Italian Sausage Pasta Casserole

I'm not exactly sure where the first week of December went, but here we are on the 9th with no posts yet! Everything is fine around here, but all the preparations for the holidays take time. I remember that my Mom used to complain that every year it seemed to take longer to do the things that went faster the previous year. Not just holiday prep, but most things. Grocery shopping takes longer, laundry seems to take longer (although that might be because the washing machine and dryer are over thirty years old and so are the pipes...the cold water in particular seems to dribble into the machine. I suspect the pipes are filled up with minerals so less water gets through). Even cooking and baking seem to take longer, so I guess I haven't started as many baking sessions and only a minimum of cooking.

Anyway, time flies by and it's dinner time. What to make? Well, there are a couple of cooked turkey Italian sausages in the fridge, and it doesn't take long to boil water for pasta, nor to make a simple white sauce, nor to crisp up some bread crumbs in melted margarine. Put all that together and you have a cozy casserole, perfect for a chilly, damp night.

The white sauce recipe comes from a classic cook book; the Joy of Cooking. For the pasta I found a half pound of multi-color twisty pasta. Since this casserole only serves 2-3, you don't need any more pasta than that. I served the casserole with steamed green beans and Sweetie was very happy. Hope you will be too, if you try this recipe out. The pasta and sauce are fairly bland, but the sausage lifts the flavors and the crunch of the topping adds texture so that the whole is delightful.

Italian Sausage Pasta Casserole
Serves 2-3 (Double the recipe to serve 4-6)

For the Pasta: 1/2 pound rotini (I used multi-colored, but plain is fine, too)
salt (optional)

For the White Sauce:
2 tablespoons butter (I used margarine), melted
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup milk (I used soy milk)
1/4 cup ricotta cheese
salt and pepper to taste

For the Bread Crumbs
2 tablespoons butter (I used margarine), melted
1/4 cup dry bread crumbs

2 Italian sausages, cooked, and sliced in 1/4-inch slices

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add salt if desired. Once the water is boiling, stir in the pasta and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the pasta is cooked al dente. Drain pasta and set aside.

While the pasta is cooking, make the white sauce: In a medium sauce pan, combine the melted butter and the flour. Cook, over low heat, stirring 3-4 minutes, until well blended and flour has had a chance to cook off the raw taste without browning. Slowly stir in the milk and simmer and stir the sauce with a wire Whisk until it has thickened and is smooth and hot. Whisk in the ricotta cheese until smooth again. Taste and add salt and pepper to taste. Place a piece of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the sauce to keep a skin from forming.

In a small non-stick skillet, combine the melted butter and the bread crumbs. Stir constantly over medium-high heat until the crumbs are slightly browned and a bit crispy. Don't allow to burn.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Grease a casserole dish. In the pot that the pasta was cooked in, combine the drained pasta, the white sauce and the slices of Italian sausage. Pour into the prepared casserole dish, use the back of a spoon to level the filling, then evenly top with the prepared bread crumb mixture. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the crumbs become golden brown. Serve at once while still hot.

Spanish Chicken and Rice for Dinner

Want an easy casserole of chicken, rice, tomatoes, onions and garlic, herbs and spices and a little marsala wine? Check out this one that was a family favorite for many, many years. I made it tonight but had to change a few things. It was supposed to be sherry instead of marsala, and the dish should have saffron, but those were both missing. It still tasted wonderful! The good news was that it went together so quickly. We've spent quite a bit of time today on our next project and suddenly it was almost dinner time. From start to finish was less than an hour. Don't leave out the whole cloves...it is an essential flavor in this dish.

Sweetie and I are in the planning stages for replacing the tub in Grandma's farmhouse with a nice alcove shower with glass doors. We still haven't decided on the size but have narrowed it down to a 5 foot one that is basically the same size as a tub in length, or a 4 foot one that will allow us to move the vanity over to the same wall...a blessing in a bathroom as narrow as this one. I'm going with white shower, vanity and toilet, brushed nickel fixtures and door frame, and cream colored walls with bright white trim. The floor is currently cork colored but it will need replacing, so we may go with something darker for contrast with all that white. It should be fresh feeling once we are done. We are hiring a plumber to do all the plumbing and the electrical that's in there should be OK, so it's really mostly constructing some walls to attach the shower walls to, some tile or sheetrock, and paint. Probably doing demo will be the most complicated because it involves, among other things,  moving a very heavy cast iron clawfoot tub out and across to the outbuilding where it will live until we find a place for it or sell it.

