Pasta with Sausages, Cream and Tomato

From Peg Cochran

Looks like we've got an Italian theme going here--Sheila's minestrone yesterday and a pasta dish from me today!  If you've had your fill of turkey/mashed potatoes/stuffing, a pasta dish is a delicious palate cleanser!

This recipe is from Marcella Hazan's "Marcella's Italian Kitchen."  I used this cookbook so many times that it fell apart.  I was lucky enough to find a pristine replacement at a library book sale for very little money.  Come to think of it, most of my beloved cookbooks are falling apart--The Joy of Cooking, Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a volume by James Beard, two New York Times Cookbooks...funny but all my "diet" cookbooks seems to be in admirable shape!

I've adapted this recipe slightly to make a little more sauce (I know from experience that Italians eat their pasta with less sauce than Americans.  A lot of people would have found my grandmother's lasagna "dry," but we thought it was perfect.)  I've also used less cream--just enough to turn the sauce pink and give it the right consistency.  Also, the dish calls for "ruote di carro" or wagon wheel shaped pasta.  Now that I live in the land where pasta and tomato sauce are shelved in the "international foods" section of the grocery store, I can't easily come by that shape.  I've found farfalle to be a perfect substitute.

1/2 pound breakfast or other mild sausage (NOT maple flavored)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (or less)
1 teaspoon chopped garlic
1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes (original recipe calls for 2/3 cup of whole tomatoes)
1/2 cup of heavy cream
salt & pepper
2 tablespoons chopped parsley (I find this optional but a nice touch)
1 pound cartwheels or farfalle or shape of your choice
Freshly grated parmesa

Slice the sausages into 1/4 thick rounds.  Heat the olive oil in a pan and add the garlic.  When the garlic is a pale gold, saute the sausages until nicely browned on all sides.  Add the tomatoes, stir, and cook at a simmer for 20 minutes (15 will do if you're in a hurry.)

Add the cream (up to half a cup) and stir, simmering for several minutes to heat.  Add salt, pepper and off heat stir in the parsley.

Serve over pasta with plenty of freshly grated parmesan.

Buon Appetito!

Use farfalle or whatever shape you prefer

Slice sausages into small rounds

Saute until golden brown

Add tomatoes

Add cream

Buon Appetito!

 This is a meal that my character, Lucille Mazzarella, might serve her family for Sunday dinner.  Follow the adventures of Flo and Lucille in CONFESSION IS MURDER out now for all e-book readers from Beyond the Page Publishing.

 Join me on Facebook or visit my website or at @pegcochran

 Out now in my Gourmet De-Lite series:  Allergic to Death and Steamed to Death.  Coming in March 2014:  ICED TO DEATH

Coming March 2014

Minestrone

by Sheila Connolly

Oh, lucky me:  I get to post the day after Thanksgiving.  Could people possibly be hungry?  The choice usually comes down to (a) leftovers (all that turkey just sitting there taking up half the fridge, plus dribs and drabs of the side dishes), or (b) something as far from turkey and fixings as possible, yet still easy to make because you’ve been cooking like a maniac for days.

Soup.  It’s November.  It’s cold and dark and maybe wet.  You want something soothing.  This is the recipe:  minestrone.

There are probably as many minestrone recipes as there are cooks.  It’s a great dish to keep simmering on your back burner, and the beauty of it is that you can add whatever vegetables (preferably fresh, but canned will do) you happen to have on hand. Sure, there’s some chopping involved, but you can take your time. The only restriction is that you have to be on hand to add ingredients every now and then, and the rest of the time the soup simply burbles quietly on low heat.  Serve it with some crusty bread (I usually make corn sticks with this) and you have a complete meal.

 

Minestrone

1 cup dried beans (white or whatever you prefer)

2 lbs. marrow bones (if these give you the creeps, you can leave them out, but they do contribute to the flavor)

2 1/2 qts. water

 

3 slices bacon, diced

1 Tblsp. olive oil

1 large onion, minced (about a cup)

1 clove garlic, crushed

 

1 carrot, chopped

1 cup chopped potatoes

1 cup peas

2 small zucchini, diced

 

The last from my garden

1 1/2 cups chopped tomatoes

1 cups shredded cabbage

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 tsp. powdered sage (or fresh)

1 tsp. dried basil

 

1/4 cup raw rice

 

2 Tblsp. butter

1 Tblsp. minced parsley

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

 

Wash the beans and put them in a large soup kettle. Cover with cold water, bring to a boil, and remove from heat. Let stand 1 hour.

