Spaghetti Squash Lasagna

Inspiration: I browse a lot of food blogs, and sometimes when I see a recipe, I know right away that I want to try it soon. This was one of those recipes. When I ran across it on My Kitchen Addiction, I immediately put it on my menu. Prior to this fall and winter season, I hadn’t eaten much (if any) squash before, so I’ve been on the lookout for new squash recipes to try.

What we Loved: This dinner was beyond fantastic. The lasagna was hearty, meaty, cheesy, and full of vegetables. We sat down to this supper after a long and busy Sunday afternoon, and it was so comforting. B said that it reminded him a lot of baked spaghetti, but better. The squash was nice and tender, and its mellow flavor really went well with the richer vegetable flavors of the spinach and tomatoes. We used a mild pork sausage that added a great meaty and hearty aspect to the dish, and there were nice strings of gooey mozzarella throughout the dish. My favorite part of the whole meal was the crusty brown cheese on top of the lasagna. Nothing beats that browned cheese flavor!

Helpful Hints: You could go a lot of places with this meal. I used mild pork sausage, but you could really use any type of ground meat that you prefer. As for the tomato sauce, I mixed a can of crushed tomatoes with salt, pepper, a good amount of oregano, and two chopped tomatoes. You could use your favorite marinara, or even a white sauce or pesto sauce would be great.

Spaghetti Squash Lasagna
Source: My Kitchen Addiction

I made a couple of changes to the recipe. Here’s the recipe as I made it.

1 large spaghetti squash
1 pound pork sausage
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup frozen spinach, thawed
4 cups tomato sauce
6 oz mozzarella cheese, freshly grated
1 oz Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, freshly grated

1. Preheat the oven to 375.

2. Poke the squash all over with a fork, creating holes. Roast the squash in the oven for 1 hour.

3. Remove the squash from the oven, and cut it in half. Allow to cool, and then scrape out the seeds. Scrape the spaghetti squash strands into a large bowl.

4. Brown the sausage in a saute pan over medium heat. When it is cooked through, add the onions, and saute until the onions are translucent. Add the garlic and spinach, and mix to combine. Remove from the heat.

5. Add half of the spaghetti squash to the bottom of a 9 x 13 baking dish. Spread evenly and flatten with a spatula. Top the squash with half of the sausage mixture and then half of the tomato sauce. Cover with half of the mozzarella cheese.

7. Add the second half of the squash, sausage, and tomato sauce to the dish. Cover with the rest of the cheese.

8. Bake uncovered for 30 minutes, and then broil for 2-3 minutes, until the top is golden and the cheese is bubbly.  Allow to rest for about 10-15 minutes before serving.

Angel Hair Pasta with Italian Sausage Marinara Sauce

Inspiration: Ever since the weather started cooling off a little bit, I’ve been craving a nice plate of spaghetti. Last week, I found myself with a big bag of very ripe tomatoes that B’s parents gave to us from their garden. They needed to be used fairly quickly, and I happened to have a pound of Italian sausage stowed away in the freezer. The stars had aligned. :)

What we Loved: I’m really not a big meat-eater these days, almost always preferring seafood or vegetarian meals. That being said, I really, truly adore things like bacon or Italian sausage. You know, the healthy stuff. I’ve never had a meat sauce for spaghetti made only with Italian sausage, though, so I was excited to give it a try. And it was so good! I plan to always use Italian sausage for my spaghetti in the future. It gave the sauce such a spicy, rich, almost pizza-like flavor. I served the sauce over angel hair pasta, because it’s B’s favorite kind of pasta, and I topped it with a nice sprinkle of fresh Parmesan. I was worried that the sauce might be too heavy for a delicate pasta, but it worked great.

Helpful Hints: I used a combination of fresh tomatoes and tomato paste as the base of my sauce, but you could certainly use canned tomatoes, tomato puree, or tomato sauce. I put most of my tomatoes in a food processor to completely puree them, and then I added an additional chopped tomato to the sauce for some texture. If you like your sauce without any tomato chunks, just puree them all. My pureed tomatoes resulted in a very, very thin sauce, which is why I added a good portion of tomato paste to thicken. Simmering uncovered also helped to thicken.