I'll try to remember to post photos of the before and after once the project is finished. The one at the top is courtesy of WayFair. Probably not the vanity we will use, but I like the sleek look.

Speaking of photos, I completely forgot to take any of this delicious dish. Think browned chicken pieces peeking out of a sea of tomato-studded rice with a nice sprinkle of peas on top. Colorful and savory. Don't take my word for it...try it yourself.

Arroz con Pollo (Spanish Chicken and Rice)
From Family Food by Patricia Lachman
Serves 6-8

2 1/2 lbs. chicken...I used boneless, skinless chicken thighs, but a cut up frying chicken is traditional
salt (optional)
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 medium pepper, chopped (traditionally green, but I used red)
1 can peeled, chopped tomatoes in their own juice
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 bay leaf
a pinch saffron
2 whole cloves
1 cup water
1/3 cup sherry (or marsala)
1 cup long grain uncooked rice
1 cup cooked green peas
1 pimento, cut up (optional)

Use a large skillet or Dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid. Season chicken with salt, if desired (I always skip the salt...it's not needed). Brown the chicken in 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Remove the chicken and cover with foil. Add remaining olive oil, heat, then add the onion, garlic and pepper. Brown 5 minutes. Add remaining ingredients, except for rice, peas and pimento. Return the chicken to the pot. Cover and simmer 15 minutes. Add the rice. Bring to a boil, stir, being sure that the rice is submerged in the liquid in the pot, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
Garnish with the hot peas and with the pimento, if using.

This dish makes great leftovers since the rice tastes even better the next day.

Not By Bread Alone

Tomorrow is the natal day of NoHandle, my dear brother who sometimes, including today, is a guest blogger here. Happy Birthday a day early NoHandle. He and I were close as children (except for when he was taking delight in teasing me) and I was always interested in and a bit in awe of his passion for electronics, such as ham radio. I still remember that when he went away to college that I offered to be the one to help clean his room because I was willing to take each dustpan of stuff swept from the floor and extract the transistors, radio tubes and bits of coated wire and save them for him for his return. Now we live too far away from each other to visit very often, but through the ease of the Internet, another magical (to me) electronic device, we can share our passion for cooking. He is an excellent cook and this time has given us another imaginative use of the seasonal favorite, zucchini, this time giving that excellent if prolific vegetable a chance to play at being another vegetable. Read on!

Not by Bread Alone

My last post talked about Zucchini bread as a vehicle to deal with the bounty of the fruit that seem to engulf us every year. The season is declining, but I wanted to talk about another aspect of this abundance, overly large fruit, and how to deal with that.

A number of years ago my uncle Ray (I usually call him my obscure relative, because he is my mom's half-sister's husband. But practically speaking, he's my uncle.) brought me a zucchini from his garden that must have eluded his attention for quite a while. If you garden, you've had that happen too. It was so big that its seeds were well established, the squash bigger than my forearm. I hadn't cooked zucchini before, at least one that large, and I was somewhat at a loss as to how to proceed. My inspiration was eggplant, for which the Italians (he's one) have a politically incorrect nickname, and he explained that too. What I did was substitute zucchini for the eggplant in Eggplant Parmesan. First I extracted the seeds, then sliced the rest long-ways, and layered the strips with spaghetti sauce, topped with cheese, both mozzarella and Parmesan, and baked.

When another similar but somewhat smaller renegade appeared in my garden recently, I decided to replicate that earlier recipe. BTW, the one in the picture is smaller yet; you can use them too, it just may take more than one. 

