Sausages à l’étuvée

One of several sausage recipes in From the Hearth, this one involves a wide range of seasonings, as well as the formation of the sausage meat into patties. This is the second sausage dish we’ve tried from the book, and it’s about the same complexity as the first one.

I made this along with the third cauliflower recipe in the book.

Ingredients

1 lb sausage meat (we used 5 large sausages, removed from their casings)
2 tbsp butter (for frying)
1/2 cup flour
1 lb pearl onions (we couldn't find these, used chopped cooking onions)
1/4 cup red wine
1/4 cup bouillon
1 tbsp butter (for dotting top of contents before braising)
salt and pepper
1-2 anchovy fillets, minced (optional)
1 tsp capers, minced (optional)
croutons

Bouquet garni:
1 tbsp fresh parsley (or 1 tsp dried)
1 sprig thyme (or 1/8 tsp dried)
2 basil leaves (or 1 tsp dried)
2 tbsp green onions, minced
2 whole cloves
1/2 bay leaf, crushed

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400F. 

Shape meat into patties. Coat with flour and brown in a hot frying pan with butter about 10 minutes per side. (This replaces, in the original, encasing the sausage meat in cauls (animal membranes)).

Blanch the onions and drain. 

Arrange patties and onions in baking dish (that has a lid). Pour in the wine and bouillon and add the bouquet garni. Dot with butter.  

Cover and cook for 30 minutes, or until onions are almost cooked.

Remove from oven and skim off fat (we didn't do this - not sure how it would be possible to skim off the fat, because the liquid doesn't come up above the solid items). 

Add anchovies, capers, additional salt and pepper if needed. (Added these at the beginning. Oops.) Cook until onions are tender. Add croutons and serve.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t find pearl onions, so we used chopped cooking onion.

We didn’t skim fat from the dish, because none of the liquid came above the solids (you can see a bit of liquid in the image above – that’s all of it).

The verdict

This involved a moderate amount of effort, and I’d say the outcome was worth it. It was very tasty! I’m not sure if the frying of the patties was needed to make this dish work, but it probably added more flavour than the original would have had. The croutons added a really nice texture, and I’d be sure to include them (I’d thought about skipping them).

Would you do this with your sausages? Let us know in the comments!