Similar Recipes: spaghetti with turkey meatballs, angel hair pasta with sundried tomatoes and goat cheese

Angel Hair Pasta with Italian Sausage Marinara Sauce
Source: Marinara sauce recipe adapted from Ina Garten

I used Ina Garten’s recipe as direction, but I changed it around quite a bit. Here’s the recipe as I made it.

Extra virgin olive oil
1 Vidalia onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup red wine (I used cabernet franc)
4 large tomatoes, 5 for tomato chunks in the sauce
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 pound Italian sausage
Angel hair pasta
Freshly grated Parmesan cheeese

1. Heat a pot of water to a boil. Add the four tomatoes, and cook for approximately 2-3 minutes, until the skin starts to just barely peel. Remove the tomatoes from the water, let them cool, and peel off the skins. Place the tomatoes in a food processor, and puree until the sauce reaches the desired consistency. The sauce will be very thin. If you’d like, chop an additional tomato, and add it to the sauce.

2. Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a large saute pan. Add the onion, and saute over medium heat until it is cooked through and starting to brown, approximately 5 minutes. Add the garlic, and saute for one more minute.

3.Add the wine, and scrape any brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Cook until almost all of the liquid evaporates, approximately 5 minutes.

3. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, oregano, salt, and pepper to the pan. Mix well, and let simmer uncovered.

4. While the sauce is simmering, crumble the sausage into a dry skillet. Cook over medium heat until browned. Drain the sausage, and add it to the sauce. Simmer for an additional 15-20 minutes.

5. Cook the angel hair pasta according to package instructions. Serve the sauce atop the pasta. Top with freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

Tomato Paella with Chorizo

Cuisine: Spanish

Inspiration: At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ve been trying really hard the last few weeks to clean out all of the food from my freezer and my pantry. B and I are travelling to Europe next Friday for two weeks (!) and I really don’t want any excess food hanging out around our house. I picked out this recipe to use a few links of extra chorizo that I had stashed in the freezer and the last of a box of arborio rice. Though I love picking out my menu based on whatever I stumble across at a given time, making meals out of leftover odds and ends can be really fun, too.

What we Loved: This is going to be a permanent recipe in our house. I’ve mentioned before that these one-pot, super flavorful and spicy rice dishes are some of my favorite meals, and this one is no exception. I absolutely adored this, and B deemed it to be the best of the rice-style dishes that I’ve tried so far. The flavors were just amazing. The chorizo slices add a great, spicy-sausage flavor to the dish, and the layer of tomatoes cooked on top of the rice get nice and soft, with all of the rich tomato juices running down into the rice. With the additional flavors of tomato paste, paprika, saffron, and cilantro, this recipe really is fantastic.

Helpful Hints: I’m not sure what I did wrong, but I ended up having to cook this dish for much longer than stated in the original recipe. The original cooking time is stated as 15 minutes, but I ended up having to keep mine in the oven for somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour before the rice was cooked through.  I’d make sure to allow for extra cooking time just in case. The extra time wasn’t a problem, because the meal still turned out perfectly, but it was definitely necessary for my rice to cook all of the way through.

Similar Recipes: sausage and shrimp jambalaya, shrimp creole, fisherman’s rice

Tomato Paella with Chorizo

Source: Pinch my Salt, originally from Mark Bittman’s recipe in the New York Times

I made a few changes to the ingredients and the cooking time, as noted above. Here’s the recipe as I made it.

3 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 lbs tomatoes, cut into thick wedges
Kosher salt and black pepper
Extra virgin olive oil
1 Vidalia onion, diced
2 large garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
A large pinch of saffron threads
2 teaspoons paprika
2 cups arborio rice
6 oz. Spanish chorizo, sliced
A handful of cilantro, for garnish

1. Heat the chicken broth in a saucepan.

2. Put the tomatoes in a bowl, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and drizzle with olive oil. Toss to coat.

3. Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a large saute pan or paella pan. Add the onion, and saute for 2-3 minutes, or until softened. Add the garlic, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cook for an additional minute. Stir in the tomato paste, saffron, and paprika, and cook for a minute more. Add the rice, and cook for another 1-2 minutes. Add the chorizo and the chicken broth, and stir to combine.

