Recipe Roundup: Sausage, Mozzarella, and Brocolli Rabe with Shells

We had Sausage, Mozzarella and Broccoli Rabe with Shells, from the November issue of Everyday Food, for dinner on Friday night. And boy was it delicious. I used Italian sausage with basil and garlic instead of regular Italian sausage and really liked the flavors. This was also my first time cooking with broccoli rabe. It's sort of an unwieldy vegetable, but it was a great alternative to spinach, which is what usually ends up going into baked pasta dishes.

The recipe had a few steps to it, since you start off by boiling the pasta and the broccoli rabe in one pot while cooking up the sausage, garlic and tomatoes in another before combining everything and pouring it into a baking dish, topping with fresh mozzarella and Parmesan, and baking for 15 minutes. In other words, don't make this on a night when you're in a hurry. Do make it when you want something warm, gooey, savory and satisfying. It is great!! And even cutting the recipe in half (well, everything but the amount of pasta), we still had enough leftover for lunch on Sunday.


Sausage, Mozzarella, and Broccoli Rabe with Shells
Source: Everyday Food Magazine, November 2009
Serves 4. Prep time: 35 minutes. Total time: 50 minutes

2 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
3 sprigs thyme
coarse salt and ground pepper
2 garlic cloves, chopped
3 links spicy Italian sausage (3/4 pounds total), casings removed
1 Tb. all purpose flour
1 can (28 ounces) whole peeled tomatoes
1 bunch (about one pound) broccoli rabe, trimmed and coarsely chopped
6 ounces freshly mozzarella, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1/4 cup Parmesan

Preheat oven to 400. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium high. Add onion and thyme; season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is golden brown, 15 minutes (reduce heat if browning too quickly).

Add garlic and sausage, breaking up meat with a wooden spoon, until browned, about 5 minutes. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, 30 seconds. Add tomatoes, breaking them up with a spoon. Cook sauce until slightly thickened, 5 to 8 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Discard thyme.

Meanwhile, in a large pot of boiling, salted water, cook pasta 4 minutes less than package instructions. Add broccoli rabe to pot and cook 15 seconds. Drain pasta and broccoli rabe and return to pot. Stir in sausage mixture. Transfer to a 3 quart baking dish or divide among 4 16-ounce gratin dishes. Top with mozzarella and parmesan. Bake until cheese has melted and liquid is bubbling, about 15 minutes.

Dinner Tonight: Mrs. Taylor's Pasta Sauce over Sweet Italian Sausage Tortellini

While my pound cake was in the oven, I decided it might be nice to pull together a little something to simmer on the stove. So I pulled out one of my most beloved cookbooks - one put together and given to me by my old friend Mrs. Taylor of her favorite tried-and-true recipes - and made a pot of from-scratch pasta sauce. I must admit that more often than not, I cheat and use bottled sauce. (I'm partial to Vodka Sauce from the Teeter) even though I was raised by a mother who always always made a fabulous meat sauce from scratch. So tonight, I vowed, I'd return to my from-scratch roots, and, since I wanted to make a meatless sauce tonight, I went with Mrs. Taylor's version. I'm going to serve it over tortellini stuffed with sweet Italian sausage as a concession to my meat-loving husband. It's still simmering away as I type this, and it smells great. Here's to hoping Mr. Fritz likes it! (I think he will... It's seriously awesome...)


Mrs. Taylor's Pasta Sauce

2 cups chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced (optional)
2-3 Tbs olive oil
3 30-oz cans diced tomatoes
2 6-oz cans tomato paste
2 Tbs. brown sugar
2 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp ground thyme
2 tsp. salt
2 bay leaves

1 pound fresh mushrooms
olive oil

In a large stock pot, cook onions and garlic in olive oil over medium heat until tender, but not brown. Add remaining ingredients (except mushrooms) and simmer on low heat for about 2 hours until sauce is thick, stirring occasionally. Saute mushrooms in olive oil; add to sauce. Remove bay leaves before serving.

