Kielbasa with Winter Brassicas

Winter meals are sometimes very monochromatic, and this one was no exception - white white and white. The colors may have been pale, but the flavors were diverse and satisfying: local kielbasa sausage, homemade sauerkraut, and fried turnip patties.

This meal took about 25 minutes to prepare and left me wondering why eating local food in the winter is hard for some people - nothing could have been easier or more tasty on a January evening.

Kielbasa from Willow Creek Farm. This is a traditional Polish sausage, made with their delicious pastured Berkshire pork. I think I'm going to have the opportunity to visit this farm and their new processing facility later this month. I'll be sure to take pictures.

I put the sausage in boiling water to begin cooking, and then turned my attention to the vegetables.

thought I was going to make potato pancakes, but I remembered at the last minute that I'd given the 5lb bag of potatoes to Dave when he moved out. All had for roots were the beets I grew this summer and these two turnips, the last of my backyard crop. Not too pretty, but they were still firm, so I decided to give them a shot.

Peeling them revealed two snowy white orbs with a nice crisp turnip-y flavor. Turnips are not usually one my favorite root vegetable, but I like them every once in a while - especially if I grew them myself!

I shredded them and squeezed as much of the water out as I could.....

.... added one egg, some salt and pepper, and a tiny bit of nutmeg and mixed it all up on the board.

I made three little patties of them, and started them frying in local sunflower oil.

I was a little nervous that they wouldn't hold together, but the egg did it's job and they held relatively well. As they began to cook and brown they filled the house with a delicious odor. Suddenly I was feeling like I liked turnips very much.

When the patties were close to done I took the cooked sausage out of the boiling water and added it to the skillet for a few minutes to brown the skin.

There you have it: A delicious local sausage, surprisingly delicious turnip patties (with a dollop of sour cream of course), and homemade sauerkraut. The texture and flavor play between the turnips and the sauerkraut was interesting: two shredded brassicas, prepared in vastly different ways with vastly different flavors and textures. All in all a very pleasing winter meal!

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