Nut Free

Faced with a surplus of leftover bread—enough crumbs stockpiled and nothing requiring croutons at the moment—I turn to a savory bread pudding. Since bread puddings remind me of British cooking, I whip up a sausage with typical English aromatics, add dried pear for tasty curiosity, and ecco!—a pudding-pie for dinner. The dried pears should be unsulfured, rather than sulfured, because they are less sweet, making them more suitable for this dish.

By curious circumstance, I found myself in Vienna in 1968, shortly after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and just over a decade after the Soviet invasion of Hungary. I was there for the International Philosophical Congress, which didn’t hold my interest long. There was much more to see and experience outside the confines of academia. Aside from the eternal beauty of Vienna as a center for music, the fine arts, and fine pastries, the streets were filled with people—Czechs as well as Hungarians—who had taken refuge in the welcoming city following the invasion of their countries. The energizing buzz over the politics of the time was everywhere, expressed in Czech, Russian, Hungarian Magyar (a language unrelated to nearly all other European languages and incomprehensible to ears unfamiliar with it), and in other tongues as well. But, as always, the food served as a binding, cohesive force. The city’s dining establishments, casual bistros and more formal restaurants alike, were filled with east Europeans, Viennese locals, and tourists like me, all looking for something good to eat. In addition to the impossible-to-resist Viennese fare, there were many Hungarian dishes which had become a familiar part of Viennese cooking. That is when and where I discovered the essential tastes and food combinations of east European cuisine, and, more important, that no matter what, food of the homeland is never left behind.

The countries of east Europe are a disparate lot, continually at odds over issues of religion and governance. But, as nearby neighbors, they share a cooking culture over and above those differences. This sausage and the following recipe for Hungarian meatballs in a sour cream sauce are my imaginative combining of the foods that this corner of the world can share without rancor or strife. The sausage, formed into balls and sautéed, can also be served with cucumbers in a light vinaigrette and potato salad dressed with dill and sour cream for a meze plate.

Imam bayildi, as this dish of Turkish origin is called in Bulgaria, Albania, and Greece, and its story have a special place in my cooking repertoire and in my heart. It was introduced to me by Susanna Hoffman, my longtime friend and sometimes cookbook coauthor, who is, among other things, an esteemed social anthropologist whose special field of endeavor is Greece. The story of imam bayildi has many versions, but details aside, it is essentially a tale of love and household thrift. A bride new to the house of her new husband, an imam, came with a dowry of olive oil. But there was only a certain amount. And the imam loved eggplant above all other foods. In practice, because eggplant, as it cooks, is a great gulper of olive oil, and olive oil is the equivalent of kitchen gold, the dish was using up too much of the bride’s dowry. What to do? How to please the husband and keep the eggplant rich and unctuous without blowing the kitchen budget? Susanna solved the dilemma by having the thoughtful bride coax the eggplant into softening with the addition of some water, thereby requiring less of the precious olive oil and with equally excellent results. Was the imam thrilled? Did he faint as the original story line suggests? We don’t know, but we presume the clever, money-minded bride kept her place and the imam was happy. In yet another, latter-day telling of the story, I call the beef and eggplant filling a sausage and the eggplant shells the casing, and imam bayildi winds up in a new sausage cookbook.

Partially cooking the potato and chilling it before grating serves two purposes: the potato gets thoroughly cooked within the sausage mix, which it won’t if it is added raw, and the sausage doesn’t turn out soft and mushy, which it will if the potato is cooked and mashed first. I prefer to get a jump start on this dish by preparing the potato a day ahead and chilling it overnight. But if you’re in a rush, several hours will do the trick, in which case, use the freezer to hasten the chilling. Rather than the standard Swedish accompaniment of mashed potatoes, I serve the sausage with a side of colorful, almost candylike roasted beets topped with sour cream.

I dub my Italianate beef meatballs with a nugget of cheese in the center polpette, which in Italian means “round food”—as in meatball, fish ball, rice ball—because it is a fun word to say and it describes their jolly, amenable nature. They accommodate meatball needs from cocktail-size tidbits for dipping into cherry tomato chutney (page 17) to large balls bouncing in a hearty red pasta sauce (page 73).

Whether the tomatoes are fresh or canned is a seasonal matter: in summer, choose fresh ones; in winter, use canned ones. Both make a delicious, rich sauce for braising meatballs. When using fresh tomatoes, I like to peel them and I don’t bother to seed them, but that is the cook’s choice, depending on time constraints and inclination. The herbs are also a matter of choice: fresh or dried basil (the most usual addition), marjoram, or tarragon all enhance the sauce with a mildly sweet herbal presence; oregano or bay add a more assertive flavor. Spaghetti is traditional for this everyday, home-style dish, but other shapes, such as bow ties, small rigatoni, or penne, will also capture and hold the sauce as the pasta is lifted from plate to mouth. For the meatballs, I like to use my polpette, because their cheese centers add an extra oomph to the dish. But you can also use meatballs fashioned from either sweet Italian or Tuscan sausage with good results.