Drain the beans. Add the water and the beef bones. Bring to a boil and simmer, uncovered, for 1 1/2 hours. (I won't give you pictures, because this part is not pretty.)

Sauté the bacon until golden. Drain off the fat. Add the oil to the pan, then the onions and garlic and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes. 

 

 

Stir in the carrots, potatoes, peas and zucchini and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

 

 

Remove the beef bones from the beans. Add fried vegetables, tomatoes, cabbage and seasonings. Simmer, uncovered, for 1 hour.

Add the rice and continue cooking for 30 minutes.

Cream together the butter, cheese and parsley.  Add to the hot soup and stir until dissolved.

 

 

See?  Easy, and relatively low fat (you can leave out the butter at the end if you want, but don’t skip the bacon), not to mention warm and homey. By the way, it’s even better the second day, if you have any left.

 

 

And even more appropriate because my new book, Reunion with Death (released last week), is set in the north of Italy, where the food is amazing.

Available in print and e-format from Amazon.com

Happy #Thanksgiving from Mystery Lovers Kitchen

LUCY BURDETTE: By the time you get to our blog on Thanksgiving, you are finished with cooking for the day, right? Who needs a new recipe for stuffing or cranberries or even dessert? Who needs to be reminded what she forgot to do, or wished she done for the holiday? We thought it might be fun instead to tell you some cooking disaster stories. Because believe it or not (LOL), not every dish we make comes out perfectly!

My disaster came a couple of years ago when we hosted a giant family Thanksgiving dinner. Along with the turkey and gravy I made pumpkin and chocolate cream pies. Chocolate cream pie on Thanksgiving, you say? But my husband's family loves anything chocolate. And I was happy to show off, even buying designer chocolate instead of the usual Baker's. I've made this pie a dozen times--using a recipe right out of the JOY OF COOKING. The graham cracker crust was lovely, but the chocolate pudding part looked grainy. And though I refrigerated it overnight, it never set. We served it in bowls and I was humbled. Though the mounds of whipped cream did help...(These pix are the actual offending pie--If you look closely at the full pie, you'll see the grainy texture. Why you might ask, did she stop to take a picture? I must have known in my heart this would come in handy one day!)

Happy Thanksgiving to all our MLK readers! xoxo Lucy


KRISTA DAVIS: At least you could eat it, Lucy! Our big holiday disaster happened one Christmas. My mom was ready to put the goose in the oven when – boom – the electricity went out. We probably could have tried roasting it on the grill, but what about all the side dishes?  Instead, we phoned everyone and ate our Christmas dinner the next day. As I recall, the electricity returned about eight o'clock that night.

My current trend seems to be forgetting at least one dish in the fridge on Thanksgiving. LOL! No matter, everyone seems thrilled to have another dish added to the yummy leftovers the next day. 

A very happy Thanksgiving to all! Whatever happens, don't forget that the little kitchen mishaps often make for the funniest memories. ~Krista


DARYL WOOD GERBER
aka AVERY AAMES:  Krista, I know about forgetting a dish. LOL! I think we all do that. My disaster was the Thanksgiving we moved into our new house in Los Angeles. New kitchen. Lots of people. Not enough space. And everyone wanting to "help." Ooops. Too many cooks, you know? I dumped the stuffing on the floor as I was trying to negotiate going around someone to get to the oven. I really hadn't figured out the square footage of "between the oven and the island" very well. And then the milk boiled over for the mashed potatoes! And the milk oozed
below the stove to the drawers so they all had to come out and get washed down. Before dinner!  Ugh!!!  But the dinner was delicious, and by this time, everyone was participating in clean up.  Too funny. But not so funny at the time. I do remember having a delicious sauvignon blanc...again and again...

