Cassoeula

The cheap cuts of the pig cooked down with savoy cabbage added late.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains pork.

Ingredients

• 600 g pork ribs
• 300 g pork rind, in strips
• 4 pig's trotters, split, or 2 pig's ears
• 400 g small pork sausages
• 1.2 kg savoy cabbage, after a frost if you can get it
• 2 onions, 2 carrots, 2 celery sticks, chopped
• 200 ml dry white wine
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons salt

Method

1. Blanch the rind and trotters 10 minutes and drain. This takes off the heaviest of the fat and the smell with it.
2. Brown the ribs and sausages in the oil, lift them out, then soften the vegetables in the same pan.
3. Return the ribs, rind and trotters, add the wine, and cook covered with a little water for 2 hours.
4. SHRED THE CABBAGE AND ADD IT ONLY NOW, for the last 40 minutes, in two goes as it wilts down. It is a vegetable here, not a flavouring — put it in at the start and there is nothing left of it but a grey thread in the fat.
5. Return the sausages for the final 20 minutes.
6. Let it stand off the heat 30 minutes and skim the fat that rises. There will be a lot, and skimming it is the difference between rich and inedible.
7. Serve with polenta, which is what it is for.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes