10 Herb Sausage

Tonight was 10 Herb Sausage, italian sausage cooked with 10 herbs and a little bit of wine.  This seemed to be a pretty basic dish until I actually got to cooking it.  The directions tell you to chop up two teaspoons of a variety of fresh herbs while you get the sausages started cooking.  So far so good, I'm doing fine, chopping up basil, parsley, shallots, celery, rosemary, and sage.  I realize that I was a fair few short, and should celery and shallot even count?  SS says yes, so we move on.

Here is where the cognitive dissonance rears its ugly head.  The Silver Spoon directed me to add two tablespoons of water to a pan and cook the sausage until it turns golden brown.  Wait, you want me to steam sausages?  Flashes of my mother threatening to make New England boiled dinner flash in front of my eyes, I grab the counter to steady myself.  "Come on Balzano,"  I say to myself, "Listen to the book, it knows more than you!"  I wanted to protest and say that the sausages would turn a weird white color, not brown!  Also, I wanted to assert that a work colleague of mine from years past would gag if she looked at them, but then I would have been having a full fledged conversation with myself so I just thought these things and cooked the sausages in water.

At first, the sausages were a weird white color, but SS also fosters patience as well as cooking skills.   The directions call to cook the sausages for ten minutes in water before adding the herbs.  I do so,  the sausages are still white, patience.  I add the celery and herbs and reach for the white wine.  This is the part where our champion of the kitchen realizes she doesn't have any white wine.  Crap!  I call my best friend hoping she has some upstairs, she says no (damn) but offers to pick some up.  That is why she is my bff, phew, the recipe is saved!  I put the pan aside and decide to do another bonus recipe.  Vinaigrette number 2, vinegar, oil, and anchovy paste, yum, very salty, perfect PMS salad dressing. The fiance tastes the bonus dressing and thinks it is a keeper so I dump it into my salad just in time for my bff to come home.  For more vinaigrettes, read this post: http://aprojectforacook.blogspot.com/2010/01/quiet-monday-steak-pizzaiola-with-salad.html

I put the sausages back on add the wine and cook for a a few more minutes, twenty minutes then they finally turned a golden brown!  Ah,  much more appetizing, dinner is served.  Fiance and friend like the sausages, I thought it was kinda fussy and tame.  Later my best friend admits that she likes my preparation of Sausage and Peppers grilled in the oven better.  (Me too, I wince)

Everything else that I have cooked so far has been bold and really said, "cooking is serious business."  This said, "Eh."  Don't get me wrong, I am glad I tried it. This recipe taught me it is acceptable to cook sausages in water as long as you are prepared to wait until they turn the right color.  My fear of New England boiled dinner is properly compartmentalized once again, and I look forward to tomorrow, a day in which I have all my ingredients on the first try for "Chicken with Green Peppers!" A dish I hope speaks to me in the bold tones to which I have become accustomed.