Sausage

Today’s low-fat sausages make it easy to enjoy heart-healthy versions of some Eastern European dishes, such as this one.

Capture the traditional flavors of huevos rancheros with this any-time-of-day casserole. You can make it and bake it right away or prepare it ahead of time and bake it the next day.

You can make this robust soup in less time than it takes to have a pizza delivered. The soup is a lot more nutritious—and costs less, too.

My mom recently made this recipe. She called my office and told Stephanie, our “Test Kitchen Goddess,” that it should be called Polish Paradise. She was shocked at how quick and easy it was to make, especially for as much as she and my dad loved it. When spooning the sauerkraut into the measuring cup, it doesn’t actually need to be drained, but it shouldn’t be accompanied by a lot of excess liquid. Please note this isn’t a dish that should be eaten every night if you’re watching your sodium intake, since the amount of sodium is pretty high. That said, the recipe has only a fraction of the sodium it would have if you were to eat something similar in most restaurants.

Pat: A breakfast sandwich should be a thing of beauty, a stackable, delectable, calorie-laden gut-buster of a meal. This one is all those things. I usually have this sandwich on a warm buttermilk biscuit, but you can also split a glazed doughnut in half and use it as the “bread” (you’re already down the rabbit hole with the bacon, sausage, and cheese, so you might as well go whole hog with the biscuit or doughnut). Butter and hot sauce are the only condiments that I need, but feel free to add a slather of mayo, mustard, or ketchup, if you like. Have a fresh pot of coffee ready when you prepare this one.

Pat: I’m a grits man. Have been my whole life. And it always surprises me when I travel to different parts of the country and taste grits that they are not sweet. In coffee shops and home kitchens throughout Memphis, we stir in sugar to make them sweet. Then we crumble a few sausage patties and stir those in, too. I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for something hot, sweet, and salty. My aunt Leona from Detroit stirs chopped poached eggs into her sausage and grits! To me, that seems like the ultimate grit combo. Top it with a dash or two of hot sauce, and you can’t find a better feel-good breakfast for a Southern boy.

Gina: Lord knows I love a hot, sizzling grilled sausage, but sausage served all by its lonesome is kind of like a basic dress without accessories, you know what I’m saying? A classic is always improved by a dash of color and a bit of sass. That’s why this dish is a nice change of pace—pork sausages are braised with an array of peppers (in assorted colors and heat levels), onions, beer, and mustard. The resulting sausages and piquant braising liquid are especially good served atop steamed rice, grilled Italian bread, or creamy grits made with cheese.

Gina: Pat and I love, absolutely love, Cornish hens. One year we took a family vacation to Florida’s Gulf Shore for Thanksgiving. When we got there, we had a beach view as well as the beach to ourselves. It was going to be a special Thanksgiving. Here’s what happened: Before we left for our vacation, Pat begged me not to go overboard packing the foodstuffs. He said, “I don’t want to smell collard greens up the road.” Well, I said, “Too bad,” because I knew stores might not be open, and I needed my ingredients for cooking the birds. See, ladies, this is why we are so special, because we know. Well, guess what, when we got to the coast, we couldn’t find any stores that were open. So it was lucky for us that a smart momma had packed all her ingredients, and we were able to cook our entire Thanksgiving dinner. Long story short: It was a wonderful meal. We enjoyed our dinner overlooking a beautiful beach, and the meal remains one of our most cherished memories. Lesson here, ladies: Never let a man tell you what to pack! As for the birds, they are surprisingly easy to prepare. After the hens are rubbed with spices, the fragrant cornbread stuffing can be assembled in minutes in one skillet. The real appeal is the flavor and the stylish presentation. This recipe promises to be a holiday staple for years to come, with or without the view!

Pat: In the South, most stuffing recipes call for some kind of meat, whether it’s bacon, liver, chicken, or boiled turkey, as well as some kind of stock to keep the stuffing moist. In this recipe, the briny oysters meld beautifully with the spicy andouille sausage, and the end result is a stuffing so good that you won’t want to wait until Thanksgiving to try it. For the best results, use day-old cornbread, so it has time to dry out a bit, which will enable it to absorb all the flavorful juices inside the bird.

Poussins—young chickens that weigh about 1 pound each—are great for this dish. Figure on one per person, and cut them into pieces at the joints; there’s no need to cut them into smaller pieces across the bone. As good as poussins are, I made this dish using supermarket-bought fryer chickens, because I want to be sure you try this delicious recipe. The secret to golden-brown chicken pieces is to leave them be as they cook. They will brown better if you’re not constantly turning them or checking on their progress.

For this dish I prefer luganega, a thin (about 1/2-inch-wide) pork sausage seasoned only with salt and pepper and without fennel or other seeds. If that is unavailable, use the wider (about 1-inch-thick) sweet pork sausages, preferably made without aromatic seeds of any kind. Cut the smaller luganega into 1-inch lengths, and the wider sausages into 1/2-inch lengths. When I cook a whole chicken, or any chicken on the bone, I always salt it three times: in its raw state, when I first begin to cook it, and as it finishes cooking. It seems that the first two saltings are absorbed and somewhat dissipated, especially if you add more ingredients as the chicken cooks. The last salting should be to balance the whole act. Each time you salt, it should be done judiciously, to avoid oversalting and ruining the dish.

You may be surprised to see that there is no stock or wine in this dish. I prefer to let the sausages and vegetables simmer in their own juices. The flavors blend and mellow a little, but still stay intense. The key to making really wonderful sausage and peppers is to caramelize each ingredient separately, then to pile them into a baking dish and finish them in the oven.

This meat filling is similar to the one for cannelloni on page 165. You can use them interchangeably.

The “riga” in “rigatoni” means “stripe.” It is those stripes and rigatoni’s wide, hollow shape that make them perfect for a chunky sauce like this one. You can make the sauce a day or so in advance; just don’t add the ricotta and grated cheese until the last minute.

This zesty dish is suitable for all sorts of occasions. As a first course, it will turn an ordinary meal into a festive occasion. It’s also a great main course for a family dinner, with a salad and pasta. Heap the sausages and potatoes on a big platter, and let people help themselves.

It’s the combination of bitter broccoli rabe and hot sausage that makes this one of the greatest Italian-American dishes. My mother began making this when my Uncle Joe became a butcher and could provide an unlimited supply of his own handmade pork-and-fennel sausages. It’s still one of my favorites of Mama’s dishes. Here I use whole-wheat penne and low-fat turkey sausage—but the rest I left just like Mama’s.

This brown-rice version of the national dish of Spain may raise some eyebrows in Barcelona, but at less than half the calories of the original, this combination of fragrant saffron, garlic, chorizo, and shrimp is a beautiful thing.