To Eat or not to Eat

On the first day of the new year I give you a treat.
My dear husband did the cooking and he also did the writing. Enjoy!

Am ersten Tag des neuen Jahres gibt es etwas Besonderes.
Meine Bessere Hälfte hat heute das Kochzepter geschwungen und den Text komponiert. Er schreibt aber nur auf auf Englisch. 
Trotzdem viel Vergnügen!

På den første dagen av det nye året har vi en gjest på bloggen min.
Gubben laget maten idag og han skrev også teksten. Alt er på engelsk. Håper du liker det!


To Eat or not to Eat
I have rambled on about my good childhood memories a couple of times before, so you have to bear with me if I do it again.

One of my fondest memories is about eating a very favorite dish. It was served every year on New Years Eve, at my granny's place. The German name is "Grünkohl", over here it is called Kale. I kinda announced that the other day. If you pay real good attention here, you might learn about a good dish. So here we go:

This is what you need for two hungry people:

2 pounds of Kale
1 pound (or more) of baby potatoes (gotto be real small)
2 smoked sausages of farmer-style variety
1/2 pound of smoked pork chops
a handful of cut bacon
1/2 of a midsize onion
salt, pepper and SUGAR
1/2 cup of fat like lard, butter or magarine (lard is best)

You start with cooking the small potatoes. 
While they are cooking you take the kale and chop it with a big knife. Don't chop up the stringy stems in the middle. (you throw them away) 

Lots of kale is needed!

Take a big enough pot and fill in 1 inch of water. The chopped up kale goes into that pot to be cooked. At this point it will look like you have way too much kale. Don't worry, it will be of a much smaller volume, once it is cooked.

You add the fat, salt, pepper and some sugar to the kale. Let it cook a while. Meanwhile you cut up some bacon and put that on top of the kale. Also add the two smoked sausages and the smoked pork chops. Is your pot big enough? It should. You put a lit on and reduce the heat.

Your small potatoes are now cooked ready, so you pour off the hot water and replace with cold water, so the potatoes are covered. They are now cooling down. Consequently you can grab them and peel them. Put them aside. Now, if your potatoes aren't really, really small you better cut them in halves. They NEED to be small and preferably round, but halves will work)

Potatoes are ready to go...

Do you have a steel pan? Take it out. (Teflon is no good for this..) Put margarine into the pan and melt it. You pour the potatoes into the pan and put in the oven. You add generously with granulated sugar. The sugar will melt and create a caramel layer around your (rolling) potatoes.

Caramelized Potatoes, Yummy!

We did that part on the outside BBQ. If you have a Teflon pan only this might not work, or you ruin your pan.

As soon as the caramelized sugar has turned the potatoes nicely brown you are done.

The dish will be served as shown and you might want to have a dark ale with it. It's heaven!

If you absolutely don't like caramalized potatoes, because you are a diabetic, you can make it with salted potatoes, but hey it's not the original.

The dish originates from the east coast of Schleswig-Holstein, Northern Germany, and is traditionally made during the winter. (there is no kale in the summer) It is a dish which will keep you warm during a cold winter night.

Bon Appetite!