Dinner Tonight: Chicken and Tortellini with Green Beans and RRP sauce

This weekend I made another batch of the aforementioned Roasted Red Pepper Sauce and decided to use some of it for dinner tonight. It was a very simple affair and gave a nice result. I put a pot of water on to boil and when it was ready, I dropped in a package of cheese-filled spinach tortellini. While it was cooking, I cut up boneless chicken and sauteed it, along with green beans until the chicken was cooked through and the green beans still had a little bite to them. Then I deglazed the pan with a little white wine. When the tortellini was ready, I divided it between two bowls and dressed each bowl with a few tablespoons of sauce. Then I topped each bowl with the chicken and green bean mixture and more sauce. And then finally I dusted each bowl with a bit of Parmesan. It was a nice meal and was very colorful. The combination of pasta, protein, vegetables and sauce is a pretty regular meal solution for us on busy weeknights. But this is the first time I've put these four specific elements together. I'll definitely make it again!

A Tale of Three Peppers

Recently I picked up a pack (not a peck) of peppers at Trader Joe's. It was a three-pack, consisting of one red, one orange and one yellow pepper. I wasn't sure what I was going to use the peppers for, and so they languished for a bit in the crisper. Then I had a revelation: Roasted Red Pepper Sauce. The recipe is an old, long-forgotten favorite of mine. Back in college, I worked for a restaurant called Pastabilities. The restaurant is, sadly, long gone, but I managed to sweet talk one of the cooks into giving me the recipe for both this sauce and a killer pesto as my time there was coming to an end. The thing about it is that it really could not be more simple to make, yet it tastes spectacular. And, so, without further ado, the tale of how my three lowly peppers turned into the best sauce ever:

Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
adapted from Pastabilities*
Yield: about 2 cups

Ingredients:
3 red peppers (or a mix of red, yellow and orange)
1/2 of a 10.5 oz can of crushed tomatoes
2-3 Tb heavy cream

Cut the peppers in half, discard stems and seeds, and broil cut side down on a baking sheet until the skins are totally black. Remove peppers from oven and place in either a ziplock bag or a bowl with a tight-fitting lid. Let peppers rest until they are cool enough to handle, then remove blackened skins from each pepper and discard the char.

Place peppers in a blender, add tomatoes and cream, and puree until smooth. From here the sauce can either be saved for another day or heated and served over your favorite pasta. I served it to Mr. Fritz over gnocchi and mixed in some bite-sized pieces of sauteed chicken breast, then dusted the dish with grated Parm. Seriously delish!

* The original recipe called for a 48 oz can of roasted red peppers, a 10.5 oz can of 6-in-1 tomatoes and 8 oz of half-and-half. This would have made enough sauce to feed and army and wouldn't have helped me use up my fresh peppers, so I scaled it down to the recipe you see above. If you need a LOT of RRP sauce, definitely give the larger proportions a try!

Mrs. Fritz resurfaces with lots of recipes

Several friends have emailed me, concerned that Mr. Fritz may be starving. I want to put those fears to rest: he continues to be well-fed despite my lack of posting here. That said, he and I have been trading colds and other various ailments for most of 2009 and thus I have slacked off on blogging. But I have tried some pretty good recipes in the past month and I don't want to keep them from everyone, so, below, you'll find six of the best:

Orecchiette with Sausage and Roasted Peppers

This recipe from Everyday Food took some effort -- roasting bell peppers in the oven under the broiler until blackened, then letting them sweat in a plastic bag before rubbing the skins off and chopping them up, but it was worth it in the end: a company-worthy dish that won raves from both me and Mr. Fritz in terms of flavor and overall lusciousness.


My only variation to the recipe as written is this: After the sausage was cooked, I added the peppers and the cooked pasta to the pan, mixed it all together, then added the reserved pasta water and the cheese and butter and mixed it all together. That way, I didn't have to dirty another mixing bowl and everything stayed nice and warm. I'll definitely make this again.

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Mexican Shrimp and Rice

Ms. Haley came over for dinner a few weeks ago and I served this dish from Real Simple. Unfortunately, I can't find it on their web site, but I've typed it in below. The most notable thing about this meal is that I should have followed the directions more closely and added the dash of heat the recipe calls for instead of going with a milder, heat-free preparation. As a result, the meal was a little bit bland -- good for Mr. Fritz's palate, not so good for mine and Ms. Haley's. I'm confident that following the recipe would make this good dish great. One variation that I made that I would recommend: instead of transfering the shrimp and rice to a casserole, I baked the whole thing in a dutch oven -- makes for less cleanup and works just as well. Not sure why they even included the transfer as part of the recipe, actually.