Happy holidays, to all. May you enjoy those you love and let those you love "help" when they can.

~ Daryl aka Avery


SHEILA CONNOLLY: I can't recall a lot of disasters of my own, although for the first half of my life turkeys were either overcooked to dryness or still pink in the middle--there didn't seem to be any such thing as "just right." I can remember my mother and grandmother poking the darned things and arguing whether it was ready or not.

The worst Thankgiving dinner I ever attended was when my husband and I were guests of a colleague of his, in North Carolina.  His wife was a bit mentally unstable and retreated to the bathroom in tears, and Jim was left holding the turkey and asking us, "How do you make gravy? Do I just add water to the pan?" We all survived, but their marriage didn't.

To balance that, one of my best Thanksgivings ever was in Berkeley, where there are lots of people with few relatives around.  One person gathered together 25 guests for a potluck.  The long table occupied the entire living room and extended six feet into the hallway.  That's the way to celebrate Thanksgiving!

PEG COCHRAN: I, too, have forgotten side dishes in the fridge--usually the homemade cranberry sauce!  With so much on the plate how would you even notice!  When I was a kid my grandmother made the turkey, getting up at some ungodly hour to get it in the oven.  That turkey was COOKED by the time it came to the table.  As my cousin always said, you don't have to carve Grandma's turkey, just hit it on top with a fork and all the meat will fall off the bones.

I've been lucky not to have had too many disasters (okay the make it now, bake it later dish that contained tiny canned shrimp and white bread..but that was before I knew better.)  At some point, it was in the late 90s, I learned about brining a turkey.  It was all the rage almost overnight (I was really into food and had honestly not ever heard of it before.)  I decided I would brine our turkey.  It was fairly small but I still didn't really have a big enough container for it (this was before I learned you could use a clean garbage bag.)  I ended up putting it in my large soup pot.  It was a snug fit, and the lid wouldn't quite go on.  And there wasn't any room in the fridge for it, but it was hovering around freezing so I put it outside on the front steps (I had no deck and the back door was downstairs.) 

When I went to retrieve it to cook it the next day, I had to chase a whole bunch of birds away.  They were nibbling on the raw turkey!  Fortunately I was able to retrieve the situation by cutting off that end of the turkey.  We all survived!  Hope you not only survive but thrive!  Happy Thanksgiving to all. Peg


MARY JANE MAFFINI/
AKA VICTORIA ABBOTT: Oh disaster! You bet, and If only it had been food. All our food disasters happen at Christmas and New Year's. But two years ago, as we were driving to the cottage after having picked up a turkey for Thanksgiving, we drove over the crest of a hill just as the sun was starting to set in the early fall sky. We were blinded by the sun in our eyes -- the windshield went black. Worried about hitting someone head on, the little mister pulled over to the side of the road, taking out a farmhouse mailbox and the front bumper of our 4-month old car.  

Some time later, we were

 grateful that we hadn't killed someone or been killed. There's always a bright side when turkey's involved.  Have a lovely Thanksgiving everyone. Enjoy your family, friends and food.  Look our for mailboxes.

XO  MJ (aka Victoria)


CLEO COYLE: MJ, sounds like that turkey was a party crasher! Hey, no groaning. Bad jokes are allowed on Thanksgiving--after a few adult beverages. And adult beverages were definitely on the menu after this disaster...

This one is a story from my dear husband (and partner in crime-writing). On Marc's first Thanksgiving in New York City, he wanted to whip up a feast for his roommate and some friends.

Marc was no novice at cooking. He’d preparing meals for his family since the 9th grade (because both parents had careers). Unfortunately, he’d never gotten up early enough on Thanksgiving morning to watch his mother and father prep the bird for the oven; so he failed to learn an important lesson...

Fast-forward to a small apartment kitchen in New York City. Marc proudly prepped and stuffed his ten-pound turkey, and popped it into the oven. All done! Right? Wrong. Before long a foul plastic smell filled the apartment. What was it? Some illegal incinerator going full tilt? An unlicensed construction crew? No matter, the stench quickly passed and the turkey roasted to beautiful perfection—but looks were deceiving.