The best recipe I found online (thanks Kraft) also included sliced mushrooms, and that sounded good to me, so I used that to re-inspire my efforts. In this case, the seeds weren't a problem so I simply sliced the zucchini using a mandolin, set to about a 1/4 inch thickness, not even peeling, and stacked them up to assemble the dish. 

I put a layer of them down in a 9 inch by 13 inch glass baking dish, covering the bottom, and topped them with sliced mushrooms, and sprinkled them lightly with jarred spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce works too, and is about the right amount; almost any sort will do.

 A word about mushrooms though. I chose the largest whole white mushrooms I could find and sliced them about as thick as the zucchini, but by hand. I could have used pre-sliced mushrooms, but they are smaller, thicker, and wouldn't cover as well. You could slice Portobellos too, they are nice, and are what you see in the photos here.

Continue alternately stacking zucchini strips, sliced mushrooms and sauce until you run out of zucchini (about three layers). Go gently with the sauce, it doesn't take as much as you might think. Bake until the veggies are tender. 

Finally, sprinkle liberally with  mozzarella, and top that with the Parmesan. I used more than the recipe called for because that is the signature of the dish, after all. Then back to the oven to melt and brown the topping. You can also just put the cheese on before baking, and get a nice browning.

 

Serving is a matter of cutting across the vegetable strips and moving carefully to a plate. You can serve four to six people with a single zucchini, depending on how much they like their veggies. If there aren't that many of you, the leftovers are great too.

Ingredients:

1 lb. large, (or if larger, seeded) zucchini, up to 1.5 lb., sliced about 1/4 inch thick

½ lb. large mushrooms sliced

1 cup of your favorite spaghetti or pizza sauce

1 cup of low-moisture, part skim mozzarella cheese, shredded (10-12 ounces)

½ cup Parmesan cheese, shredded (not the ground stuff) better quality helps; I used a Reggiano.

Directions:

Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Coat 13 x 9-inch baking dish with cooking spray. Layer the vegetables and sauce in the dish. Bake for 25 minutes. Top with the cheeses. Return to the oven and bake an additional 5 minutes or so, until the cheese melts and starts to brown. Cut into portions and serve immediately.

Let's Pretend

Should have posted early in the day when the computer was working, but for a while I've been posting in the evening. Bad idea. By evening the computer was having trouble finding Windows (according to my tech guru), so I turned it off to give it a rest. Of course that meant no post on Saturday, breaking the chain. Let's pretend that I posted this yesterday as planned, OK?

I've been doing a happy dance because we got about 2 inches of rain between Wednesday night and Saturday noon. We still have a long way to go, but it really helps put a little moisture in the aquifer.
Although we had leftover pork roast and steamed yams and peas for dinner, I do have a recipe for a wonderful casserole that I made earlier in the week.

It is sort of a strata or maybe a savory bread pudding with cheese. Elaine, who gave me the recipe, calls it a cheese souffle. It does puff up during baking, but by the time I was able to serve it, it had deflated. Not low calorie, but pretty easy to make and you make most of it ahead, a bonus at this time of year when time seems to just fly by!

You butter day old bread and cut off the crusts. Pi was quite taken with the crusts that kept showing up in his food bowl. Then you cut the buttered bread into cubes. The cubes get layered in a buttered baking dish with shredded cheddar cheese and green onions. A custard mixture which includes Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar and cayenne pepper gets poured over it all. Seems like an odd combination of flavors, but it works. The baking dish gets covered and the whole thing sits overnight and is baked the next day. Don't forget to take the baking dish out of the fridge enough in advance to let the whole thing warm up to room temperature before baking.

You could get creative and add things like cubed ham, or cooked bacon, or add some chopped spinach to the custard or to the layers. Herbs or a different kind of cheese would change the flavors but it would still be easy to make. Since it serves 12 it's great for a holiday buffet. Imagine what other times you could serve it!

CHEESE SOUFFLE

10 slices day old bread, trim, butter and cube. ½ tsp. pepper

1 lb. sharp cheddar cheese, grated ½ tsp. Beau Monde Seasoning (I used Penzy's Mural of Flavor and it worked fine)

6 eggs beaten ½ tsp. Salt

1 tsp. brown sugar ½ tsp. Worcestershire Sauce

1 bunch green onion, chopped 2 ½ cups milk

¼ tsp. paprika

½ tsp. dry mustard

Put ½ of the bread in a buttered 9 x 13 casserole. Top with half of the cheese and the chopped onions. Repeat the layers.

