Tag Archives: turnip greens

Sausages, greens, and beans this evening

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Today has been a particularly bone-chilling, dreary, damp, windy, rainy day with temperature steadily dropping this afternoon; looking out the windows you see puddles of water everywhere and you can’t really walk anywhere without getting wet feet;  this calls for  something filling, flavorful, and warm for supper.  (I also need to “tidy up” the freezer to get rid of some of the partial packages of this and that which have accumulated from single-serving cooking.) Since I’m really fond of charcuterie, that seemed like a good starting point for comfort food tonight.

plate of greens, edamame, and a sausage

sausage, beans, and greens for supper

I found Sicilian sausages (house-made) at Harris Teeter when I went shopping yesterday (in 70°F weather, but knowing the forecast) so I got some sausages for a one-pot meal.  Part of tidying up the freezer involves using the bits and pieces living in there, so I thought I’d improvise on one of my favorite meals: braised green, sausages, and beans. The Sicilian sausages are similar to spicy (not  raging hot) Italian with orange zest added so it does well with any rather mellow greens, like turnip, or kale.

I was pretty confident that I had greens of some ilk in the freezer, beans, onions and the like as well; all I needed for my supper was the sausages.  What I found in the freezer to go with my sausages were turnip greens and edamame (soybeans).

I browned the sausages in olive oil, added onions, some garlic, the turnip greens, and edamame and a bit of water.  After reaching a simmer on the stove-top I popped the covered pot into the oven at 425°F oven and went back to the computer to keep working.  After about half an hour in the oven, I uncovered the pot for about 15 minutes to let a little more liquid cook off and supper was ready!

I usually use two sausages to make this–one is quite adequate for a single serving.  I like to put the “leftover” in the freezer for a quick meal later as this freezes and reheats well.  There are lots of easy variations on this dish–use other types of beans like cannelinni, borletti, or pinto–or potatoes to fill this out.  Vary the greens–if you have a sweeter sausage, then mustard greens make a great contrast with their sharp, slightly hot flavor. This can be turned into soup really easily too: slice the sausage, add some broth, add some pasta, and a whole new meal.

There are so many delicious sausages out there and an almost infinite variety of greens to pair them with. You don’t need exact measurements here at all so it does well for single-serving meals.  Just cruise through the produce department and eyeball the greens: frisée, dandelion, kale, mustard…  Bitter greens pair well with sweeter sausages like lamb or sweet Italian–have fun, improvise and a son goût!

Wine? of course!  This just needs a good “everyday” red–even something out of a box, like the Portuguese Alandra box red.  We are, after all, talking peasant comfort food here.

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Turnip greens…

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Loose mustard greens

While having leisurely Sunday morning coffee I was browsing through the Huffington Post and discovered a presentation on rediscovering mustard greens (though I didn’t realize that they were lost or misplaced). If mustard greens need rediscovery, then perhaps turnip greens need rediscovery (or just discovery) too. One of my favorite things to do with heartier greens (those that need longer cooking, unlike spinach) like collards, mustard, kale, dandelion, or chard is to braise them with sausages for a one-pot meal that is easy to make in any quantity–and reheats and freezes well.

Just recently I was the happy recipient of a LOT of turnip greens from a gardener who likes the bottoms–the turnips and not the green tops. Some of these were older–so a bit spicier, with some of the “horseradish” tang that you find in mustard greens as well.

Even though it was warm weather, I had just started an intense indexing project and wanted some easy food–braised greens with sausage.  No need for a recipe and certainly not labor-intensive or needing a lot of attention while it cooked. (I thought about using the pressure cooker, or the slow cooker but just did this on the stove-top this time)

hot italian sausage IMG_6092I started by dicing and sautéing a large onion, then added a mix of sweet and hot Italian sausage, removed from the casings, to brown lightly.  Of course it needed garlic–about half a dozen large cloves, minced. (The garlic mellows a lot during cooking.)  Since the greens had their own “heat” and I had used hot Italian sausage, I didn’t add the hot red pepper flakes that I would have used with other sausages, or other greens–e.g. kale or collards.

Once the garlic had sautéed enough to become aromatic, I added the washed and cut up greens (still wet from washing) and a can of diced tomatoes. In a tightly lidded pot, I left this over low heat until the greens were almost tender–about 45 minutes. (Since these were older turnip greens, I did remove the stems before cooking.)

In went one can (rinsed) of pinto beans (not on the low-carb diet, but…) and continued to cook about 30 minutes more to let the beans pick up some of the flavor of the greens and the sausage. Home-cooked dried beans would have been better, but since I didn’t have any of those in the freezer, and hadn’t planned ahead–canned ones had to do for now.

And there you have it, a quick supper, and a couple of servings for the freezer for several more quick, comforting meals.  Since the greens were spicy, the sweet Italian sausage added a nice counterpoint. I’m glad to have some tucked away in the freezer since I suspect that will be the last of the turnip greens for the summer–as the weather gets hotter the greens get a bit more assertive. If I’m lucky and there are more, I’ll probably do this again, but omit the hot Italian sausage. Or think about doing this with lamb sausage…so many possibilities, and so easy–and reasonably healthy as well.

All you need to add is a glass of a nice sassy, robust red wine, and maybe some good crusty bread (if you’re not on a low-card diet). A son goût!