I can’t channel spirits, but I can channel recipes. Yesterday I was making an apple pie for our friends Jenny and Jared who were coming for dinner and I couldn’t quite figure out what to make for an entree. I knew I wanted it to be autumnal. I knew I wanted to use the apples that we picked this past weekend in Tivoli (the same apples that went into the pie). I knew pork needed to be involved (because pork + apples = good; haven’t you ever seen a pig with an apple in its mouth?). I wanted to serve it over polenta.
And then, like the ghost of a long-lost cousin, the recipe arrived fully formed in my mental crystal ball. Sausages braised in cider with apples, pears, and Juniper berries.
If we’re being honest, the crystal ball wasn’t really in my head, it was on my computer screen and the ghost wasn’t a long-lost cousin, it was Delia Smith, whose recipe for sausages braised in cider would be the road map I’d follow for my own take on the concept.
Like all great braises, this one begins with browning. Specifically: the browning of Italian sausages, fat ones, that you should get from your favorite butcher. Nancy Silverton has some good advice on browning sausages in one of her books; she tells you to do it on low heat so they don’t burst. It requires patience, but I just let them sizzle on low while I prepped all of the other ingredients.
Once the sausages are done, you add your onions, garlic, and apples (I also used pears). Here’s where I part ways from Delia’s recipe: she has you cook the apples in a separate pan. I’m sure that gets more color on them, but this is way faster (and yields wonderful results too). Also I left out the bacon because that feels like overkill.
The reason the browning is so important in phase one is that you pick up all of those brown bits in phase two, which is where all of the flavor comes from. Then you add flour, cook that for a bit, then deglaze with cider, the alcoholic kind (this one comes from New York State).
You add even more flavor with crushed juniper berries (they smell like a pine tree) and fresh thyme.
Put the sausages back in, put the lid on, and simmer for an hour while you see to the polenta. Note: this is a great dish to make ahead because it’s really hard to overcook the sausages and you can turn the heat off after an hour and then reheat when everyone’s ready.
For the polenta, I used Anson Mills coarse rustic polenta which I cooked in chicken stock on high heat until thick, then lowered to a simmer, put the lid on, and cooked for an hour. I finished with just a little butter and Parmesan.
There’s one other place where my recipe departs from Delia’s: she just has you remove the sausages and serve, with the sauce, over mashed potatoes. Fine, mashed potatoes sound good. But you need to reduce that sauce to amp up all the flavors! So once the sausages were out, I put the heat on high and boiled boiled boiled.
That resulting sauce was everything. Rich, meaty, sweet from the apples and pears, acidic from the cider (and also cider vinegar, forgot to mention that), and thick from the flour. Ladled over the sausages and polenta?
Dare I say it, the perfect fall meal. Great for company, great for family, just great period. Am I good at conjuring recipes or what?
Sausages Braised in Cider with Apples and Onions
Ingredients
Method
- In a large Dutch oven, add four of the sausages and a splash of olive oil and cook on medium heat until you hear a sizzle. Lower to low and cook — it should still be sizzling — until the sausages are brown all over. It will take a while. Remove the first four sausages and then brown the rest. Remove those and pour out most of the fat, leaving about one tablespoon.
- Add the onions, apples/pears, and garlic, plus a pinch of salt. Crank the heat to medium-high, stir all around, and cook, allowing the juices from the fruit to help pick up the brown bits on the bottom of the pan. Keep cooking until everything starts to brown a little (it’ll take at least ten minutes).
- Add the tablespoon of flour and cook for a minute, to remove the raw flour taste. Mix the cider with the apple cider vinegar and pour some of it into the pot, stirring all around until it thickens, then incorporate the rest. Add the Juniper berries, thyme, and bay leaves, bring to a boil, return the sausages to the pot (and any juices that have collected). Put the lid on, lower to a simmer, and cook for an hour.
- To finish: remove the sausages from the pot, discard the thyme sprigs and bay leaves, and bring to a boil. Reduce the sauce until super thick and viscous; taste for salt. Spoon some polenta or mashed potatoes on to plates, top with two sausages per person, and ladle on the sauce. Sprinkle with chives, if using, and serve right away.
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