Mexican Shrimp and Rice
source: Real Simple Food, page 101

Hands on time 25 minutes, total time: 1 hour
Serves 4

2 Tb. olive oil
1 small white onion, diced
2 medium carrots, diced
1 cup Arborio rice
3 Tbs. chipotles in adobo sauce, mashed (or substitute a splash of hot pepper sauce)
1 14.5 oz can low-sodium vegetable or chicken broth
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1 1/2 lbs large shrimp, peeled and deveined
juice of one lime
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped (optional)
1 lime, cut into wedges

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Heat the oil in a dutch oven or oven-proof sauce pan over medium-low heat. Add the onions, carrots and rice and cook for five minutes. Meanwhile, in a separate pan over medium heat, heat the chipotles, broth, oregano and salt until warm. Add the broth mixture to the rice and vegetables and transfer to a casserole. Cover and bake for 15 minutes. Add the shrimp and lime juice. Recover and bake until the rice is tender, 10-12 minutes more. Remove from heat and let stand for 5 minutes. Stir in cilantro if using and lime juice. Serve with lime wedges.

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Spicy Orange Chicken Stir-Fry

I made this one night for me and Mr. Fritz and we ate it while watching Gosford Park, the Robert Altman movie from a few years ago about a weekend party at a manor house in England. The film follows the wealthy attendees of the the party as well as the goings-on down "below house" where the servants live and work. Great movie! And an equally good meal. (Although there's nothing "English" about it. Note to self: work on themed dinners to eat while watching future films...). Anyway, this came together quickly and offered all of the yumminess of Chinese food without the uncertainties of chemicals (MSG) or hidden fat from lots of oil. Will definitely make the next time we are craving Asian food. Oh, and my variation (because I always seem to have one): I substituted sugar snap peas for the called-for broccoli, since Mr. Fritz won't eat broccoli.


Spicy Orange Chicken Stir-fry
Source: Everday Food, March 2008
Prep time: 35 minutes. Total time: 40 minutes. Serves 8

1/3 cup cornstarch
2 cups orange juice
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup honey
4 garlic cloves, minced
1-2 tsps. red pepper flakes
coarse salt
1 Tb. vegetable oil
3 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-wide strips
1 head broccoli, cut into florets, stalks peeled and thinly sliced
1 lb carrots (about 5), peeled and thinly sliced on the diagonal
cooked rice, for serving

Place cornstarch in medium bowl. Gradually whisk in cornstarch until smooth. Whisk in soy sauce, vinegar, honey, garlic, red pepper flakes and salt. Set aside.

In a 5 quart, non-stick Dutch oven or pot, heat oil over medium-high heat. Working in batches, cook chicken on one side until slightly browned, 2 to 4 minutes; transfer to a plate and set aside (chicken will cook more later.)

Add broccoli, carrots, and 1/2 cup water to the pot. Cook, partially covered, until water has evaporated and broccoli is bright green, 3 minutes. Add reserved chicken and cornstarch mixture; bring to a boil. Cook until chicken is opaque throughout and sauce has thickened, 2 to 3 minutes. Serve stir-fry over rice.

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Grilled Peanut-Butter and Banana Sandwiches

Mr. Fritz loves bananas. Mr. Fritz loves peanut butter. And Mr. Fritz loves French Toast. So imagine my delight when I came across this recipe for what is essentially a peanut butter sandwich filled with bananas and then dipped in an eggwash and fried in a pan on the stove like french toast. Perfection on a plate! This will definitely make another appearance in the future here at Chez Fritz...


Grilled Peanut-Butter and Banana Sandwiches
Source: Everyday Food Magazine, March 2008
Serves 4. Prep time: 15 minutes. Total time: 15 minutes

1 large egg
1/4 cup whole milk
1 Tb. light brown sugar
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg
coarse salt
4 slices white sandwich bread
1/4 cup peanut butter
2 bananas, peeled and cut in half crosswise and then lengthwise
1 Tb. butter
confectioners sugar for dusting

In a shallow bowl, whisk together egg, milk, brown sugar, nutmeg and salt. Set aside.

Spread each slice of bread with 1 Tb. peanut butter. Dividing evenly, sandwich banana pieces between slices of bread.

In a medium, non-stick skillet, heat butter over medium. One at a time, dip both sides of sandwiches into egg mixture and place in skillet. Cook until golden brown, 1-3 minutes per side.

