Recipe corner: Sausage and kale gratin

This is my take on a dish called panade, which, I must admit, I knew nothing about until I started to look for ways to use up some kale lurking at the bottom of my fridge. Hugh F-W described it in an old Guardian column as a sort of cabbage, onion and stale bread gratin which doesn't sound immediately tasty. It certainly isn’t attractive which is why I haven’t bothered to include a picture. An unattractive, rustic dish combined with my lamentable food photography skills equals a picture that looks like nothing on Earth.

I liked the idea of the layers of bread, cheese and cabbage all melded together by the stock. But why not add a bit of additional interest in the form of crumbled up sausage meat? My mind was going along the route of a pimped up stuffing which can often contain some element of offal. For my first version, I used a bit of haggis that had been languishing in the freezer, for the second, some crumbled up slices of black pudding. Both excellent, although I know neither ingredient is to everyone’s taste so I have suggested sausages in the ingredients list below. Incidentally, while I have included weights and measures in the recipe it is really the kind of dish that can be adapted to suit individual taste. If you want to be a bit heavy handed with the cheese, or whack in another sausage that you happen to have lying around, I certainly won’t tell.

This can be a side dish or a main event depending on how hungry you are. It is rustic food, a meal for an Autumn evening of long shadows and air that nips at your fingers.

Ingredients

150g curly kale
Tsp butter
Salt, pepper, nutmeg to taste

3 small onions, thinly sliced
Tsp vegetable oil
Tsp butter
3 standard size sausages, meat squeezed from casings
3 large sage leaves, finely shredded or generous tsp dried sage
Salt, pepper

50g cheddar cheese, grated
3 slices of bread, crusts removed, cubed
250ml vegetable stock

Heat together the oil and butter in a small pan and then turn the flame beneath them down to the lowest possible setting. Add the onions and stir well to coat in the fat. As they just begin to cook, add the sage and season well and then cover and cook for around 20 mins until golden or soft. Stir regularly and add a splash of water if they look to be sticking.

Meanwhile, bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Cook the kale for 4-5 minutes and then drain and rinse under the cold tap to prevent it cooking any further. Squeeze as much liquid from the kale as possible and then return to the pan and melt through the butter over a gentle heat, seasoning well with pepper and mace.

Preheat the oven to 180 (160 fan) and boil the kettle to make up the stock.

After 20 mins, add the sausagemeat to the onions and combine well. Cook for a further 5-10 mins until the meat is beginning to crust and colour.

Place half of the sausage and onion mixture in the bottom of a small, preferably buttered, gratin dish and top with half of the bread and the cheese. Then spread across all of the kale. Finish with another layer of sausage, then bread and cheese.

Pour over the hot stock. Cover the dish and bake in the oven for 35 minutes then remove the cover and bake for a further 15 or until the whole lot is a golden, bubbling mass. Allow to sit for 10-15 minutes before serving.