Mix all remaining ingredients and pour over bread mixture. Let covered casserole set over night in refrigerator.

The following day, remove from refrigerator and let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. Bake uncovered in a 300 degree preheated oven for 1 hour. Serves 12.

A Potluck Dish I Love

In just a little over a week I'll be off to my Mom's on the East Coast to help celebrate a significant birthday of hers. It's very exciting because all of my siblings will be there as well as some of the spouses and kids and grandkids. I'm really looking forward to seeing them all, and to seeing Mom's sisters and their extended families. I think the last time we had so many of us together was ten years ago for another birthday. Since we are scattered all over the country, it might be years before we gather again.

One of the things planned is a potluck picnic by the Potomac river on Sunday. I'll be making a wild rice/brown rice and baby carrots casserole with herbs to bring. I made it many years ago for one of the Derby Day pot lucks and tried it out for dinner last week. It went really quickly at the Derby Day potluck and Charlie gave it his stamp of approval, too, last week. It’s easy to fix, delicious, and vegan if made with vegetable broth, but mostly I’m making it because I like to eat it.

I'm starting with a rice mixture sold in a box because it is designed to have the different rices cooked together. I'll skip the seasoning packet (with usually has way too much sodium) and instead add some onion and celery, Italian parsley and thyme, a touch of orange juice, plus a bit of salt and lots of pepper. I looked at some recipes online, but didn't find anything where the rice and carrots cook at the same time. I know when I made it years ago I cooked the wild rice separately and then mixed it in once the other rice was cooked, but the packaged mixture didn't need that. It's pretty simple actually: Onions sautéed in a little olive oil, rice mixture stirred in, carrots cut into chunks stirred in, herbs and orange juice stirred in, S&P over all, then the broth. I brought it all to a boil, reduced the heat to simmer, then covered it and let it cook until the rice was cooked. By that time the carrots were perfectly cooked, too with just a bit of bite still to them. I like it warm, but it would probably taste fine cold. It was even delicious a day later, maybe even better. Dishes with cooked onions often taste better then next day.

May is usually filled with lots of occasions for gathering together of family and friends, so you may want to bookmark this for a quick dish to bring or serve at your party.

Wild and Brown Rice with Carrots and Herbs

1/2 medium to large onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil or grapeseed oil
1 package wild and brown rice mix (discard the seasoning packet)
1 1/2 cups baby carrots or larger carrots cut into approximately 1 1/2-inch chunks
2 tablespoons finely chopped Italian (flat leaf) parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
the juice of 1/2 a medium orange
salt and pepper to taste
1 can broth, either chicken or vegetable

In a wide, flat skillet or pan with a lid, sauté the onion and celery in the olive oil until onion is translucent, about 5 minutes.

Stir in the wild and brown rice, the carrots, the parsley, the thyme and the orange juice. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pour over the mixture the broth.

Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer, then cover and let cook until rice is cooked and most of liquid is evaporated, about 25 - 30 minutes. If desired you can remove the lid, increase the heat, and let more of the liquid evaporate for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep the rice mixture from scorching.

Serve warm or at room temperature. If made with chicken broth, keep chilled once mixture has cooled.

Serves 6-8 as a side dish.

A Cozy Casserole for a Chilly Evening

We may get snow!

I know this is not something to get excited about in most of the United States, but we so rarely get snow that I'm kinda hoping that some sticks and stays, at least for a few hours. It won't happen until Friday night or Saturday and might not happen at all, but it gives you some idea of the nice chilly (for No. CA) weather we are having.

Sweetie has the fire going to heat the house...well only the living room actually, the bedrooms and bathroom are frigid...and I baked a nice rice gratin for our dinner using winter squash I grew myself. How fun is that?