Transfer sandwiches to a work surface. Using a serrated knife, cut sandwiches into quarters. Dust with confectioners sugar and serve immediately.

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Creamy Carrot Soup

I made this Cooking Light soup last week and had it for lunch every day. And it was absolutely fabulous. The recipe made plenty of soup and the hardest part was chopping all of the carrots (it calls for 2 pounds of carrots chopped into 1/2-inch pieces). If you are in need of a filling, warming, inexpensive, incredibly tasty meal option, I can't recommend this soup highly enough!


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New-Fashioned Pot Roast with Fresh Rosemary

Today, Mr. Fritz and I delivered dinner to Mr. and Mrs. Robertson to celebrate the birth of their first child. I wanted to make them something special, so I turned to a recipe from one of my favorite slow-cooker cookbooks: Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker: Recipes for Entertaining. This recipe is super simple -- it mainly requires a bunch of chopping (carrots, onions, and potatoes), plus mixing up a quick marinade of red wine vinegar, ketchup, fresh rosemary, Worchester sauce and some boiling water. I was planning to make it in the slow cooker, but then I looked at the weather forecast and realized that it would be smarter to take the cooking down from 8-10 hours to more like 4. So instead of employing my crock pot, I pulled out an enormous Dutch oven, filled it first with the beef (a 4-lb boneless chuck roast) then added the vegetables, then poured the sauce over the whole thing, covered the pot and put it on the lowest rack of a 350 degree oven. I put it in at 9:30 a.m. and by 2:15 p.m. it was done -- it smelled heavenly and, if previous outings with this recipe are any indication, should taste heavenly as well. We can also report that Baby Robertson is absolutely gorgeous! Cheers to the new parents!


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So there you have it -- a recap of most of my adventures in cooking over the past month. I will try to post more regularly from here on out. Thanks for reading the blog!

48 Hour Recipe Roundup: Chili Pie, Foil Packet Shrimp and Asparagus, Greek Frittata, Fettucini with Proscuitto and Peas

So... I've been lax in posting this past week because the cold that I had that I thought was going away flared up again and basically kept me out of the kitchen for several more days. But this weekend I made up for lost time with four great meals.


Lunch yesterday: Chili Pie
This is a Real Simple "Fake It, Don't Make It" recipe and it is both super simple and really tasty. You pull it together in two parts. First, you make the chili, by sauteing sweet Italian sausage in a skillet until it's cooked through. Then, add some chili powder and saute for another minutes before adding a can of kidney beans (drained), some salsa and a can of diced tomatoes and heat the whole mixture through. Pour that into a casserole dish and top it with the second part of the recipe: a box of corn muffin mix combined with an egg, some milk and shredded cheddar. Drop the cornbread mixture in dollops over the pie and gently spread it evenly so it covers all of the chili. Bake for 15-20 minutes and serve. Delish! I will definitely make this again.


Dinner yesterday: Foil Packet Shrimp with Asparagus and Jasmine Rice
Pam Anderson has a great system in her cookbook, "The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight and Eating Great" for pulling together fast, easy meals: she has you whip up a marinade (I chose one with soy sauce, sesame oil, vegetable oil, ginger and garlic), combine it with the protein and vegetable of your choice (I chose shrimp and asparagus, with the latter cut into one-inch pieces), then package into portion-sized packets fashioned out of aluminum foil. From here, you can either grill or bake the packets. Obviously, I went for the baking option. Set a rack at the lowest possible spot in the oven, set the temperature to 500 degrees, put the packets on a baking sheet, put the whole thing in the oven and roast for 15 minutes of so. When the cooking time is up and you open the packets, you'll find a flavorful dinner, with very little clean-up needed. Can't beat that.


Lunch today: Greek Frittata
This is another Real Simple recipe. This recipe is impressive because it seems easily adaptable to other fillings and looks elegant enough that you could serve it for a nice brunch and no one would need know that it is so easy to make. To wit: you start by pouring a bit of olive into a casserole dish and putting it into a 350 degree oven. As it heats, you pull the frittata together: whisk together eggs (the recipe calls for 10, I used 5 since I was cutting the recipe in half) with some salt and pepper, then mix in some fresh spinach, halved grape tomatoes and some chopped scallions, then add some crumbled feta. Pour the mixture into the prepared casserole and bake for 25-30 minutes, until the frittata puffs up nicely. Mr. Fritz, our dear friend Ms. Hays and I all agreed that it was way tasty. The hardest part was waiting for it to cook. I'm not used to having patience when it comes to cooking eggs!


