crimp your edge, and put a couple of steam holes in the top crust. At this point, you can brush on an egg wash before putting your pies into the oven. But after you’ve made this the first time, you’d better be quick about it because he’s going to be impatient for those tourtieres!
Bake at 450° F for 10 minutes, reduce heat to 350° F and bake a further 30 minutes. Serve them hot from the oven, or at room temperature. Alternately, you can make these into little turnovers and pop them into his lunch box. He’ll go a little crazy. You may get flowers.
Sauté onions in a hot skillet until caramelized. Remove to a bowl. Dredge chops in seasoned flour and brown them in batches, adding more fat, if needed. Return onions to the skillet, add the remaining ingredients and return chops to the skillet. Add water, if needed. Liquid should come about halfway up the meat. Bring liquid to the boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 30-40 minutes. Arrange chops or pork medallions on a platter and ladle sauce over the top. Garnish with fresh herbs if you’re feeling fancy. 🙂
Bread Pudding
1 loaf good, day-old bread, cubed
1 qt whole milk or half-and-half
4 eggs, beaten
2 c. sugar
1 T. vanilla
1/4 c. whiskey (or rum)
1 c. raisins
1 1/2 c apples, chopped
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. allspice
1/2 stick butter, melted
Heat whiskey and add raisins, allow to sit while mixing the rest of the pudding. You can also allow them to plump overnight. Combine milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and spices in a large mixing bowl. Add bread cubes, chopped apples, and plumped raisins (drain remaining liquor), allow to stand so that the bread can absorb the custard. Brush melted butter over the bottom and sides of a 9″x13″ pan, add pudding mixture. Bake at 350 for 40 minutes. Serve with double (heavy) cream, hard sauce, or whipped cream.
If you haven’t any day-old bread, you can cube your bread and dry it out in a low oven before beginning.
