One of my favorite cookbook authors is Lisa Lemke. She has two beautiful cookbooks out in print, one called The Summer Table and the other The Winter Table. She probably has more than two, but those are the two I know.
These books are well written and contain great recipes but my favorite thing about them is the incredible food photography. Exquisitely staged and beautifully lit, many of the photos in these two books border on still life art.
If you don’t have either of these excellent cookbooks I would highly recommend you pick up one – or both.*
This recipe is our variation on Lisa Lemke’s “Mushroom Hash with Brussel Sprouts and Apples” from her book The Winter Table (Lemke, 2017, p. 37). Lisa’s recipe is vegetarian, ours is not. Other than that, they are quite similar.
I threw this together on Halloween so that we had a one pot dinner option that we could go to anytime we wanted – in between the knocks of the trick-or-treaters – but it is an excellent recipe for any season.
Get out a good sharp knife for this one as it requires a lot of initial chopping, but once you’re done it’s a downhill ride from there, assuming of course you don’t chop off any fingers.
Need This
1 pound of smoked sausage (beef or turkey)
1 large onion
2 – 12 ounce packages of frozen baby brussel sprouts
1 – 12 ounce package of baby bella mushrooms
2 tart apples (like Jazz or Gala)
1 – 28 ounce bag of frozen hash brown potatoes or Potatoes O’Brien (Ore-Ida brand is good)
1-1/2 tablespoons of fennel seeds (or caraway seeds)
2 tablespoons of butter
Salt and ground black pepper
Grated parmesan/Romano
Do This
Fire up your oven to 400 F. Get out a cookie sheet and brush it thickly with olive oil. Roll the little roly poly brussel sprouts onto the pan and stick it in the oven for about 10 – 15 minutes – or until you see them starting to brown.
Meanwhile, dice the onion up, cut the smoked sausage into quarters, then chop it up crosswise so that you get little triangles. Slice up the baby bellas.
Get out the brussel sprouts and let cool, then cut each sprout in half.
Put the butter into a large pot and put a medium heat under it.
When the butter is melted, throw everything you chopped up so far into the pot and give a good stir. Add the fennel seed (or caraway seed) and the frozen potatoes at this time. Stir again and continue to cook on medium heat.
Now quarter your apples. Chop the quarters in half lengthwise (to get eighths), then cross chop. Chuck the diced apples into the pot last, stir and let it all warm up for about 5 minutes, then remove from the heat.
DO NOT PUT A LID ON THE POT.
When ready to serve, warm it up for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Serve warm and pass around the grated parm.
Serves 4 – 6.
My cost approx. $11.50 total – about $2.30 cents per serving.
* I recommend these books because they’re good.. really good. I have no financial interest in either of them – just sayin. GMN