This iconic pork and cabbage stew from Milan called cassoeula is as much a symbol of the city in its own rustic way as the more refined risotto alla milanese or a cotoletta.

Cassoeula belongs to the same category of pork dishes as minestra del morti or the Soup of the Dead traditionally prepared during the pig slaughtering season in the late autumn and early winter. Back in the days before refrigeration, common folk would prepare these dishes to quickly use up the most perishable parts of the pig right after it was butchered.

Served throughout the season, cassoeula typically appears as a hearty Sunday dinner. But it has particular associations with two Catholic feasts, the feast of Saint Martin on November 11, which marks the beginning of the season, and the feast of Saint Anthony the Abbot on January 17, which ends it.

Cassoeula actually includes a mix of ‘normal’ cuts like the ribs and sausages, plus those perishable odds and ends like the rind, trotter, tail, ear and snout. You braise these with aromatic vegetables and Savoy cabbage, and sometimes a bit of tomato for color, until it’s all falling apart tender. Quite literally snout to tail eating.

Now if you’re squeamish about eating these specialty parts of the pig, no worries. You can make a ‘lite’ version of cassoeula using just the ribs and sausage. The lite version won’t have quite the same taste and texture as a true cassoeula, but it will be tasty all the same.

Cassouela is usually served with freshly made steaming polenta, making for a real stick-to-the-ribs one dish meal. All you need to round things off is a piece of fruit and perhaps a chunk of cheese.

Ingredients

Serves 4-8, depending on appetite and whether you serve it with polenta

500g (1 lb) pork ribs, cut into individual ribs
250g (1/2 lb) mild Italian style sausage, of the ‘verzini‘ type if you can find it (see Notes)

Plus, if you dare, one of more of the following specialty parts:

100g (3-1/2 oz) pork rind
1 pork trotter, cut into half or pieces
1 pork tail
1 pork ear
1 pork snout

To cook the pork:

1 small onion, minced
1 small carrot, minced
1 stalk of celery, minced
a splash of red or white wine
1 head of Savoy cabbage, trimmed of its core and roughly chopped
Water or broth, preferably homemade, q.b.
2-3 Tbs tomato concentrate (or 1 cup of passata) (optional)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Directions

Prepping the specialty pork parts

If you are using the optional pork parts, simmer them in a large pot of well salted water for an hour.

With a skimmer, remove the pork parts and set on a baking rack to drain. Let cool.

Cut the rind and ears into bite-sized squares. Remove the meat from the bones of the trotter. Cut the tail into short lengths. Set everything aside until needed.

Prepping the cabbage

Remove the tough outermost leaves from the Savoy cabbage. Cut the cabbage into quarters vertically, then trim off the tough core from the base of each quarter. Cut each into thick slices, then across into bite sized pieces.

Rinse the cut up cabbage in a large bowl of water. Then transfer the cabbage, still dripping wet, to a braiser or sauté pan.

Simmer, covered, over moderate heat until the cabbage has wilted and reduced by about half. Stir from time to time to prevent scorching.

When the cabbage is done, transfer to a bowl until needed.

Prepping the ribs and sausages

Shortly before you’re ready to assemble and simmer your cassoeula, sauté the pork ribs and sausages in olive oil in a wide skillet until golden brown on all sides. (Keep them well spaced, proceeding in batches if necessary.) Set aside until needed.

Assembling and simmering the cassouela

In a large braiser or cast iron Dutch oven, sauté the onion, carrot and celery in olive oil until soft and translucent. Add a good dollop of tomato concentrate, mix it with the aromatic vegetables and let it cook for another minute or two.

Now add the ribs, sausages and, if using, other pork parts to the pot and turn them in the aromatic vegetables. Gently simmer everything together for a few minutes, seasoning with salt and pepper. Pour over a drizzle of red wine and let it evaporate.

Now add the Savoy cabbage leaves and give it a turn. Moisten with perhaps 500ml (2 cups) water (or broth). Simmer, stirring from time to time, for an hour and a half, or until everything is perfectly tender and the liquid is well reduced. The cassouela should have the consistency of a thick stew, not a soup.

Cassoeula (Milanese Pork and Cabbage Stew)

If needed add more liquid to the pot to keep things moist. If on the other hand, the stew is still brothy when the meat is tender, turn up the heat and cook off the excess liquid.

Serve hot. It’s even better reheated after an overnight rest.

Notes

A cassoeula might involve a rather lengthy multi-step process, but it’s not terribly difficult. If you’ve made an Italian style stew before, then you’ll be on familiar ground. The main challenge lies in finding the right ingredients.

