Pasta with Sausage and Tomato Sauce

Pasta with Sausage and Tomato Sauce, originally uploaded by essgee51.

[yet another disclaimer about lack of recent posts]

The lesson I learned yesterday was that I'd been undercooking my pasta sauces. This time, I waited an extra 10 or so minutes till the sauce was thick and, well, saucy, pretty much all the fluid evaporated and bits of crust were starting to form on the bottom of the pan. Level up! The scads of fresh herbs in the garden helped as well.

This recipe makes enough to very generously sauce 1/2 lb. of pasta, or barely sauce 1 lb.

• 2 T olive oil (will reduce amount and render the sausages first next time)
• 1 c onion, chopped
• red pepper flakes to taste (used about 1 t)
• 1/2 package turkey kielbasa sausage, sliced into 1" rounds (about 2-1/2 regular links or one long one)
• 2 14 oz. cans diced tomatoes
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4 cup parsley, chopped, plus more for garnish
• 3-4 long chive stalks, chopped, plus more for garnish

Boil water and cook pasta. Reserve about a cup of pasta water, just in case.

Meanwhile, put oil in a skillet over medium heat. Once it's hot, add the red pepper flakes and onions. Cook for 3-5 minutes, till onions begin to soften.

Add sausage. Cook till meat begins to brown, flipping halfway through, 5-7 minutes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.

Add tomatoes and some of their juice. Turn heat to medium-high and cook, stirring occasionally, till mixture is thick and saucy, 20-30 minutes.

Turn off heat. Stir herbs into sauce. If it's too thick, add some of the pasta water and mix well. Adjust seasoning then serve over pasta.

Pasta with Sausage, Cream and Cheese

I was ready to have leftover  split pea soup (made with ham hocks, naturally) for dinner before I came across this recipe. John kindly bought ingredients, and we had a rich, flavorful dinner. Next time: more blue cheese (we could hardly taste it, even after tripling the amount in the recipe). This would also be a good one-pot meal with a bunch of spinach or other leafy greens added. Tweaked version below.

• 8 oz. pasta
• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• 8 oz. sweet Italian sausage, cut into 1 in. lengths (6 oz. in original)
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/4 cup loosely packed basil, chopped (oregano in the original)
• 1-1/2 oz. blue cheese (1/2 oz in the original)
• 1/4 cup half and half (cream in the original)
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated, for garnish  (a treat, as we didn't have Parmesan handy)

Bring lots of salted water to a boil and cook pasta till done. Reserve a half cup or so of pasta water.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add sausage and brown, about 5-10 minutes.

Add wine, turn to high, and reduce for about 2 minutes. Add herbs, blue cheese and cream, cooking till the cheese is melted and the liquid has begun to thicken.

Mix with the pasta, adding pasta water or additional cheese till a nice, saucy consistency has been reached. Serve, passing around Parmigiano-Reggiano/Parmesan to garnish.

Summer Staple: Sausage and Couscous

I keep forgetting what an awesome summer food couscous is - quick, light, addition-friendly and especially good when cold. This is more a sample recipe than a base - just happens to be the one variant we had. A single box made three meals for two people: Saturday night dinner, with lamb sausages; Sunday brunch, with spicy longaniza and vinegar dipping sauce (pictured above); and Sunday snacks, with salami, while we waited in line for "One-Man Star Wars Trilogy" tickets. The lamb sausages were simply boiled; the longaniza, cooked in 1/4 cup of water till the liquid evaporated, then browned over low heat for 3-5 minutes in the rendered fat.

• 1 box Near East plain couscous (one day I'll find and try cooking the real stuff)
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 1 summer squash, halved and sliced thin
• 3-4 scallions, chopped
• 1-2 tbsp. lemon juice, to taste
• salt and pepper to taste

In a saucepan with a cover, add the olive oil to two cups of water and bring to a boil. Add couscous, mix, cover and set aside, off the heat. (I actually added the squash at this point as well, because I wanted it slightly softened but not cooked.)
When couscous is cooked (about 5-7 minutes), mix with scallions, squash (or whatever other vegetables and/or nuts you're using). Season with lemon juice, salt and pepper. Serve hot, cold or at room temperature.

