Category: Recipes

Anna’s Sausage, Bean, and Kale Stew

This was really good and FAST to make: a real winner for weeknight healthy meals!

From the recipe at Dinner A Love Story: Anna’s Sausage, Bean, and Kale Stew.

  • 1 onion chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic minced
  • Package of Italian sausage (we used Turkey sausage)
  • 32oz Low-sodium chicken broth
  • 14.5 oz Can diced tomatoes
  • 2 14oz Cans Cannelli Beans rinsed and drained.
  • 1 bag (or bunch) of kale
  • Parmesan cheese

Saute the onion in a large pot until softened. Add the garlic, pepper and shake of red pepper flakes. Remove sausage from casings adding to the pot and cook, crumbling, until cooked through. Add the chicken broth, tomatoes and beans. Bring to a boil. Add the kale and cook until wilted, about 3 minutes. Serve topped with Parmesan cheese.

 

Butternut squash tart

I had originally planned on using the Women’s Day recipe for the filling, and just substituting this for the corn-meal pie crust. But neither filling was exactly what we wanted (or had), and pre-cooking the onions and squash (like the Scraping the Skillet recipe calls for) seemed like a good idea. So I modified each a bit and came up with the following.

I mostly followed the crust recipe, but made it by hand rather than in the food processor:

  • 2 1/4 c Flour
  • 3/4 c Cornmeal
  • 1/2 c Vegetable shortening, cold
  • 1/3 c Unsalted butter, cold
  • ~1/2 c Ice water
  • ~1 Tbs Lemon juice

Mix the flours and cut in the butter and shortening. Add the water and lemon juice and mix. Using your hands kneed it a couple of times to bring it all together into a ball. Put in the refrigerator while getting the filling ready.

For the filling

  • ~2lb Butternut squash, peeled and cubed
  • 1 Red onion, sliced into rounds
  • 2 Tbs Olive oil
  • 1 tsp Dried thyme
  • 1/2 tsp Salt
  • 1 cup Cheddar cheese
  • 1 Egg

Preheat the oven to 400˚F. Caramelize the squash in a pan with the oil. Add the onions and caramelize. Add the thyme, salt and pepper. Remove from heat, let cool a bit.

Divide the pie crust in half and roll each half into a circle about 14in across. Don’t worry too much about the shape. Move the pie crust to a greased cookie sheet (or cookie sheet with a piece of parchment paper). Place half the filling in each pie crust. Sprinkle the cheese on top, and fold up the edges of the crust. Brush the crust with egg. Bake for about 20 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes and enjoy!

Fettuccine with Chicken and bell pepper cream sauce

I found this recipe on FamilyOven.com. Seemed like a good use for some leftover chicken breasts, plus peppers and fettuccine are on sale this week. Came out quite good.

Since the chicken was already cooked, I just chopped it up and added it in the end. We also used real cream instead of the fat free stuff!

Mint scones

Mint scones based on recipe at The English Kitchen:

  • 3.5 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 Tbs finely chopped mint leaves
  • 1/4 tsb salt
  • 6 Tbs unsalted butter
  • 8 oz cream ( I needed to add about 1/4 c more)
  • Jam

Mix flour, baking powder, salt and the sugar. Using pastry blender chop in butter until the mixture resembles  bread crumbs. Stir in the mint leaves. Add the cream mixing it in until the mixture forms a soft dough. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll the dough out until it is about 1/2 inch thick. Cut into triangles or other shape. Place onto the prepared baking sheets, leaving a good two inches between each.

Gently make an indentation into the center of each scone using the back of a teaspoon or one of your fingers. Spoon a heaped half teaspoon of  jam into the middle of each indentation. Place into the heated oven and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown.

Moroccan grilled chick with chickpea barley salad

These recipes came from Simply Recipes, and were easy and delicious! Moroccan grilled chicken and chickpea barley salad.

I love the tender juiciness of chicken that marinates in yogurt sauces! And as the recipe says, it’s easy to mix up before work and throw it on the grill when you get home.

Our youngest had a great time mixing up the ras el hanout for the salad…loved all the measuring and making something his parents had never had before!

Pasta with Corn pesto

Tonight, dinner was pasta with corn pesto. We substituted frozen corn, and that made the recipe go a lot faster. Even though it’s the weekend, we needed a quick dinner. With the frozen corn, it took longer to boil the water and cook the pasta than get the pesto made! Dinner was ready in 30 minutes and it was delicious…our youngest threw a fit because he wanted more, luckily I had saved some from my plate.

Polynesian Pork

I was looking for a way to use pork shoulder that didn’t involve a crock pot, and came across this recipe for Polynesian pork. But this doesn’t have any veggies, so we made our own version:

For the pork, follow the recipe:

4 lb. Boston Butt
2 c. apple cider vinegar
1/4 c. sugar
2 tsp. salt
1 c. soy sauce
2 tsp. ground black pepper
2 tsp. ground red pepper
10 cloves garlic
1/4 c. wine
Cut meat into 1 inch cubes; mix remaining ingredients together. Marinate meat cubes for at least 8 hours. Place on wooden skewers and grill until done. Serve with rice and green vegetable.
While the pork is cook on the grill, stir fry a bag of veggies (snow peas, broccoli, etc). Remove the pork from the skewers and mix in with the veggies. Serve over rice.
The vinegar from the marinade imparted a great flavor. It was also nice to fire up the grill after not using it much for the winter!

Beer-glazed [pinto beans] with [andouille] and orange

Earlier in the week we made the beer-glazed beans with chorizo and orange from Mark Bittman’s book. We used andouille sausage and some pinto beans that we had left over from another meal.  We cut the amount of beer a bit so that it thickened faster and was ready sooner. Turned out really good and was a fairly quick weeknight meal.

Pork Shoulder Ragu

This appeared on Dinner A Love Story, one of my favorite sources these days. The original recipe called for braising in a dutch oven for 3-4 hours. Given that we don’t own a dutch over (why do they cost so much!?!) and it is much easier to put stuff in the crock pot and go off to work and come home to a tasty meal, I adapted it for the crock pot…or more truthfully, I just followed the recipe, it didn’t need any adaptation! YUM!

All I did was brown the pork shoulder in a skillet first as directed. After putting the pork in the crock pot I put the red wine in the skillet to deglaze and get all the browned bits scraped up. Add that and everything else to the crock pot and cook on low for a while, I did 9 hours because that’s how long it was until dinner time!

Came out yummy! Thanks for the recipe.

Crisp and Spicy Chickpeas with Ground Beef

This is from Mark Bittman’s The Food Matters Cook Book (p. 410, also posted on this blog).

We made this last week, but with sleep overs, and other things, it’s taken a while to get photos uploaded and this posted…

This was really good! The crisp chickpeas and beef had a great texture.