Marc had failed to clean the gizzards out of the neck flap, and they were sealed in plastic. The bird looked great—but it tasted like hot, wet Styrofoam! That Thanksgiving, Marc and his friends enjoyed dinner at the local fast-food joint (Nathan's), where the hot dogs were delicious. 

Which goes to show you: no matter what you're eating for dinner, if you're sharing it with people you care about, Thanksgiving can turn out to be a doggone beautiful meal. May all of us...

Eat with
(Thanksgiving) joy!
~ Cleo 

And to all
of our readers...

Happy 

Thanksgiving!

Broccoli Cheese-y Casserole #recipe for Thanksgiving

From Daryl aka Avery

IT'S THANKSGIVING WEEK on Mystery Lovers Kitchen.

I'm so thankful for all of you, our MLK foodie fans, that I'm offering a giveaway below! Check it out.

Also, I am so thankful for all my buddies on Mystery Lovers Kitchen! We have been so blessed over the years with good companionship.


I don't know if you have purchased everything from the store or whether you have a set menu and don't intend to vary from it, but if you haven't and you don't, think about the casserole. If you have (and do), then consider it for Christmas.

Granted, it's not pretty.  LOL Is there any way to make a pretty casserole?? I mean, c'mon. Stuff clings to the sides. But isn't that the fun? It sure is for the person who's cleaning up. Sometimes the remains are the best parts of a casserole. Get a spoon. Lick. Yep. Gooey, cheese-y fun! And when you put a casserole portion on a plate, it oozes out on all sides. Only in cooking magazines and cookbooks do you see a "perfect" picture. Don't despair. Pretty doesn't matter. Taste does. And this is tasty!

In fact, this is one of my new favorite dishes that I'll make throughout the year. I adore Gouda cheese. I hope you do, too. For those who can't get Gouda, I'll bet you could use Monterey Jack cheese in its place. In fact, I'm going to test that and report back.

May this Thanksgiving bring you good times with family or friends or, if you're on your own, a wonderful private time with a good book or a good movie!


Broccoli Cheese Casserole

Ingredients:

(serves 6)

1 pound broccoli

2 cups sweet onions, sliced

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons cornstarch or potato flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

dash of pepper

1/2 cup half and half

1/2 cup milk

3-5 tablespoons cream cheese

1/2 cup Gouda cheese (shredded)

2 more tablespoons butter

3/4 cup dry gluten-free rice cereal, crushed

Directions:

In a large saucepan, bring 6 cups of water to boil. Add chopped broccoli and sliced onions. Cook 3 minutes. Drain and set aside.

In another large saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons butter, stir in cornstarch (or potato flour), minced garlic, salt, and a dash of pepper.

Add half and half and milk; cook and stir until thickened and bubbly.

Add cream cheese; cook and stir 1-2 minutes then stir in broccoli and onions. (I skipped this step and combined the two right in the casserole dish.)

Put in 2-1/2 quart casserole dish. Top with Gouda cheese.

Melt remaining 2 tablespoons butter and toss with rice cereal crumbs. Sprinkle over casserole.

Bake at 350°F for 25-30 minutes.

So...what are you thankful for?

Giveaway: IF YOU POST THIS ON FACEBOOK, TWEET IT, or PIN IT ON YOUR PINTEREST PAGE, and let me know in a comment HERE, you'll be entered to win your choice of either a Cheese Shop Mystery (4 choices) or A Cookbook Nook Mystery (1 choice, Final Sentence). I'll announce the winner next Wednesday. Remember to add your email in your comment, or send me your email to avery at averyaames dot com. Good luck!

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, Krista Davis, Lucy Burdette, Julie Hyzy and I are having a contest on Facebook. It's fun with lots of ways to win. We're giving away a fabulous gift basket from Salt & Pepper books (you know, the store that inspired the Cookbook Nook mysteries) as well as our books. And we might even sweeten the deal in weeks to come. Runs to the middle of December. So check it out. Click on the picture for the link!

******************

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Next up: 

Days of Wine and Roquefort Feb 2014, preorder here

Inherit the Word March 2014, preorder here

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