New Year's Eve

Eager to avoid the king of amateur nights (and a cold, rainy one at that, in DC), John and I opted to stay in and indulge ourselves, without the effort of cooking. Behold, our lovely repast, pieced together from both our fridges:

Clockwise, from midnight: sharp cheddar, dry sausage (thanks, Norah!), goat cheese, Laughing Cow baby bels and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Mustard in the center, olives, macademia nuts (courtesy of John's father) and crackers on the side. And of course, the celebratory Islay.

The roasted garlic was a late but welcome arrival to the table.

 

And for dessert? Baked apple à la mode (and à la Bittman).

Good food, good drink, good movies (The Return of the Thin Man on AMC), perhaps some Xboxing later -- and, most importantly, great company. Who could ask for anything more?

Happy New Year, everyone!

Today's Bento

I've steamed other things in my rice cooker before, so I'm not sure why it took me so long to wilt young spinach leaves in a strainer while my sausages boiled. While the magic bag is definitely handy, I'll have to start timing various veggies in both the cooker and atop a boiling saucepan of something else.

So, today I'm having:

• 2 lamb sausages (tasty on their own, but with a small container of spicy vinegar for added kick)
• garlic steamed rice
• baby spinach

They all fit together nicely in a square plastic container. I'll probably grab a banana at some point today as well.

The Seasonal Bento

My lunch looks like fall, today: fluffy white rice; soft yellow-green sauteed artichokes, interspersed with golden-brown bits of garlic and garnished with a bright yellow lemon slice; dappled tan and Maillard-brown sausages, speckled with green inside. The most intense colors congegrated in the top container: deep purple and brown Nicoise olives, five dark green cornichons and two red waxen mini-wheels of Laughing Cow cheese.

Brunch, Bentos, Beets - and Andrew Bird

Laziness has led to one of these all-in-one posts. Saw St. Vincent and Andrew Bird last night - a wonderful show (there's a pretty good write-up at DCist, which alas doesn't mention the new duet "Lusitania" - one of the concert's highlights). I'd never seen St. Vincent live before, and am now regretting not catching her earlier this year at the Cat - her music's much more powerful, complex and interesting live. The Bird portion of the evening seemed even tighter and better than his last 9:30 show, even before taking the St. Vincent collaborations into account.

UPDATE: Found footage of their "Oh Sister" cover, complete with the utterly charming mess-up.

And now to brunch. Last Sunday, we had rosemary and lamb sausages (from Canales at Eastern Market - one of their in-house products), couscous and spinach - which is how I discovered yet another time-saving shortcut. Chop and wash the spinach (nice and fresh from one of the weekend vendors - a bulging plastic grocery bag full cost only $3!) while the water is coming to a boil. Once you've added the couscous, let the water return to a boil, wait a few seconds (so the greens have a fairly solid clump of carbs to land on), throw in the spinach, put the lid on the pot, wait a few more seconds then remove from heat. The spinach was perfectly steamed after a 5-6 minute wait.

Did much the same thing with some chicken and portebello mushroom sausages for Monday's bento; Wednesday and Thursdays consisted of John's meatloaf (UPDATE: recipe here), rice and a few cornichons to counterpoint the ketchupy sweetness.

And now to the week's pickling - beets, this time. I can't find the recipe we used right now, but John put up a bunch of beets, 6 eggs and an onion in two jars. Just 24 hours later, they were delicious - even more so another day later. I can still remember the tart, sweet, earthiness of the egg he fed me right before we left for the concert last night.

Today's Bento

Between doing laundry and watching the Phillies dismantle the Dodgers last night, I managed to put together a good little lunch:

• boiled sausage (with spicy suka - Filipino cane vinegar infused with garlic and chiles - on the side, of course!)
  
• double garlic fried rice (about 2 cups of leftover garlic steamed rice fried in peanut oil with another tbsp. or so of chopped garlic, 3 chopped scallions and soy sauce to taste)
  
• sauteed spinach (cook a heaping tbsp of chopped garlic and 1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes over medium-high heat for a couple of minutes. Add a 10-oz. bag of spinach, roughly chopped, and cook, stirring often, till greens are wilted. Season with salt and pepper to taste, then drizzle with lemon juice just before nomming)
• an orange, a bit of Laughing Cow cheese and some garlic-flavored cracker nuts for snacks

Even hours after everything was packed away, the apartment smelled like the paradise where all good garlic cloves go when they die - a rich, warming aroma for a cold autumn weekend. Though I'm getting home late tonight, I'll hopefully have the energy and inclination to cook the leftover leeks and pickle the cute little cukes I got at EM yesterday.

