Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Dinner In One Dish

I'm not one to try complicated recipes..........period! I enjoy cooking with fresh ingredients, vegetables that are in season and want to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible. Then, I came across this recipe from LHJ...... It is a sausage, apple and cheese pie. I had to doctor it up some because I did not have all the called for ingredients, but I think it tasted wonderful with my adaptations.
I tried to condense this recipe as much as possible as many of the steps are things we already know how to do-why repeat eveything! Here goes........


Sausage, Apple and Cheese Pie
1 pound of cooked (grease drained) sweet sausage, not in casings.
2 cups of red chopped onions.
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and diced into 1/3 inch size.
1/2 cup white cranberry juice.
1 Tablespoon of balsamic vinegar.
2 Tablespoons of freshly chopped sage.
1 cup of freshly sliced mushrooms.
1 prepared piecrust, 2 sheets, thawed.
1 1/4 cup of milk.
4 eggs
1 cup of shredded Gruyere cheese- plain Swiss will work.

After cooking the sausage, drain the excess grease and cool. Save a bit of the grease for saute process. Break the sausage into smaller pieces.
Cook onion, season with salt and pepper, until golden brown. Add apple and 1 tablespoon of the sage. Cook for three minutes. Stir in juice and vinegar and reduce.Transfer to bowl and cool.
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly coat with grease, a springform pan.
Roll out the dough into a 13 inch round and place into pan, slightly pleating or over-lapping the sides. Prick the dough all over and freeze until firm. Roll out the other pastry sheet and cut into 1/2 strips to make the lattice top. Place these strips on a cookie sheet and put in freezer to chill. They are much easier to work with when chilled. Fill the lined pan with whatever you use to weigh the crust down when precooking. Bake until crust is light brown. Cool.
Whisk the eggs and milk together and stir in sausage mixture.. Add the cheese and rest of sage. You can beat another egg to brush the top of the lattice if desired-I didn't. Much of the egg mixture came to the surface anyway. Wrap the outside of the pan with foil incase of a leak. Mine did leak some.
Bake until filling is set, about 1 hour. Garnish with fresh sage and serve warm.

4 comments:

Christine said...

This looks like a wonderful dish to serve to company Jann. I'm assuming that you placed the lattice strips on top of the whole thing before baking?
Love your photo!

wheresmymind said...

Wow...that sounds so great...I'd eat this for breakfast ;)

Katie said...

What a great photo....and the recipe sounds good, too!

And I love your 'dancing teapots'!

Unknown said...

Ooh, that recipe has many of my favorites in it. I'm going to try it, but not photograph it. I could never compete with your photo.