Food in a Pot with Kale, spring onion, tomatoes and pork sausage
As you may have noticed we can get really really busy at the store.  Not to get graphic, but there are some days where I have to hold a pee for 3 hours before I can find the time to go. The phone is always ringing, orders are always being delivered, customers and staff always have questions that need an answer, and disasters always need averting. This makes cooking a meal very challenging.  I see lots of busy working Moms and Dads at the store whose lives must be as hectic as mine. THIS is the meal for you. It's just food in a pot, and it is DELICIOUS and EASY!
Look in your fridge. Have some green onions that are going wilty? A yellow or red onion that is going soft?
Clean it up, chop it up and put it at the bottom of a heavy pot.
Chuck in a few cloves of garlic. Sometimes I peel them, sometimes I don't have the time.
Sometimes I then put a layer of baby potatoes, if I don't have the time to wash potatoes, I leave out the potatoes. But if you can, add them next, they are very tasty at the end.
I make my next layer Kale or Swiss Chard. If I don't have the time, I don't de stem either the kale or chard. Sometimes life is just too busy to destem things.
On top of the kale and/or Swiss chard I place whatever soft veg we have kicking around. It could be zucchini, sweet peppers, whatever you have lying around that is looking a little less than prime. Prime veg is great too, but this meal in a pot is also a great fridge clean out method. Chop it up and layer it on top of your greens.
The next layer should be a pork sausage. Bison and grass fed Beef are just too lean for this dish. I used our Berkshire hot italian sausage, but any pork sausage will do. We're busy here at the market, so I just usually chuck them in the pot frozen. I use 2 packs of sausage.
On top of the sausage, I pour 1-2 pints of cherry tomatoes. This should bring your big pot to heaping full. I drizzle a bit of olive oil on top of it all, add whatever herbs I have kicking around put the lid on and pop the pot in the oven at 350 degrees for about and hour and a half. (At the store we have a convection oven, so this cuts down our cooking time to about 45 minutes) After 45 minutes, I take the lid off of the pot, move my once frozen sausages into a better less clumped together position, and put it back in the oven, for another 30 minutes. Then I remove the lid, and put it back into the oven until the tomatoes and sausages are slightly browned, about 10-15 minutes.
The tomatoes burst and drizzle down over everything, the sausage does the same thing. At the end you end up with tasty potatoes in sauce at the bottom, delicious braised kale in the middle, veggies and meat!
It's food in a pot. It's always delicious but especially so if you haven't eaten for 13 hours that day.
Enjoy!
Erin