4. Put the tomato wedges on top of the rice, and drizzle with the juices from the bowl. Put the pan in the oven and roast at 450, undisturbed, for 15 minutes. Check to see if the liquid is evaporated and if the rice is cooked through, and if it’s not, continue cooking. I ended up cooking mine for somewhere close to an hour.

5. Remove the pan from the oven. Sprinkle with fresh cilantro and serve.

Fisherman’s Rice

Cuisine: Southwest

Inspiration: In February I made this jambalaya, and I ended up thinking that it was one of the best recipes to cross my dinner plate in months. It’s not a particularly complicated, unique, or even authentic recipe, but there’s just something about the flavors of one-pot, rice-based recipes that I just adore. The jambalaya recipe has become one of my favorite meals, so I was very excited last week to find a similar recipe, but with a very different flavor spin, at We Heart Food. This is one of those recipes that has been stuck in the back of my head ever since I found it.

What we Loved: I knew that I’d love everything about this dish before I even made it, and I did. The rice has a great tangy bite from pureed tomatillos that are added at the end of cooking, and I loved all of the different flavors and textures. The great thing about a one-pot dish is that you taste so many different flavors in each bite. There’s a tang to the rice, a spiciness to the chorizo,  a cool, buttery taste to the avocado, and a fresh seafood taste to the shrimp. I could eat dishes like this every day and be a very happy girl.

Helpful Hints: If you’re not concerned about a particularly healthful meal, I don’t think that it would be a bad idea to up the chorizo to about 6-8 oz or so. I used 3 oz and restrained myself from adding more, since this was supposed to be a healthy weeknight meal and all, but both B and I particularly enjoyed the chorizo flavor in this dish.

Similar Recipes: sausage and shrimp jambalaya 

Fisherman’s Rice
Source: We Heart Food, originally from The Border Cookbook

I only made a few minor changes to the recipe. Here’s the recipe as I made it.

3 oz bulk chorizo
Extra virgin olive oil
1 medium red onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup uncooked rice
2 cups chicken stock
1 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp white vinegar
1 bay leaf
8 oz shrimp, cooked as desired (I sauteed mine for about 2 minutes with olive oil, salt, and pepper)
1 Haas avocado, diced
2 medium tomatillos, husked and pureed
Cilantro, to garnish

1. Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a saute pan, and saute the chorizo over medium heat. When it is just browned, add the onion, garlic, and rice, and saute briefly until the rice is translucent.

2. Pour in the stock, soy sauce, and vinegar. Add the bay leaf, and bring to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer, and cook for approximately 15 minutes until most of the liquid is absorbed.

3. Stir in the cooked shrimp, avocado, and pureed tomatillos. Cook for a few more minutes, and serve garnished with cilantro.

Stuffed Poblano Peppers

 Cuisine: TexMex

Inspiration: I saw this recipe on Elly Says Opa a while back and have had it bookmarked ever since. B and I love Mexican and TexMex food, but a lot of times that kind of food means a ton of cheese and calories. I really get excited when I find Mexican or TexMex recipes that are healthy, and this is definitely one of them. We love to have Mexican food on the weekends, when we typically cheat a little bit and have more caloric meals, but with this recipe, we got the best of both worlds – a great TexMex meal that was healthy, too.

What we Loved: This recipe was fantastic in every way. Poblano peppers have such a rich and smoky flavor, and while they were baking in the oven they made my house smell wonderful. Added to the flavors of the filling (chicken sausage, corn, fresh salsa, onions, and spices), the flavor combination was spicy and delicious. Rather than using a tomato-based salsa, I used some leftover cilantro salsa that I had in the freezer, and I also added some fresh cilantro as a garnish. I thought that this added a nice freshness to the dish, and I also enjoyed the manchego cheese melted on top of the peppers. Manchego has a great nutty flavor, and having baked in the oven, it also got that nice added layer of flavor that comes from browning cheese. Chicken sausage (which you can always find at Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods) is very healthy, so with this recipe you get the benefit of a meaty and filling meal without the calories or fat.

Helpful Hints: Definitely wear a pair of kitchen gloves when dealing with cutting open peppers and removing the seeds. For some reason I always insist on doing this with my bare hands, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been left with burning red hands for the rest of the evening and a pair of ruined contacts that burn into my eyes when I try to put them back in the next morning. Poblano peppers aren’t particularly hot, but I still had issues after removing the seeds without wearing gloves, so I would highly recommend wearing them.

