January 25, 2011

This One Sounded Very Weird


Just about everywhere I've read about this, though, the most usual comment is "deceptively simple." But there's nothing deceptive about it. And you can't get more simple. To be honest I felt I was taking a chance on this because I never heard of such a thing and it doesn't have some great, fancy Italian or French or Greek name. But since you use mild Italian sausage for it I'm going to say it's Italian. But who knows?

Put just a little olive oil in a pan and heat it to just right. Then you take
1 1/2 lb of mild Italian sausage and you brown it - JUST BARELY. Just enough to get the pink off.
In a bowl you put
2 lbs of seedless red grapes (you heard me), removed from the stem
sprinkle lightly (don't overdo this) with thyme and olive oil.
Toss that like a salad.
Heat the oven to 475 and go find an oven-safe bowl that will be big enough to hold everything yet small enough so that you can jumble everything up.
Put a layer of grapes on the bottom.
Set the Italian sausages on top of that.
Put in the rest of the grapes.
Shove it in the oven for 20-30 minutes depending on how you like your sausage. Occasionally mixing the contents.

And... um... that's it. I had that on a plate with some Italian bread on the side and a nice red wine. Here's the deal...

This is just about as inexpensive as you can get and still feed yourself some very complex flavors. Don't use brand new grapes (this was my mistake), but try and use grapes that have been around for a few days so that when it hits the heat the skins break on some. Or, if you've got new grapes, lightly mush them up a little bit (a LITTLE bit). The taste of the grapes changes under the heat, and when the resulting kinda-sauce melds in with the fatty juices from the sausages you've got something really unique.

I've never tasted that before and I cleaned my plate. It's called Italian Sausage and Red Grapes. Duh. You can just have it with bread or put some noodles on the side; whatever you want. You get points from me if you try this and report back.

I dares ya.

8 comments:

Mrs. Hall said...

can u use spicy turkey Italian sausage?

(don't judge me!!)

RW said...

Sounds good to me. I'd watch the spicy with the thyme in the grapes though.

sybil law said...

What the ?
Actually, it sounds good, but I don't like sausage that much. Love grapes, though. Hmmm..
Do you recommend a sausage to use?
I'll bet chicken apple sausage would be good, too.

I've never typed "sausage" so much in my life.
Oh, who am I kidding? Haha

RW said...

Just a good butcher's Italian mild. Feel free to experiment but don't sell it short, it was really good. It all came together as very much like a kind of glaze.

Gino said...

ok, this one's right up my ally. i'll let know.

Verdant Earl said...

Sounds good to me, but I'll have to wait for Gia to go away for a few days to try it. She's not a fan of any sausage except breakfast patties. But I think I would like it.

Petunia said...

I've tried a similar version with all different varieties of tomatoes instead of grapes. Do I still get points? Will have to try the grapes version. Or tomatoes AND grapes?

RW said...

Maters would be good!