Koken Eten: Green cabbage mash with Saucisson de Campagne

I know, I know, it`s been over 10 months since I posted something in this division of my blog page.  Not that i haven`t been cooking, I just always forgot to take pictures to make a little post.

But today, I remembered (just barely in time, I already did some cutting and chopping works), so after a rather long absence, here we go with some good, honest, wintery food... even though it`s 15 degrees outside here in Belgium :-s

The main players for this simple yet delightfull plate of food are, well, a green cabbage, some potatoes and some sausages.

The first things we have to do is the preparation work, namely to roughly chop up the green cabbage, and to peel and cut the potatoes in some medium sized cubes.  Now, I used one cabbage, and for that about 8 small to medium potatoes.

We are going to cook the cabbage fist for about 15 minutes.  Break a vegetable stock cube up in small pieces and put it in a big pot of water (DON`T just toss the cube in as one piece!!!) and once it boils, toss in the cabbage.

After about 15 minutes, we now put in the potato cubes as well.

While this happens, we can let the butter for the sausages melt in a pan.  Saucisson de Campagne is a walloon specialty, which rougly translates as `peasant sausages`.  No, they aren`t made with farmers, but they are spiced up with onion and parsley for that added though, and have a `knacky` texture.

Bake them light brown on both sides (it depends on your personal way of backing sausages if you prick some holes in them or not, I usually do) on a high fire, then lower the fire to about half of that.  Since the potatoes and cabbage will take about 15 to 20 minutes to cook, then another 5 to mash, this means you will be baking them for about 10 minutes to nicely colour and seal them, then use the lower fire to have them get ready on the inside.

Once the vegetables are cooked and the potatoes have softened up, let them leak out for a moment and reinsert them in the pot.  Add some (not ice cold, some might say warmed up, but I just take room temperature) milk, a cube of butter, some salt and pepper and mash them to a stew.

Some people use mixers, blenders and whotnot`s electrical helping tools to do this, I just prefer the good old manual masher, takes a few minutes to mash it all together and it is far less dishwashing afterwards...

Plate up, and enjoy!

Labour Rating: 1 - the hardest work on this is to actually chop up the cabbage, something that might be rather time consuming.  For the rest it is mostly `put in the pot / pan and let it go`

GF and Smurf Appreciation Rating: 8 - they both didn`t know the vegetable, but both ate of it... a lot.  The combination with the spiced up sausages and the greenie works wonders for this!