This recipe came about by chance (like most great recipes do). Some friends gave us a pack of sausages to try out. It was VT99 Blue Cheese sausage from Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont. We’ve had Jasper Hill meats before, but not their sausage product. I figured, Mmmm, what do I do now? When I prepare sausage as a meal, I usually prepare it with bell peppers, be it red or green peppers.  It’s a common entrée in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. It happened I had no green peppers around, but I had lots of onions. So it became sausage and onions.

I was fortunate in acquiring the blue cheese sausage, and it was delicious! But you can substitute whatever sausage you prefer, be it Italian, German bratwurst, French andouille, Spanish chorizo, turkey or chicken sausage. You can even use the Libby canned sausage—which we substituted back in Spanish Harlem during our lean days. Let me add that some sausages (like the VT99 product) come with a casing that has to be removed before cooking. Check to see what you got.  Also, the recipe runs along the Nuyorican method of preparation with some basic staples. It ain’t complicated at all.

In my family we almost always had the dish over steamed rice. This time we tried something new, red rice. If you can find it, great. If not, regular rice will do, either white or brown; or you can try the dish with quinoa, or even kasha.  This is America, where we experiment and come up with the unusual, as long as it’s tasty.

SAUSAGE AND ONIONS

Ingredients:

4 links sausage, cut into ½-inch rounds
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled and thinly sliced
2 clove garlic, peeled and  minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 tablespoon fresh chopped oregano or 1 teaspoon dried
2 tablespoons dry red wine

Instructions:

  1. Rinse sausage under running water and pat dry with paper towels.
  2. Heat olive oil in a skillet or fry pan over medium heat. Add sausage and cook until brown, about 2-3 minutes. Add onion and cook, stirring, until onion is translucent. Add garlic and cook 2 minutes more. Season with salt, pepper and oregano. Stir in wine, raise heat to high and and cook until most of the wine has been absorbed, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a serving platter and serve with the rice.
    Yield: 4 servings.