Comfort food

Tonight's Menu

• grilled fresh pork sausages
  
• fried potatoes, onions and cabbage
• sliced tomatoes from the garden
  

I've felt pretty puny all weekend and have been craving the comfort food of my childhood. I mostly hail from hardy European peasant stock, and sausages, potatoes and cabbage are about as comforting as it gets. This is the kind of stuff that my mom would make when I was a kid, and there are times when I miss it desperately.

The sausages were simmered in water for about 15 minutes before being browned/crisped on the grill.

The potatoes, onions and cabbage weren't really fried per se, but that's what we always called it when I was a kid. I cut some red potatoes into fairly thick slices and parboiled them until they were just barely tender, then stuck them in a deep skillet with some olive oil and chopped onion. Once the onions and potatoes had a bit of color, I added some chopped green cabbage. After the cabbage had wilted a bit and gone shiny, I crumbled in some dried rosemary and thyme, along with a big pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper. Then I turned off the heat and covered it, just letting it sit until the potatoes had softened a bit. (Alternatively, you could fry off some lardons of bacon and cook everything in the grease from that instead of olive oil, cutting back on the salt a bit.)

The tomato was a nice cool antidote to the spicy sausage.

Normally I would wash all this down with beer, but I have SUCH a headache.