There is always something yummy cooking at Katie's blog. Last night when I stopped by to see what she was up to I saw that she had posted a wonderful dish with butternut squash, leeks and rice. It looked great and sounded even better. I was pretty sure I had most of the ingredients on hand so I made it for dinner tonight.

Probably doesn't sound that earthshattering, but I so often bookmark or save recipes from other blogs and so rarely actually make them. This one was a must-make! And here you thought I only get buzzed about baked sweets and bread.

I used the smaller of the two butternut squash left from the ones I grew in my garden this summer. The great thing about winter squash is that they keep so well. This one was still moist inside and sweet, too. The skin was thin and peeled off easily and there weren't very many seeds, so there was lots of usable squash. It's likely that I had more squash than the recipe called for but it turned out just fine!

I was missing leeks, so used a cup of chopped onion instead. Since thyme was a dominant herb in the recipe I couldn't resist adding a cup of chopped mushrooms...I love the way mushrooms and thyme just go so well together.

I already had left over cooked rice so that made the dish come together faster. A couple of strips of bacon from the freezer went in the pan first with a lid on to sweat some of the bacon fat out. That meant I didn't need to add much olive oil when it came time to saute' the onions, mushrooms and butternut squash. The only other change I made was that I added an egg at the end when I mixed in the yogurt and Parmesan cheese. It was meant to help the gratin hold together when served and that worked very well.

Do try this dish. The flavors go so well together, it is filling without being heavy, and it tastes wonderful! Next time I'm going to make it with brown rice and I bet it will be even better!

Butternut Squash, Mushroom and Rice Gratin
adapted from Thyme for Cooking by Katie

8oz (250gr) butternut squash
1 cup chopped onion (about 1/2 large yellow onion)
1 cup roughly chopped mushrooms
1 1/2oz (45gr) bacon
2 tsp olive oil
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp thyme
1 cup cooked rice
1/2 cups chicken stock
1/3 cup Greek yogurt
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 egg, lightly beaten

Peel the butternut squash and remove any seeds or stringiness. Cut butternut squash into small cubes. Peel and roughly chop the onion. Roughly chop bacon. Roughly chop the mushrooms.

Heat oil and paprika in a large skillet. Add bacon, squash, leeks and sauté until vegetables are tender bacon is done, about 10 minutes. Add chicken stock, thyme, rice, yogurt, Parmesan cheese and egg. Add salt and pepper as desired to taste.

To finish: Spoon into an oiled baking dish and bake, 400F (200C), for 15 minutes, until top starts to brown.

Serve hot (although I bet this tastes great cold, too).

Oldie But Goodie Casserole

It is very interesting that newspapers and magazines are flooded with tips on ways to get through these tough economic times. I guess no one in the media knew a year ago that there were plenty of people going through economic hard times...it took the loss of income by upper middle class folks when the stock market took a dive to alert them.

The good news is that I've been there, done that, and have the scars to prove it. The mid '70s were difficult ones for me. I was laid off at a retail store...not enough sales...sound familiar? I did temp work, odd jobs, street vendor sales at Christmas, sewed my own Christmas gifts by hand because the sewing machine was broken and there was no spare money to fix it. When I went to the grocery store I added up each item in my shopping cart and returned the least needed items to the shelves until I had the amount of groceries that I could pay for with the cash in my pocket. I was young and had no expectation that I should be living a cushy life yet, so it really wasn't bad, but you do learn how to be frugal while having fun.
In ancient times, right around 1978, since we were experiencing a similar shortage of cash as many folks today, we turned to recipes that were less expensive to cook. The cookbook Moosewood Cookbook by the lovely and artistic Mollie Katzen had just been published and going vegetarian was one way of eating more healthfully and frugally at the same time. Her illustrations were wonderful. Everything was done by hand, then turned into a book. How appropriate.

One of my favorite recipes from the book can be made even healthier these days by using low fat cheese and egg substitute, although that costs a little more than with plain eggs and regular cheese. You could cut the amount of cheese, too . Even though fresh spinach is delightful, there was a sale the other day on frozen spinach, so I used that for this recipe. It needed to be defrosted and drained, but was then perfect for this dish.

