sausage

chicken & sausage & lemons, oh my!

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chicken and sausage bake

I’ll admit it right here, I like Nigella Lawson. I think she’s a great menu planner and hugely entertaining to read (I’ve never seen her on TV), and I own several of her books. Strangely, I sometimes find her recipes disappointing (such as a nearly flavorless chocolate cake), but I generally forgive her the details because I like her general concepts so much.

One recipe of hers that stuck in my mind when I saw it was a sort of mishmash of chicken pieces, sausages, lemon, onions and sage, squished together in a pan and baked. I don’t know why I found the idea so fascinating, but I’ve been just waiting for my chance to try it. So on Saturday I combined the chicken and marinade, and on Sunday J put it all in the oven while I was at work. We were a little short of vegetables in the house, so I cooked some frozen spinach to go alongside.

The verdict? I liked it. It’s not going to be my go-to comfort meal from now on, but it was fun and simple. If I make it again I’ll add loads more sage to it, and maybe use hot Italian sausages instead of sweet, and serve it with a big salad or lots of green beans or something to cut the richness. The chicken did have a really nice sharp lemony flavor and the skin was beautifully crisp, and the onions were lovely combined with bites of sausage. We had a lot of leftover Portuguese white wine with a definite barnyard edge to it, and it went really well with the chicken. So it was a successful dinner. And the leftovers were even better the next day. Continue reading →

making it up as I go along

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pasta gratin

This was an impromptu sort of dinner. I had gotten a couple things out of the freezer the day before – a smoked andouille sausage (left over from the cassoulet) and a container of pesto from a long-gone summer. There was a bunch of (very non-local) asparagus in the fridge that I had bought on spec and done nothing with, and half a box of macaroni sitting in the cupboard.

So, making it up as I went along, I put on pasta water to boil and put together a small pan of bechamel sauce. Once the sauce was thickened I stirred a heaping spoonful of pesto into it. I warmed up the andouille and sliced it thinly, and chopped the asparagus into inch-long pieces. When the macaroni was almost cooked, I dropped the asparagus into the water with the pasta to blanch it, then drained it all at once. I mixed the macaroni and asparagus with the pesto bechamel and the sliced sausage in a gratin pan, then grated fresh parmesan over it all and sprinkled breadcrumbs on top. I let it sit in a 450° oven for ten minutes or so until we got hungry and ate it.

Not the sort of dinner I make very often, but strangely comforting. And easy, too.

cassoulet for New Year's Day

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cassoulet and salad

I was only recently introduced to the idea of eating beans on New Year’s Day for good luck and prosperity. I’ve always figured I’ve gotten my good luck from our noodles the night before – but on the other hand, you can’t have too much good luck. So this year I decided to try my hand at a cassoulet.

white beans

I know that there’s a lot of argument over what makes the “true” cassoulet. I read the recipes in Mastering The Art of French Cooking and The Cooking of Southwest France, and I read David Lebovitz’s post on Camp Cassoulet in Gascony.  Doing it the “official” way, with confit and pork fat and God knows what, certainly sounds exciting. But you know, the only people I was trying to impress were J and myself, and I just wanted it to taste good. So I did it all in one day, skipped the confit, and came up with something I was really pleased with. My one concession to working ahead was to have a pork roast for dinner a few days previous, so we could use the leftover meat.

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Mushroom risotto with kielbasa

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wind in the bamboo

Yes, the weather has been nasty around here, windy, cold and wet. It snowed rather convincingly on Sunday morning but then settled back into a glum, clammy grayness. I wanted something warm, easy to eat and comforting for dinner, as you might imagine.

I had a little Arborio rice left, so I made risotto. I was going to do a plain mushroom risotto with a piece of salmon alongside, but wasn’t thrilled with our store’s fish selection (an unusual occurrence). So we went for one of our frequent emergency backups: kielbasa. It’s quick, easy and gives a great savoriness to anything you put it in. We use Hempler’s, a local brand.

slicing kielbasa Continue reading →

Beans & greens soup

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broccoli rabe

This soup was a concept that kept changing. First I thought I’d make lentil soup with sausage and kale. But we were out of lentils, and I thought white beans would be even better. Then when we went to Dunbar Gardens to buy vegetables, there wasn’t any kale -so we got broccoli rabe instead. As it turns out, there’s a recipe for this exact soup in Barbara Kafka’s Soup cookbook. I glanced at her approach, then built the soup my usual way.

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Hallowe’en dinner

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yorkshire pudding in the oven

Don’t ask me how this got started, but every year on Hallowe’en we have to eat the same thing for dinner. Pumpkin soup, hot Italian sausages, and Yorkshire pudding. It’s a requirement. It’s warming, autumnal and not a little bit indulgent, so I guess it’s perfect for an autumn holiday. In any case, we’ve been doing it for years. Usually I get a small sugar pie pumpkin for the soup, which I actually did this year, but it will have to get used for something else this time, because we got hold of one of these:

Padana squash

It’s a padana squash, as far as I know, a sort of heirloom Italian pumpkin with awesome ribbing down the sides. J saw it at the Dunbar farmstand and immediately wanted to carve it, and Steve pointed out that it makes good eating, too. So on Saturday J carved it, and we saved the flesh for our soup. Continue reading →

Hallowe'en dinner

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yorkshire pudding in the oven

Don’t ask me how this got started, but every year on Hallowe’en we have to eat the same thing for dinner. Pumpkin soup, hot Italian sausages, and Yorkshire pudding. It’s a requirement. It’s warming, autumnal and not a little bit indulgent, so I guess it’s perfect for an autumn holiday. In any case, we’ve been doing it for years. Usually I get a small sugar pie pumpkin for the soup, which I actually did this year, but it will have to get used for something else this time, because we got hold of one of these:

Padana squash

It’s a padana squash, as far as I know, a sort of heirloom Italian pumpkin with awesome ribbing down the sides. J saw it at the Dunbar farmstand and immediately wanted to carve it, and Steve pointed out that it makes good eating, too. So on Saturday J carved it, and we saved the flesh for our soup. Continue reading →

Chorizo-poblano quiche

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Chorizo-poblano quiche

I can’t remember when I started making quiche. In the early years of my marriage when I was vegetarian I made lots of things out of the Moosewood cookbooks, especially things like the ricotta-spinach pie and big gooey casseroles. Eventually I discovered the “quiche formula” in the Enchanted Broccoli Forest and I was converted.

Basically, the idea is that as long as you have the right proportions of egg and milk for the size of pan you’re using, and plenty of cheese to coat the bottom and protect the crust from sogginess, you can put whatever the heck you want in there. It’s easy to make and easy to remember (I made two quiches from scratch, from memory, for a wedding in Knik, Alaska, and felt very smug about it). I have tried many things, from chard and mushrooms to broccoli and ham, and they all come out pretty good. But the winner in our household, especially in the late summer when peppers are in season, is my patented Chorizo-Poblano Quiche. It’s rich and spicy with lots of cheesy goodness, set off by the whole-wheat flavor of the crust. We make this as often as possible every fall while we can get beautiful fresh poblano peppers from our friend Steve at Dunbar Gardens. The loose Mexican-style chorizo comes from a local producer as well, Hempler’s in Bellingham. Continue reading →

Last gasp of summer

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The weather this week is just gorgeous, so we’ve been eating down on our patio every night. When the air is warm, the sun is filtering down through the bay laurel and the wisteria, and the grill is heating up, it’s like a little fantasy of the south of France. This happens maybe five times a year, so we try to make the most of it. Continue reading →