Today's Bento

While today's food wasn't carted to work in Mr. Bento, I'm using the term to denote a packed lunch for ease of tagging. It consisted of a can of Amy's minestrone, a banana, some couscous with scallions, and boiled sausages with a small container of sili suka (aka spicy vinegar). Note to self: next time, chop up a few handfuls of spinach and add them to the couscous, or throw in some frozen peas and carrots with the grains.

Tomorrow's Bento: Couscous and Snozzages

This variant on couscous with basil, tomatoes and zucchini made just enough for lunch for both me and John. In deference to his ailing plant, I did away with the basil; I also halved the couscous and oil, but kept all other proportions the same. Win-win: fridge cleared of perishables, and delicious, healthy noms for tomorrow made. It's also a one-container meal - which is handy, since I won't have to drag Mr. Bento to the Los Campesinos! concert tomorrow.

Tomorrow's Bento

I've not been as remiss with the cooking as it may seem. For one thing, John has been doing a lot of cooking for us lately, including a lovely chicken dish with tomatoes, roasted red peppers, basil and orzo and a delicious by-the-Bittman bolognese sauce just a couple of days ago. For another, I've been mostly repeating old standards or rushing through too-simple-to-be-written-up dishes. Not that these are excuses.

At any rate, here are the contents of tomorrow's Mr. Bento, from top to bottom:

1. Cherry tomatoes with Laughing Cow cheese wheels
2. Artichoke hearts sauteed with garlic, anchovies and crushed red pepper flakes (next time, I'll add more garlic, dry the [canned] 'chokes more thoroughly and try to get a bit more caramelization going)
   
3. Garlic steamed rice (a new favorite: When making rice with a rice cooker, add a small head of garlic - this particular time I used about 9 cloves, peeled and crushed but not minced - to the rice and water, then cook as normal. The rice around the garlic develops a faint tinge of sweetness, and the cloves themselves remain whole but can be mashed wonderfully into the rest of it)
4. Boiled sausages with spicy suka (Filipino cane vinegar infused with garlic and chiles)
   

Refrigerator Remix: Braised Endive

So there I was, determined to neither waste nor want (and on a mission to fill at least one of Mr. Bento's compartments with greenery goodness). Found in the back of the fridge: four endives, a fortnight old but still in good shape. To Bittman! (The original recipe, from How to Cook Everything, is below, with my tweaks in italics.) Alas, the pantry contained neither prosciutto nor decent broth, but I did have some aging carrots and celery. Why not hearken to both Ruhlman's and Bittman's disdain for pre-prepared stock, add an onion to the mix, and make a mirepoix of it? And, hey, how about some of that garlic? While we're at it, why not mince some of that kielbasa in the freezer as a substitute for the prosciutto?

Note: Bradley, John and I ended up making an impromptu dinner out of this and John's first-ever attempt at risotto while watching the No Reservations: Philippines episode - a rather greens-and-grains heavy meal to be eating while lusting after sisig and lechon.

• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 4 endives, trimmed at the base
• 1/4 cup proscuitto or other minced ham (substituted equivalent amount of minced sausage)
• 1/2 cup chicken, beef or vegetable stock, or water (doubled to 1 cup of water, because of the added vegetables)
• 1 small carrot, chopped into 1 in. chunks (not in original recipe)
• 1 celery stalk, chopped into 1 in. chunks (not in original recipe)
• 1 medium onion, roughly chopped (not in original recipe)
• 5-6 cloves garlic, unpeeled (not in original recipe)
  
• salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
• 1 tsp. lemon juice or white wine vinegar

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a non-stick skillet that can be covered. Add the endives and cook, turning once or twice, until they begin to brown.

Add the meat, braising liquid, vegetables, salt and pepper. Cover and cook on low or medium-low until very tender, about 45 mins. (took me about an hour).

Uncover and turn heat up to evaporate remaining liquid (I liked the resulting broth, so I skipped this step).

Drizzle with lemon juice or vinegar and serve.