Grilled Sausages With Garlic Broccoli

As it says right there in this pic, these are garlic sausages. Many different types could be used here, of course -- Italian, Polish, Hungarian, Cajun, mushroom, etc. All delicious and all easy to obtain. In fact, it is this universal love for sausages in some form or other (the Chinese, for example, have plenty of their own) and the ease of getting them which leads us to the obvious --: why not grill them?

Sausages can of course be boiled, roasted in the oven, broiled, or fried, but somehow the grill seems most appealing. It would be great if the grill were the sort you have when you have hiked into the mountains and are sitting around a campfire. The sausages are crackling, suspended somehow over the open fire. But most of us will be content with a backyard grill. Second best, but still mighty delicious.

Garlic sausages. The broccoli here will be cooked in garlic also, but in fact this combination of two items containing garlic is in no way overpowering. The garlic flavors in both items is subtle and appealing, and the grilling helps make this so.

On some sort of preparation-simplicity vs. deliciousness ratio, a ratio I pursue in just about all culinary matters, this meal ranks high.

Grilled tomatoes go well with any kind of grilled sausage. These tomatoes are tomatoes-on-the-vine (which we got on sale), but Roma tomatoes or beefsteak tomatoes would be good also. If you want to get fancy, add heirloom tomatoes here, even yellow ones.

A touch of olive oil on each is a flavor enhancer. When I speak of olive oil, I always mean EVOO, of course.

The tomatoes can be grilled on the top rack, sausages closer to the fire. We want the tomatoes to retain some texture, not to turn mushy (which among other things makes them hard to get off of the grill), and the top rack helps us achieve this.

Some say that flavors from the sausages flavor the tomatoes above them, as the heat rises. You would have to have pretty amazing taste buds, though, to taste this, wouldn't you?

The sausages cook faster than you might expect. And they are really beginning to look beautiful, good enough to eat, you might even say.

They take on color quickly and should be turned to prevent charring. Actually, I personally like a little bit of charring, though just a little bit. It emphasizes the grilling taste.

The tomatoes cook at about the same rate up there on the top shelf.

Once the tomatoes have been turned, they take only a minute longer, at most.

These are done just right and will be a delicious companion for the sausages on the dinner plate.

What a magnificent beginning to this simple meal!

'Now it is on to the broccoli.

Forward march, the broccoli is just as easily mastered as are the sausages and the tomatoes.

Smash as many cloves of garlic as you dare. The sausages contain garlic, as we know, but don't let that make us shy about adding garlic here to the broccoli. I have prepared this twice the amount shown here, and the result was still delicious.

Saute in EVOO until the cloves take on a little color.

I added extra EVOO to this later, after the broccoli was added.

This was from a package of broccoli florets.

That beats cutting broccoli apart -- particularly if you are in a hurry. Slicing a full crown of broccoli or two into florets, though, allows you more scope in shaping the final meal -- it basically boils down to incorporating more of the stem, which is just as delicious as the florets and which has a distinctive texture.

Actually, we could throw in some mushrooms here at the same time. They would add a lot and go well with garlic sausage. Mushrooms are always good.

I added more oil while sautéing these florets, then near the end I added a little vegetable broth.

To soften things up, just a tad.

Colorful as well as delicious.

This is just the first helping. I want to show some restraint at least at the beginning.

Of course if we had had guests, there would have been a lot more sausages on the grill and on the plate.

Something to drink with this? Red wine? White? A dark ale? An Arnold Palmer?

The traditional saying is that "you don't want to see sausages being made, you just want to enjoy their flavor." Sometimes to this is added that the other thing you don't want to see being made is a new law as the bill passes through Congress (or Parliament, etc).

Well, sausages have been made since men lived in caves, and it would be difficult to expect that something with such an ancient origin lacks anything crude. The part about enjoying the flavor, though, is right on.

Sausages have classical origins as well as primitive ones. They appear in The Odyssey, and Aristophanes made them central to his play The Knights, in which a sausage-vendor replaces a sort of Donald-Trump-like character (should the Donald ever achieve power). Aristophanes is probably also the source of the comparison between making sausages and making laws, for he compares the politics of his day to the boiling of sausage meet.

Real Meal. Unlike fancy food mags, where images are hyped and food itself is secondary, all pix shown here are from a real meal, prepared and eaten by me and my friends. No throwing anything away till perfection is achieved. This is the real deal --- a Real Meal.