I was able to finish up work soon after 1pm today, which usually means that I’ll stop somewhere on the way home. Very near to the sausage plant in Laval is the Marché 440. I don’t know if it is the only market in Laval but it is an excellent place to buy fruits, vegetables, honey and much more. Wanting to make it quick – just needed a flat of raspberries while they are in season locally – I transacted for the fruit at the closest vendor, one of the best – but since I had to pay across the aisle where they have an extensive selection of vegetables, I quickly added a cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, carrots, string beans, tomatoes and new potatoes to my bill. And then I stopped at my favourite supermarket on Avenue du Parc where I have learned to speedshop. 50 cents of metred parking only buys me 10 minutes. Let’s just say that I didn’t have to use any of my time today in the produce section.
The original idea was to make raspberry jam when I got home, but since neither Carol nor I had had any lunch and I was bringing home some freshly smoked sausage from work, I knew I had all the ingredients on hand for a hearty lunch on a rainy day. Put the berries on ice and pulled out some cooking pots (des casseroles, comme on dit ici). I think I have a garden stew recipe posted on my original personal website. Yes, still there at:
http://home.ican.net/~clarkent/ted/porksausagestew.htm
With time, and especially for a garden stew, I don’t cook with a recipe, and today I did not search out the stew recipe above that I used years ago in the winter when canned soup and frozen mixed vegetables made sense. I only needed to refer to the first cookbook I ever owned, Doris Janzen Longacre’s “More-with-Less Cookbook” (MWL). On page 168 of MWL you’ll find a hamburger stew. I did turn to that today because I had the suspicion that the way to make the stew more creamy and less soupy is to add a white sauce once your vegetables are cooked. Confirmed. I didn’t use the two cups of milk in the suggested white sauce but I did use the 2 tbsp of flour, some of the butter and whipped up the white sauce in the frying pan that had just completed cooking some sausage meat and frying the onions, taking advantage of a small amount of residual grease and the onion flavour.
If you have access to some pork sausage meat I’d highly recommend using that instead of something much less flavourful like hamburger. Dettweiler’s in Breslau can fix you up with this, as they now make their fresh (unsmoked) sausage right in the shop. Besides pork sausage meat’s superiority in flavour, it also comes seasoned just perfectly – in the case of our sausage meat (fresh or smoked) that means salt, brown sugar and butcher pepper. I think when I use hamburger I always tend to go underseasoned for fear of overseasoning. By using meat that is already perfectly seasoned I have one less thing to do. I like a bit more pepper in my stew so I put more butcher pepper in – a pepper grinder will give you equally good results.
Just to give you an idea of possible ingredients I’ve taken a picture of my market finds and a few things rescued from my fridge. While I was steaming the carrots and boiling the coarsely cut new potatoes in the same pot, a steamer basket on top, setting a timer for 8 minutes so that I wouldn’t overcook the potatoes, I poured enough vegetable cocktail to cover the bottom of the large pot where all the ingredients of the stew would end up. Another time I would have used a can of whole tomatoes but since I had bought a basket of field tomatoes today, I cut up 3 or 4 of them which increases the liquid in my pot significantly. I had 2/3 of a jar of spaghetti sauce (starring Dettweiler’s Sausage and basil) from a previous meal, so that went in the pot next along with 2 or 3 more pieces of cooked sausage, also leftover, that I cut in small pieces. After 8 minutes, the potatoes and carrots went in the pot (cooked, but not overly done) and portions of the outer leaves of the huge cabbage took over in the potato water. About a cup of the potato / cabbage / carrot water went into the pot after the cooked cabbage was ready for the big pot. Celery, which might be chopped more crudely for this stew dish, went directly into the big pot – no pre-cooking necessary. I had forgotten the cauliflower, so I cut it up fairly finely (maybe about half a cup – would have used more if I had thought of it earlier) and put half of it to cook in the white sauce for a minute and the rest into the pot which was now simmering nicely. I had only put half of a good-sized onion in the stew, so I chopped up the 4 or 5 chives that I had also rescued from the fridge. I’ve got to use chives more during the summer when it grows in my garden. The raclette at the cottage was an ideal venue for these chives, but I forgot that I had put them in a bag with the celery and so they missed that role. Chives, like green onions, only lose from being cooked. Added to the stew before serving they provide an accent of colour and onion-like flavour.
This is my first WordPress post. I don’t like the font AT ALL, but I’ll learn to change that soon.
Please don’t lurk only. Comments from friends or strangers are welcome at this stage. Email: info@dettweiler.ca or deutsch-spraechen: rauchwurst@me.com. Those with Greek superpowers should email me at: λυκανικο@γμαιλ.κομ