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CASSEROLE SEASON 2: Colcannon
Oct. 21st, 2021 02:25 pmcomfort food
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You didn’t think I’d just give you one recipe, did you?
This one is a very different one. This is actually only optionally a casserole– you don’t have to bake it at all. But if you choose to, it makes a good one. This one is actually more of a nutrient paste kind of deal, but you could layer it like a classic casserole if you wanted, and top it with shredded cheese in the time-honored ways of our people. But it’s not necessary and you could do it all in one frying pan if you’d rather.
Now, there may be some Correct way of making this dish. I have never actually seen a formal recipe for it, I’ve just been told what’s in it and made my own. So possibly there’s a world of information ahead of you if you formally look this up. I won’t be doing that.
SO.
Summary first, then specifics: Make a pot of mashed potatoes. Meanwhile, sautee some pork product with some cabbage. When both are done, combine, mix well, serve hot.
Specifics:
Serving sizes. Listen, this is something I do by practice, now. I just know how big my pot is, and how much I gotta put in it to have enough food for the both of us plus some leftovers. This is something you’re entirely going to have to learn by feel. All the recipe books I own give me useless guidelines like, how many pounds of potatoes, or they try to be relatable and say “three medium potatoes” and like– how big is a medium potato? Compared to what? I don’t have a kitchen scale. I just look at how much stuff there is and how full my saucepan is. I have a saucepan-sized saucepan, and then one that’s a little taller. I do mashed potatoes in the taller one and fill it up halfway and then there’s room for the water to foam up a little. I know that amount of mashed potatoes is enough to serve me and my dude and then there’s leftovers. How do I tell you how much that is in a way that makes sense with your pot? I don’t.
Just like a lot of this is “you cook it until it’s done”– you have to cook it until it’s done to know what that’s going to look like.
My quantities in this recipe were constrained by me making it in my 15″ cast iron skillet, which is my favorite thing to fry stuff in. And that’s the approach I recommend as you’re trying to learn or adapt recipes. Get used to the pans you have, and get used to cooking to suit them, and figure out how much it takes to feed you and yours. Anyway, apologies for the digression. I used probably four medium potatoes, a third of a head of cabbage, a half a pound of sausage, an onion, and a large carrot to make this.
SO ANYWAY: First, make your mashed potatoes. If you don’t know, all you have to do is wash some potatoes well, of course leave the skins on what’s wrong with you that’s where all the nutrients are, then cube the potatoes and put them in a pot of water. Bring it to a boil, boil it like 15-20 minutes until you poke a cube of potato with a fork and it’s soft. At that point, drain the water out, reserving a little bit of it if you like. Mash the potatoes with the reserved water, a hefty pat of butter, and a splash of milk. Add more milk if they’re dry. A potato masher makes this easiest but I used to do it with a fork, it just takes some patience. You’ll want to add salt, even if your butter is salted. This is the backbone of the dish, if it’s undersalted you’ll be a bit sad– but bear in mind your meat, if you’re using a very salty cured meat then you don’t have to worry so much about seasoning the potatoes.
Optional, but recommended, start with a meat. Ham is a classic, but so is sausage– bulk sausage, or slice a sausage in casings and kind of crumble it.
ALTERNATE Optional: Start with some butter or lard, dice an onion and soften it in the pan, add a carrot, then cook the sausage in with it. This is a more flavorful, nutritious, and substantial basis for your casserole. A lil bit of alium goes a long way toward making a food a meal.
Shred the cabbage pretty finely, and add it in. Sometimes it’s hard to get cabbage cooked through just in a saute, so I sometimes steal a bit of the boiling water off the potato pot, and throw in a couple spoonfuls of it into the frying pan and cover the frying pan to steam the cabbage a bit, so it gets softer, right at the end, like while I was draining and mashing the potatoes.
Once the water had cooked off, I then dumped the mashed potatoes in and stirred the whole thing up so it was a uniform mixture, and then turned the heat off and served it. BUT.
To make it a casserole, take your two components and layer them however you like. I’d probably put down a thin bed of potatoes, put my meat and veg mix on top of that, and then top it with the potatoes, and then put shredded cheese over the top OR dot the potatoes with butter so the top will brown, and then bake the whole thing in a 350 degree oven until the potatoes brown a bit. If you do that, don’t worry about steaming your cabbage beforehand, just let it get good and mixed with the sausage in the frying pan. You’re not going to want to layer it in separately. But you’ll want your veg-and-meat mix to be fairly juicy, so they don’t dry out in the oven. Should be fine, cabbage is pretty wet.
So– I usually eat this one served right out of the skillet. But the casserole option is a good one, and less fussy, if more time-consuming. (Also, this is a good one to make in the morning, put in the casserole dish, and refrigerate until you get home from work. I don’t live that kind of lifestyle nowadays but you might.)
The secret to this one is that cabbage is kind of a superfood. It’s like, really really really good for you. And it’s a lot of bulk, for cheap. This is my fall/winter budget secret that’s also really good for the digestion. You just have to ease into it, sometimes, if you’re delicate. A whole cabbage is a lot to get through, and I recommend alternating cabbage with non-cabbage dishes throughout the week it’s gonna take you to eat a whole head of cabbage. A good way of spreading that out is to make half of it into sauerkraut, which takes four to seven days to finish, so you’ve just built yourself a little recovery period*. But I find for myself once I’m in Cabbage Digestion Mode I can keep up. So anyway just be gentle with yourself and don’t overdo it, LOL, but once you’re on that train eat as much cabbage as you can handle because it’s so cheap and so good. This is how my people survived the winter before they invented** California.
(oh, did I ever post the Sauerkraut Manual my dude wrote? He has a whole method for it. I could clean that up and post it. Maybe he’s already got it posted somewhere, I’ll ask him.) (*ha) (Your picture was not posted)