Similar Recipes: Stuffed Hot Peppers

Stuffed Poblano Peppers
Source: Elly Says Opa

I made just a couple of changes to this recipe. Here’s the recipe as I made it.

4 small/medium sized poblano peppers
Extra virgin olive oil
1/2 diced onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 links chicken sausage (I used chipotle pepper chicken sausage)
1/2 cup salsa
1/2 cup corn
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
Salt and pepper
1 oz. manchego cheese, shredded

1. Preheat the oven to 400.

2. Heat a drizzle of olive oil over medium heat, and saute the onion until tender. Add the garlic, and cook for an additional minute. Crumble in the chicken sausage, and cook until the sausage starts to brown. Add the salsa, corn, and cumin. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer over low for a few minutes.

3. Lay the poblanos flat, and cut a T-shaped slit into the top of the poblano. Pry the slit apart, and remove all of the seeds.

4. Stuff the sausage mixture into the peppers. Top each pepper with  some of the manchego cheese.

5. Bake until the poblano is tender and browned around the edges (25 minutes in my oven).

Red Beans and Rice

My favorite thing about all of the smaller holidays/celebrations throughout the year is that I can use them as great excuses to try new foods :) Not a lot of day-to-day things make me happier than trying a brand new ethnic recipe that I’ve always heard of but have never eaten. Since it’s been the mardi gras time of year, I recently made jambalaya for the first time, and for Fat Tuesday yesterday I skipped the paczki and king cake (sad, sad) and instead tested out a red beans and rice recipe. It was awesome! The recipe is from Emeril Lagasse and, as far as I can gather, it’s fairly authentic. The ingredients are all simmered in water until a sauce is formed, almost like a gravy. The sauce is rich and full of flavor, and I loved the way that it coated the beans and sausage and seeped down into the white rice. This dish really had some spice to it, too. Without really measuring, I adjusted the recipe to make a smaller portion, but I didn’t really ease back on the cayenne at all, and I also used a spicier sausage. Whoops! I guess my version was extra spicy, but I didn’t mind :)

Red Beans and Rice
Source: Emeril Lagasse

I scaled this recipe down to serve two (with some leftovers), and I made some changes in the ingredients, including using canned beans instead of fresh. The use of canned beans cut the cooking time down to approximately 1 1/2 hours. Here’s the recipe as I made it.

Extra virgin olive oil
1 cup onions, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (I’d recommend lowering this to 1/4 teaspoon)
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
3 sprigs fresh thyme, minced
2 bay leaves
10 oz cajun style Andouille sausage, sliced
1 can dark red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
3 large cloves garlic, chopped
Approximately 4 cups water
1 cup white rice
2 green onions, sliced

1. Drizzle some olive oil in a dutch oven or pot over medium heat. Saute the onions, red pepper, salt, cayenne, black pepper, and thyme for approximately 5 minutes.

2. Add the bay leaves and sausage, and saute for approximately 5 minutes.

3. Add the beans, garlic, and enough water to cover all of the contents in the pot.

4. Bring the pot to a boil, reduce the heat to medium, and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally. I simmered the mixture for approximately 45 minutes, then I increased the heat to a boil and boiled the mixture until the water turned into a thick sauce, approximately 30 more minutes. You want the sauce to be creamy, not like a soup, and it will get that way as long as you cook it long enough.

5. While the meal is cooking, cook the cup of rice according to package instructions, and slice the green onions.

6. Remove the bay leaves from the pot, and serve the mixture over the white rice. Top with green onions.

Rice with Sausage and Shrimp

This is the best meal that I’ve made all year. SO GOOD! Usually, I can just tell while I’m cooking something if it’s going to be delicious or if it’s just going to be okay (or terrible!). The whole time that I was making this, I was so excited because I knew that it was going to be incredible. And it was. B and I could barely stop eating it. Neither one of us had ever had a similar dish before this, and I have to say that I plan to put this meal into my regular rotation. I can’t even explain how good this was. The sausage and shrimp tasted wonderful with all of the vegetables, and because everything was cooked together in the same pan, the finished dish had all kinds of great and complex flavors. I served this with avocado slices, and they really added a fresh and cool contrast to the hot rice. I can’t wait to eat this again!