There’s a certain romance associated with skillet cooking in American cuisine. It conjures campfires or rustic wood-fired ovens, where the cooking vessel must be sturdy enough to withstand the heat. Cast-iron pans fit that bill and more. I routinely use three cast-iron skillets of different sizes to accommodate different types of dishes: a small one for cooking up sausage samples for tasting or for frying up a couple of burgers; a medium size for cooking plate-size pancakes or a fat, juicy steak for two; and a large one for searing meats or fish fillets before finishing them in the oven or for making this skillet tamale pie. Cast-iron skillets offer two more advantages: they are widely available anywhere that carries kitchen equipment, from hardware stores to gourmet cookware shops, and they are modestly priced. The drawback to cast iron is that it is not serviceable for dishes that include tomatoes, wine, spinach, eggplant, or the like, because it turns the ingredient unpleasantly bitter. Romance aside, cooking the tamale pie in a cast-iron skillet offers one more advantage. It saves on pots and dishes: brown the sausage in the skillet on the stove top, spread the corn bread topping over the sausage, pop the skillet in the oven to bake, and then serve directly from the skillet. The quick, few-ingredient sausage is also good for tacos, topping pizza, Mexican-style spaghetti and meatballs, or in place of chorizo for egg preparations. The corn bread batter can be cooked into a tender, light bread without the sausage; use an 8-inch skillet in this case.

In a cross-continental sausage loaf reminiscent of French pâtés, beef, pork, and veal are combined in equal amounts with bread crumbs to make a more pillowy loaf. The California twist is replacing the traditional ketchup “icing” with pavers of sun-dried tomato across the top. You can serve it warm for dinner, American style, with a side of mashed potatoes, or French style, chilled until firm enough to slice thin for an hors d’oeuvre plate. The cooking vessel can be as ordinary as a standard aluminum loaf pan or, if you are serving it warm, a more table-worthy clay pot or round soufflé dish.

Lemongrass, a key ingredient in Vietnamese and Thai cooking, contributes a clean, citrusy taste and fragrance to dishes, such as in this Southeast Asian sausage, where it lightens the bold seasoning. Only the pale, tender inside of the bottom part of the lemongrass stalk is used. To prepare lemongrass cut off and discard the long, thin, gray-green leafy tops and trim away the root end. Peel away the stiff, outer leaves down to the tender core. Slice the core into very thin rounds or chop finely.

What traveler to faraway places with strange-sounding names hasn’t become enamored of the street food found along the way? As much as art, architecture, magnificent landscapes, and the people, the food attracts. Street food requires no formal dress, nor a large bank account. It is simply there for eating, either at the spot or on the move to the next point of interest. In keeping with the street-food theme, grill these sausages if you can. Otherwise, a brisk sauté on the stove top works well. The dipping sauce, nuoc cham, is the table sauce in Vietnamese dining, much like a cruet of vinegar and one of oil on an Italian table, a bottle of chile oil and one of soy sauce on a Chinese table, or fresh tomato salsa or salsa verde on a Mexican table. It is important to use a good-quality fish sauce, one that is smooth, rather than sharp. I recommend Thai Kitchen brand, generally available in well-stocked supermarkets these days and certainly available in Asian markets.

Somewhere in the land space between Asia and Europe, pork became a rare ingredient in cooking. In most of those lands, it was because pork is proscribed for religious reasons. But then there are noticeable exceptions. In Armenia, Georgia, and Greece, pork appears on menus, though never in the exalted number of dishes that it does in the surrounding cuisines of Europe, Southeast Asia, or China. The disparity remains a mystery to me. There is no religious prohibition in these places, and pigs don’t require vast ranges or grasslands to thrive. Indeed, a small pen in the home yard does nicely. Perhaps it is because of the influence of their neighbors. The Armenians, Georgians, and Greeks are Christians, but they are flanked by Muslims and, if contiguous populations don’t insist on warring with one another, they intermingle, which means, most profoundly, they come together at the table. Thus, if you can’t share a pork dish with your neighbors, you might instead choose lamb or beef for a multicultural, convivial affair. In any case, the Greeks have retained in their repertoire a pork-based sausage that includes a bit of beef and is aromatic with orange zest and coriander and extra zesty with chile flakes. It imports with ease to anywhere such a sausage is wanted.

Pita is a staple flatbread of casual Middle Eastern cuisine. Sometimes the pita has a pocket, which is opened and filled with delicious ingredients. Sometimes it has no pocket, and is merely folded over to contain the ingredients as best it can. The cooling, refreshing cucumber-laced yogurt sauce, called by many names—tzatziki in Greek, jajik in Armenian, cacik in Turkish, raita in Hindi—soothes the heat of a dish and the heat of the day. Following the Greek theme suggested by the sausage, I call for pita without a pocket. I shape the sausage into small balls and grill the balls, their aroma recalling the enticing, smoky scent that wafts from spinning souvlakis (gyros) you find in marketplaces throughout Greece.

