Sometimes the Magic Doesn't Work

Our Annual Holiday Cake 

The Potatoes with Truffles were great!

Loved the Cake!

Sometimes the Magic works, sometimes it doesn't. We made this recipe for Cabbage and Sausage from The New York Times and didn't like it. I had bought the wrong sausage, Spicy Italian rather than Mild Italian Sausage. Once we realized the mistake we decided to use the spicy sausage anyways. Perhaps that was the error, perhaps it just wasn't a great recipe. Oh well, mark it down as a failure not to be repeated.

On a brighter side, we made fantastic Truffled Mashed Potatoes. We used the recipe for Garlic Mashed Potato recipe in TheBalthazar Cookbook by McNally, Nasr, Hanson. This is a fantastic recipe - it is super-rich! You can find the recipe on our blog of: November 12, 2012. Click the date to get the recipe. We used Truffle Butter in making the Mashed Potatoes and topped the potatoes with fresh Truffle Slices. Because of the truffles we left the garlic out. The dish is exceedingly rich and good! The best mashed potatoes recipe ever!

We served our Holiday Cake. Every year we bake the cake and let it sit for a couple of weeks in the refrigerator. I know Fruit Cake gets a well deserved bad rap, but I can guarantee you this one is great. Everyone loves it, it freezes well, it can be toasted or eaten at room temp. It is a winner! Try it. It is called Mary Ann's Fruit Cake from a recipe by Craig Claiborne of The New York Times. You can find the recipe on our blog of January 1, 2011. Click the date to get the recipe.

Sausage and Cabbage

New York Times

This recipe is an adaptation of one created by Tamasin Day-Lewis, the Stevie Nicks of British cookery. A casserole recipe that she credits to the British food writer Jane Grigson has just four ingredients — sausage, cabbage, butter and pepper — but after two and a half hours in the oven, it emerges mysterious and succulent.

Ingredients

Salt

3       tablespoons unsalted butter

2       pounds fresh sweet Italian pork sausages or bulk sausage

1       large green or Savoy cabbage, about 4 pounds, cored and thickly shredded

Freshly ground black pepper

Crusty bread and mustard, for serving

Preparation

1.            Heat oven to 300 degrees. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and butter a 9-by-13-by-2-inch baking dish. If using sausages, remove casings and discard them.

2.            Place cabbage in boiling water, cover, and let water come back to the boil. Uncover and boil for 3 minutes. Drain cabbage in a colander and run cold water over it to stop cooking.

3.            Put about 1/3 of the cabbage in buttered dish and cover with 1/2 the meat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and dot with butter. Repeat, ending with a final layer of cabbage, and dot top with butter.

4.            Cover dish tightly with a layer of parchment paper, then top with a lid or a layer of aluminum foil. Cook for about 2 1/2 hours, until cabbage is soft and sweet, and top is lightly browned. After 2 hours, uncover the dish: if there is a lot of liquid in the bottom, leave uncovered for the rest of the cooking time. If not, re-cover and finish cooking.