Bubble and Squeak (cabbage and sausage or ground beef)

This dish is one I've been eating since I was a little kid, and the one that made me finally decide to make this blog, which I had considered before. I'd decided it was too large an undertaking, and I'd gone back to looking up recipes on Pinterest.

One of my childhood favorites.

When my garden started bearing, I was as excited as any first-year gardener. Bursting with excitement to cook my very first head of homegrown cabbage, I headed to Pinterest and looked up bubble and squeak, only to find many recipes that said to cook this in a frying pan, and not one called for cream sauce. I didn't want to make their recipe, though. I wanted to make the one my dad used to make us as kids. So I went to my trusty Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and there it was.



Bubble-and-Squeak
Put in layers in a casserole:
1 lb. cooked sausage meat (*if using ground beef, see seasoning note below)
2 cups chopped cabbage (I used raw, but will try cooking it first next time)
Pour over the top 2 cups cream sauce (this recipe makes one cup, so double it)
Optional: Top with bread crumbs.
Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Edges browning in the cast iron dutch oven.

My sister adds potatoes to hers, and it does add some substance, so if you're not paleo, you might try a layer of cooked potatoes at the bottom of the dish. I cooked mine a little too long, so they were more like mashed potatoes, but you could cook them until they are just getting soft, since they will cook some in the casserole. My oldest sister suggested steaming the potatoes along with the cabbage for a few minutes before putting it all together. I might try that next time, as the cabbage was a bit crunchy (or squeaky) when ours finished cooking.

After coming out of oven.

*I did not have sausage, so I used ground beef, which I fried along with 1/2 onion, adding a bit of italian seasoning and a pinch of fennel seeds to give it the sausage flavor, and I thought it turned out fine (although my mother, the purist, was horrified at the thought of using ground beef OR potatoes, and said that wasn't real bubble and squeak). Still, if you've never made this before and you don't have sausage, ground beef is just fine, and I don't think it made much difference TBH.