Springtime Sausage, Peppers & Onions
Mar 24th, 2008 | By Hank Shaw | Category: Charcuterie, Italian, Wild Game | Comments | 4 Comments |
Sausage, peppers and onions has been one of my all-time favorite Italian-American foods ever since I can remember. I ate it as a submarine sandwich as often as I could growing up in New Jersey, and I still seek it out at the various festas small towns hold every summer here in Northern California.
Normally, this dish is a griddle-top special: Sliced onions, sliced peppers (usually green), and big chunks of sweet or hot Italian sausage. Drop the veggies in the sub roll, add the sausage and top with some good deli mustard and you’re done. I can taste it now.
But this is springtime in California, and I thought to myself: “Why not mess with the recipe to make it more springy?” This is what I came up with.
I made these sausages last autumn from a combination of Bledsoe pork and the antelope I’d shot in Wyoming, mixed with a little nutmeg, cinnamon, star anise, hot paprika, white wine and lots of oregano. They are a coarse-ground country-style sausage and are perfect for this dish.
Onions would be easy: Spring green onions are everywhere here; I picked up these at the local farmer’s market. Peppers are out of season, so I grabbed a jar of my fire-roasted gypsy peppers from the pantry - I do a lot of canning an preserving in summer, and this is the time of year I am busily eating up my winter stores.
Putting the dish together is a snap. I slowly fried the sausages in a little olive oil, and when they were done dropped in the onions. Bada-bing, bada boom! Done. A new take on a classic. Hope you enjoy it.
Hank,
I made a similar dish during a camping trip this weekend with some homemade wild pig sausage. I’m pretty sure I could eat this everyday.
Keep on feeding us the knowledge – I’m having a great time on this site.
Me, too. In fact I did eat the traditional version 3-4 times a week at times when I lived back East.
Tried finding a receipe for goose (Canada) summer sausage; any ideas?? So far, no luck.
Tom: I don’t happen to like summer sausage, so I don’t have a recipe for it on my site. But any salami-making book worth buying will have them. And look up Len Poli on the internet; I bet he has a recipe for summer sausage…