I cooked the brown rice about an hour before I put the casserole together. You can also use leftover rice. The brown rice has lots of nutrients and I like the chewiness it gives this dish.

You can use this as a side dish, a main dish if you have a big salad on the side, or even for brunch. If you added some crumbled bacon or turkey bacon or veggie bacon bits to it, it is super brunch food.

Hope that you are experiencing enough prosperity that you can make this dish just because it appeals to you!

Spinach-Rice Casserolebased on a recipe from Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen, 1977

2 cloves minced garlic
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt (More, to taste)
3 tablespoons butter (I used 2 tablespoons olive oil)
2 lbs. raw, chopped spinach
4 cups cooked brown rice
4 beaten eggs (I used the equivalent amount of egg substitute)
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups grated cheddar
1/4 cup chopped parsley
2 tablespoons tamari (optional)
a few dashes each - nutmeg, cayenne
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
paprika

Saute' onions and garlic with the salt in butter (or oil). When onions are soft, add spinach. Cook 2 minutes. (Alternately, thaw and drain a 10 oz box frozen chopped spinach. Add to onion mixture, but don't cook any further.)
Combine the onion mixture with the brown rice, eggs, milk, cheese, parsley, tamari, nutmeg, cayenne. Spread into buttered casserole and sprinkle sunflower seeds, paprika on top.
Bake, covered, 25 minutes at 350 degrees F. Uncover and bake 10 more minutes.

Serves 4 - 6

The Chicken and the Egg

Easter eggs are nice and all, but with only two people living in our house, the question arises at once. What to do with all those hard boiled eggs? Do I make deviled eggs? Nah, too much like picnic food and it's still a bit cool for that. Egg salad is always a winner, but I'm thinking about dinner and egg salad sounds like lunch to me.

After trolling through the recipe files, I came across a recipe that is from 1972 or earlier. I made a few adjustments to better comply with current nutritional guidelines, but it still tastes decadent and used some of those hard boiled eggs. It's also perfect for FF#1 (Food Fight #1) hosted by Allen at Eating Out Loud. He chose eggs for the monthly theme. Great choice!

Continental Chicken Casserole, where the chicken meets the egg, can also be made with turkey, it can be prepared ahead, it can serve a crowd, and it's fairly easy to make.

The key is in the mixture of spices in the sauce and the addition of sherry. You don't really taste the sherry as a strong note...it's more of a grace note. It's important to use a good sherry that you wouldn't mind drinking. I used an Amontillado sherry from Jerez de La Frontera in the district of Macharnudo in Spain. It's dry and light enough that it enhances the spices, but doesn't drown them. Don't forget the eggs. They bring all those flavors together. I served this with yolkless egg noodles and steamed peas, but you can use rice too.

Continental Turkey Casserole

3 tablespoons butter

6 tablespoons flour

2 cups chicken broth (I used the almost fat free kind of canned, but fresh is better)

1 cup non-fat milk

1 teaspoon mustard (I used standard ballpark style yellow, but other kinds would be good, too)

1/2 teaspoon salt, dash pepper

1/8 teaspoon each: allspice, ground nutmeg, cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon each: paprika (I used sweet Hungarian), and seasoned salt

1/4 cup dry sherry

4 hard cooked eggs, cubed

4 cups cooked turkey (or chicken) cubed in roughly 1/2 inch cubes

1 teaspoon butter

crumbs from one slice whole grain bread

Melt 3 tablespoons butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour until smooth. Using a whisk and over low heat, slowly blend in the broth, then the milk, stirring constantly until smooth.

Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly until sauce is thickened.

Combine all the seasonings in a small bowl, then blend into the sauce. Stir in the sherry, fold in the eggs and chicken.

Turn the chicken and egg mixture into a buttered (or spray with cooking spray) 3 quart casserole dish.

Melt the 1 teaspoon butter in a small pan. Add the crumbs and stir to coat with the butter. Top the casserole with the crumbs, spreading evenly. Bake at 350 degrees F for 25 - 30 minutes or until the sauce bubbles and the crumbs are browned. Serve hot. Serves 10-12.