Sausages and Garlic

Chinese sausages and sliced raw garlic is about as easy as Taiwanese food gets (unless you're in the habit of stuffing your own sausages, I guess). Sausages are a yummy thing to keep in the freezer for those days when I don't want to cook, and there's always garlic in the house.

Cabbage sliced thin and stir fried with dried shrimp (I pour in the soaking liquid for extra fishiness) is somehow the perfect accompaniment to sausages. Everything, of course, is eaten with rice. This is the Taiwanese equivalent of a TV dinner. Aside from the rice, everything else takes about fifteen minutes. Here's what I did:

When you prepare your rice for steaming, put two links of sausage and a cut up cob of corn into the raw rice. The corn and sausage will steam, saving you cooking time. More importantly, they'll also impart a little flavor to the rice. Meanwhile, soak a handful of dried shrimp in a few tablespoons of warm water.

When the rice is done (during its resting time), slice up some cabbage. Sautee the dried shrimp in some oil until fragrant, then stir fry the cabbage. Add the liquid, cover, and let the cabbage cook through. Remove the lid and stir fry a little more to evaporate most of the liquid. Set aside. Slice the sausages, and use the same pot you used for the cabbage to brown the sausage on all sides. Slice up the garlic while you do this, and put the corn on the same dish as the cabbage. Voila! You'll be done in about as much time as it took me to type this post.

Health update: guess who's up to jogging 2.5 miles without stopping? One of these days I think I might actually conquer this thing that runners call "the wall!"