Rice with Sausage and Shrimp
Source: Adapted from Laylita’s Recipes

1/2 vidalia onion, diced
1 red pepper, diced
2 roma tomatoes, seeded and diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup white rice, uncooked
2 cups chicken broth
3/4 lb Italian sausage
1/2 lb raw shrimp, peeled, deveined, and tails removed
2 tablespoons chives
Kosher salt and black pepper, to taste
1 avocado

1. Heat a saute pan over medium heat. Crumble the sausage into the pan, and cook until the sausage is no longer pink and is starting to brown.

2. Add the onions and the peppers to the pan, and cook for approximately 5 minutes.

3. Add the minced garlic to the pan, mix, and cook for an additional minute.

4. Add the diced tomatoes to the pan, and cook for approximately 5 minutes.

5. Add the rice to the pan, stir, and cook for approximately two minutes.

6. Add the chicken broth to the pan, cover, and cook for approximately 15 minutes.

7. Add the shrimp to the pan, cover the pan again, and cook until the shrimp are cooked through, approximately 6-8 minutes.

8. Add the chives to the pan, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Mix well.

9. Serve with fresh avocado slices.

Sausage Stuffed Mushrooms

Like a lot of other people celebrating the Superbowl this past weekend, B and I skipped lunch and dinner on Sunday and had our fill of appetizers instead. We watched the game at home this year, just the two of us, and we made a pretty healthy (as in large, not as in good for you) spread of snacks. And we both agreed that this snack was the best. We both love mushrooms, and the filling was to die for. It was a mixture of Italian sausage, onions, garlic, seasoning, Parmesan, and bread crumbs, and it was awesome. Baked in the oven until everything was nice and warm and the tops of the mushrooms were just a little crispy, these made for an appetizer that I can’t praise enough. The flavor combination from the filling and from the mushrooms themselves was perfect. I’ll be revisiting this recipe the next time that we have an occasion for appetizers, for sure.

Stuffed Mushrooms
Source: Pete Bakes

I cut this recipe in half, but otherwise I followed it pretty closely. Here’ s the recipe as I made it:

10 medium-sized white mushrooms
4 oz Italian sausage
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried parsley
1/8 cup Parmesan cheese, finely shredded
1/4 cup Italian bread crumbs
1/2 small onion, diced
salt and pepper, to taste

1. Wash the mushrooms, and then cut out the stems, scraping out the inside of the mushroom. Finely dice the stems and extra mushroom pieces.

2. Crumble the sausage in a saute pan. Add the mushroom pieces, onion, garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper. Saute until the sausage is cooked through and lightly browned.

2. Pour the Parmesan cheese and bread crumbs into a small bowl. Add the cooked sausage mixture, and stir to combine.

3. Stuff each mushroom cap with the sausage mixture while it is still warm.  Bake the mushrooms on an ungreased baking sheet or dish at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

Minestrone

I make a lot of soups, but it seems that many of them just don’t turn out. This soup, however, was fabulous. I wanted to make a minestrone after B ordered a bowl of it in an Italian restaurant a few weeks back, so I hunted around for a while and found this recipe. It’s full of vegetables, and the broth has an amazing flavor from the tomatoes and the sauteed sausage. I have a handful of soup recipes that I keep as favorites, and I’ll definitely be adding this to the bunch.

Minestrone
Source: Adapted from Meet me in the Kitchen

1 pound pork sausage
3 cups water
1 can reduced sodium beef broth
1 large onion, chopped
6 small carrots, diced
1-14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
1-14.5 oz can tomato sauce
2 tablespoons crushed dried parsley flakes
1/2 teaspoon crushed dried oregano
salt and pepper, to taste
garlic powder, to taste
1-15 oz can garbanzo beans
2 large handfuls fresh green beans, washed and cut
2/3 cup uncooked pasta shells

1. Brown the pork sausage in a dutch oven or large pot.

2. Add the water and beef stock to the pot. Add the onions, carrots,  tomatoes, tomato sauce, parsley, oregano, salt, and pepper. Simmer, covered, for at least one hour and for as long as 4-6 hours.

3. Thirty minutes before serving time, add the green beans, garbanzo beans, and pasta to the pot. Simmer until the noodles are tender and the beans are cooked.