In a showcase dish for slow-cooking-meets-quick-and-easy, sausage and lentils come together in a hearty combination for cool weather. The slow part is making the sausage, which is actually a cinch and can be done days in advance. The quick-and-easy part is that the dish cooks in about half an hour. Of all the many, many kinds of lentils, which vary in size, color, and their use in cooking, French green lentils are perfect for preparations such as this one where you want the lentils to cook up soft to the center while retaining their shape and not collapsing into a puree, as would be desirable, for instance, in an Indian dal. The soupçon of balsamic vinegar is stirred in just before serving so its tang and aroma remain bright and boldly present, not faded into the background.

Herbaceous and zesty, this sausage is an excellent all-purpose choice for whenever you want to add a sausage element that is neither too strident nor too wimpy. I especially like it for the vindaloo on page 49, where it stands up to the other forceful seasonings in the dish.

An unassuming regional dish of sauerkraut with various charcuterie meats—sausage, duck confit, salt pork—garnered three stars for the restaurant L’Auberge de l’Ill, located on the banks of the River Ill in picturesque Alsace, and made both the specialty, choucroute garnie, and the restaurant classics in the world of European haute cuisine. It’s one of my favorite composed pork dishes, and I often cook a simple but still lusty version of it with robust Polish sausage. If you’d like to make it more elaborate, add baby back ribs baked until half done and/or the cured duck legs without the Toulouse sausage stuffing (page 35) to the sauerkraut. The juniper berries lend a clear, piney fragrance. If you don’t have any on hand, 1 tablespoon of good gin, the spirit they flavor, can be substituted.

Vindaloo originated in the tiny state of Goa, on India’s southwest coast, which was colonized by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. Because the Portuguese are traditionally Christian, pork is not proscribed in Goa, as it is almost everywhere else in India. Vindaloo, however, has been embraced throughout India and beyond, reinterpreted sometimes with chicken, sometimes with beef or lamb, so that it can be enjoyed within religious bounds. In fact, vindaloo with any meat, or even as a vegetarian dish, has an irresistible sweet-salty-sour-hot flavor. And though it seems intimidatingly spicy at first, one taste and you are hooked. A fruit chutney, to both soothe and stimulate the palate, is an expected complement for many Indian meals. Here, dried plums fit that bill in a chutney that can be enjoyed year-round not only with this dish, but with nearly any pork, poultry, or game dish, as well. I won’t tell you any lies: this dish is for a day when you feel like cooking. The good news is that it is a one-pot meal and worth it.

The familiar Polish sausage known as kielbasa was introduced to American cuisine in the neighborhoods of Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, where many Polish immigrants settled during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nowadays, kielbasa is widely produced commercially and is marketed to food purveyors nationwide. It is usually smoked and sandwiched in a hot dog bun, tucked into a hearty cabbage borscht, or added to a robust sauerkraut dish (page 46). That is not the whole story, however. Kielbasa is actually the generic term for sausage in Polish and there are many versions. I prefer a fresh, not smoked, sausage, but with a hint of ham to suggest a smoky flavor.

When I was growing up, fried egg sandwiches were one of my mother’s specialties, and we often had them for lunch on weekends. The sandwiches were made in her New Mexico cooking style: The eggs were turned once and fried until the whites were crisp around the edges and the yolks were well set. Then they were transferred to slices of white bread that had been slathered with mayonnaise, and a lettuce leaf was slipped between the egg and the bread. Here’s my contemporary version of that homey sandwich. Its siren call of melted, oozing cheese and added bonus of sausage bits turn my mom’s simpler lunchtime sandwich into a mini-meal on bread. In keeping with the pizza theme, I call for sweet Italian or Tuscan sausage. But American Breakfast Sausage (page 10) or Spicy Garlic Sausage (page 48) would also do nicely.

There’s almost no turn in Tuscany that doesn’t provide some sensory joy. Driving its curvy roads through low hills gently swelling up from narrow, verdant valleys, you discover olive groves that produce some of the world’s finest olive oil and vineyards that yield some of the world’s most renowned wines. Exploring the region’s old towns and cities on foot, you wind your way through dozens of museums full of famous artworks and wander into back-alley churches and quaint shops stacked with Tuscan treasures. And everywhere, there is fabulous food. The Tuscans have long produced delicious salumi, that special form of pork cookery, called charcuterie in France, that comprises prosciutto, mortadella, soppressata, salamis and other cured meats, along with fresh sausages particular to the region. In this recipe, sundried tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella flavor fresh pork sausage to deliver the taste of Tuscany.