Dark Days Challenge Week 4: Goat sausage, cabbage: Together, again.

It's Week 4 of the eat-local Dark Days Challenge.

I decided, after two soups and a fish dish, it was time to cook some meat, specifically goat, which seems to be turning up a lot at the year-round Seattle farmers markets.

I love the concept of goat meat. Sure, I adore goat cheese, but meat goats seem to be the hot new crop.


And how could I forget Lusa Landowski, the city girl from Barbara Kingsolver's “Prodigal Summer,” raising meat goats in a whim in the tiny Appalachian town of Egg Fork, where everyone thought she was crazy for not growing tobacco.

I admit I took an easy route with Italian-seasoned goat sausage I bought at the Ballard farmers market from Quilceda Farm of Marysville, using the perhaps the simplest recipe for a main dish I have ever heard of.

It's an adaptation of a Real Simple recipe, recommended by my eat-local friend Amy in Washington, D.C., who said, quite convincingly: “It looks kind of unappetizing, but is delicious and so insanely, ridiculously easy! The cabbage is basically a conveyance for sausage, which I have no complaints with.”

I knew I needed to make this dish — nothing more than sausage and cabbage layered and baked — when I ran across the most amazing heads of cabbage I had ever seen at the Edmonds PCC (lead photo).

They were beautiful, big savoy cabbages, lush and green, a picture of Eden, inspiring in me a new form of vegetable lust. (Thanks, again, Nash's Organic Produce of Sequim.)

I cut the recipe in half, added salt and pepper and, whoops, forgot to cover the dish as recommended, so the dish burned slightly on top.

Otherwise: Wow!

I thought the goat sausage tasted great, almost like a cross between a lamb and chicken sausage and it paired beautifully with the cabbage, which caramelized quite well in the oven, though it did give up its sublime color and texture.

Real Simple describes this dish as a casserole. I, however, found that the mostly uniform ½-inch rounds of cabbage really lend themselves to solitary stacks of goodness, resulting in about four circular portions when the recipe is halved.


Also, to make this dish shine, you really need to dip every bite into the sour cream and mustard mixture, which I sourced non-locally.

Next week: I think I'll make a Thundering Hooves pot roast, in keeping with the meat theme.

You know, it's not just me doing this Dark Days Challenge. Read recaps from more the 75 participants at urbanhennery.com.

Sausage and cabbage stackers

1 pound Napa, savoy or green cabbage

1 pound Italian sausage (sweet or hot)

1/2 cup sour cream

1 tablespoon prepared horseradish or mustard

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Slice cabbage into 12-inch rounds.

Place 1/3 of the cabbage rounds in a Dutch oven or casserole. Lightly salt and pepper.

After removing meat from sausage casings, arrange half the sausage on top of the cabbage. Press firmly. Top with half of the remaining cabbage rounds and all the remaining sausage and press again.

Spread the remaining cabbage over the top and lightly salt and pepper again. Cover with foil and bake until the cabbage is tender, about 1 hour, 40 minutes.

Let the dish stand at room temperature for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine the sour cream and horseradish or mustard.

Serve stacked rounds with the sour cream mixture and extra salt and pepper.

Adapted from Real Simple