Dinner tonight: Pasta with Proscuitto and Peas
This recipe capped off the weekend and it was a nice way to end a really restorative weekend. As I was making my grocery list today I was at a loss for what to make tonight and this recipe from Everyday Food looked just right. Martha Stewart demos how to make it in this video (written recipe attached, too). I added a couple of shortcuts: first, I added the frozen peas to the water when I threw the pasta in instead of waiting for them to thaw on their own. I also made the sauce in the same pan I'd used for the pasta instead of dirtying another one (the pasta and peas rested safely in a colander in the sink while the quick sauce came together) and finally, I added the pasta and peas back into the pot instead of pouring the sauce over them in yet another bowl/pot. In the end, then, this was a one pot/one colander meal. But more importantly, it was absolutely delicious. Wow. I will definitely make this again, possibly the next time we have someone over for dinner -- it's that good.

In any case, it's nice to be off the couch and back in the kitchen again.

Dinner tonight... Last-Minute Lasagna

On Sunday, I made a pan of Real Simple's Last-Minute Lasagna and divided it into six portions. I'm eating it for lunch each day this week (which is good, because work has been so busy that I can barely step away from my desk for the minute-and-a-half it takes to warm it up), and Mr. Fritz had it for dinner tonight (I had dinner out with a friend). This was another one of Real Simple's all-time favorite recipes and I must admit that it was in fact both easy to prepare as well as really tasty.


The recipe has only a few ingredients: refrigerated ravioli (I used tortelloni, because the grocery store was out of rav), frozen chopped spinach (thawed, with the water squeezed out), shredded mozzarella, marinara sauce (I used Trader Joe's Organic Vodka Sauce because I had a jar in the pantry), and shredded Parmesan. What makes it extra easy is that the filled pasta stands in for ricotta cheese and you don't need to pre-boil the pasta, since it's fresh, unlike regular lasagna sheets. You layer sauce, pasta, spinach, cheese, then repeat twice, finishing with sauce. It then bakes for 30 minutes, covered, in a 375 degree oven, followed by 5-10 minutes uncovered. Simple, tasty, good, and lends itself to lots of variations.

Some notes: The recipe calls for one 24-26 ounce jar of marinara sauce, but I think it would have been better with more sauce, maybe even double that amount. Also, OCD girl that I am, I carefully placed the tortelloni in rows. I think that it would probably be fine to be a little less precise, but what can I say? I'm kind of all about the presentation. At least I didn't force myself to alternate between the plain pasta and the spinach pasta -- even I can admit that doing that would have been over the top!

Dinner tonight... Pasta with Tomatoes, Sausage and White Wine

I'm continuing my quest to feed Mr. Fritz anything but Asian food this week, since he had his fill for awhile while on his business trip. So, tonight, I turned to another Real Simple recipe: Pasta with Tomatoes, Sausage and White Wine. It's from a story in their January issue called "18 Easy Upgrades for Your Favorite Convenience Foods." In this case, the convenience food is jarred marinara sauce. I picked up a 24 ounce jar of Mezzetta Roasted Garlic marinara sauce because I wanted to start with a decent base and thought the product could do the work for me of layering in a roasted garlic taste. (I used half of it tonight for this dish.)


To make this for two people, boil an appropriate amount of pasta (I used angel hair) and as that's cooking, follow these directions: "Heat 1 Tb olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add 1/2 a pound of sweet Italian sausage (removed from casings) and cook, breaking it up with a spoon, until browned, 6 to 8 minutes. Add 1/2 cup dry white wine and cook for 3 minutes. Add the sauce and cook until heated through, 2 to 3 minutes. Serve over the pasta." To make it for six people, follow the same directions, just use the whole jar of sauce.

Mr. Fritz and I both really liked this: it was flavorful and filling, and it took only about 10-15 minutes to pull together, which is perfect for a weeknight. In addition to using nice jarred sauce, I also picked up some good quality, house-made Italian sausage from the grocery store instead of going with a mass-produced variety. And it was another chance to use a mini-bottle of white wine, which I happily cracked open in lieu of using a full-sized bottle and having tons left over. I'll definitely make this again. It reminded me a little bit of the seriously tasty Italian-sausage laden risotto I made a few weeks ago, but with much less effort required.