Sausages

A classic cassoeula is made with a local type of pork sausage called verzini. These are mild sausages only about 5cm (2-3 inches) long. They are traditionally accompanied by Savoy cabbage, hence the name. (Savoy cabbage is verza in Italian.)

Purists will tell you it’s not a true cassoeula without these little sausages, but verzini are not easily found outside Lombardy. You could make them at home, following this recipe from my cyber friend Manu of Manu’s Menu (sadly no longer active). Otherwise, we need to content ourselves with a simulacrum using another kind of Italian style sausage.

A number of Italian recipes call for luganega, which are easily found many places. I don’t have easy access to luganega where I live, but there’s a local Italian deli that makes rather small (actually standard size by Italian standards) mild sausage that I simply cut in half to roughly mimic the size and shape of verzini. If you’re dealing with those enormous supermarket ‘Italian’ sausages, you’ll need to cut them into several lengths.

Specialty pork parts

An even bigger challenge in making a traditional cassoeula is finding the specialty cuts. There aren’t many mainstream supermarkets where I live where you can find pork rind and trotters, let alone cuts like the ear and snout. Here, ethnic markets, in particular a nearby Chinese supermarket, came to the rescue. Latin markets, too, are likely to have at least some of these cuts. The good news is that (other than the ears, for some reason) they’re dirt cheap.

Traditionalists will tell you that a real cassoeula will, by definition, include at least some of these specialty parts. After all, the whole purpose of this dish was to make sure no part of the slaughtered pig went to waste. Moreover, these parts contain much fat and collagen, which give the cassoeula its characteristic “sticky” unctuous mouthfeel.

I think you should try the original version at least once. That said, however, there are plenty of contemporary recipes, in Italian and aimed at Italians, for “lite” versions of cassoeula that don’t include them.

Other ingredients

Savoy cabbage is the other main ingredient. It is much loved by northern Italians, more than the green cabbage favored here in the US. Cognoscenti will tell you that the cabbage is at its best after the first frost, which tenderizes the vegetables. But unless you’re buying from a farm market, that advice will be hard to follow. And if you can’t find Savoy cabbage where you live, then green cabbage (cavolo cappuccino in Italian) will do.

Traditionalists also consider tomato a kind of heresy, but many cooks use a little bit, as indicated here, just to lend for color. Do be discrete if you do use it. You don’t want an actual red sauce.

Variations

The exactly mix of cuts varies from place to place and even family to family. So use what you can find. And in Novara, they say, they add duck leg to the mix as well.

The cooking methods can vary as well, at least at the margins. In some recipes, you brown the ribs and/or sausage in the aromatic vegetables in the usual Italian manner, not separately. In others, you add the sausages raw without an initial browning. A few recipes tell you to blanch the specialty cuts only briefly, say 10 minutes, but the vast majority call for a long boil. These cuts are quite fatty and an hour long initial boil removes most of their fat, leaving just enough to enrich you cassoeula without it becoming overwhelmingly greasy.

Many recipes call for braising the meats and cabbage in a fairly minimal amount of water, topping up as needed with just enough to keep things moist.

In some recipes, you add the cabbage directly to the pot without pre-wilting. In others, you add the cabbage to the aromatics first, then the meats go on top. If you cook the cabbage for the full 90 minutes as directed here, it will tend to fall apart. If you like your cabbage to retain its individuality, then hold it back for the first 45 minutes or so. In fact, there are some recipes where you add it only for the last 20 minutes or so.

Making ahead

Like all stews, you can make cassoeula entirely ahead. In fact, as noted above, it is even more delicious when it has a day to rest in the fridge. This also makes degreasing easy if you find the result just too fatty.

You can prep the specialty parts and cabbage ahead and then make the rest at your leisure. As indicated, I prefer to brown the ribs and sausages just before assembling the dish, but you could also prep them as well if you like.

Origins of cassoeula

The most popular story about cassoeula goes that the recipe was brought to Milan by a Spanish soldier during Spanish Hapsburg rule over Milan in the 16th century. He taught his local sweetheart, a cook to a Milanese noble family, to make it. She then made it for her masters and the rest, as they say, is history. There is reason to doubt the story For one thing, this isn’t the kind of fare that was likely to wind up on the tables of the nobility. But I suspect there’s some truth to it, in particular the Spanish connection.

Given the supposed Spanish origins of the dish, it also seems to me like that the name cassoeula is a corruption of the Spanish word cazuela, or casserole, though some people say the word derives from local Milanese dialect words for spoon or casserole.

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