Recipe: Sausage and Kale Pasta in Creamy Tomato Sauce

This is hands down my favorite new dish. I use pasta to bridge the gap in weeknight meals. Before school started we only did pasta once or twice a month and I viewed it as a cop out meal. But with the new intense school schedule I am changing my tune. Plus my kids usually eat it, which lessens the tantrum duties.

I figure a good way to make pasta more of a meal that sticks to your ribs and not your belly is to load it up with sauce. My sauce to pasta ratio is pretty high. I like it soupy. Then I make sure that the sauce is filled with lots of different veggies and pastured meats! The following combination has been helping me to sneak more green leafies into my kids bellies. After serving this dish 5-6 times in the last few months I am happy to say that they no longer fuss over seeing the greens in the sauce

Sausage and Kale Pasta in Creamy Tomato Sauce
1/2 pound of pork sausage (but really any old thing will do, leftover cooked sausage, ground beef or turkey, even leftover meatloaf)
1 cup of kale chiffonade
2 cups prepared marinara sauce
1/4 cup heavy cream
8 ounces of dried pasta (I am not going to be hypocritical enough to encourage you to eat whole wheat pasta, I have currently fallen off the whole wheat pasta wagon....trying to get back on. It's hard

In a large skillet, sautee your sausage until well browned. I do not drain the fat. I think it adds something to the final dish. Add the kale to the pan and wilt. Next add the prepared marinara. I usually keep a meat free version of this sauce on hand in my freezer. That is what makes this a weeknight meal. When the kale is cooked and the sauce is all unctious and delicious looking, stir in the cream. My kids don't like when the sauce is super pink, so I have to restrain myself to about a quarter of a cup. You can add more if you want, because Good God it is worth it.

Finally cook your pasta in boiling salted water for about 9-10 minutes. Drain. Then let the cooked pasta simmer in the sauce for another 2-3 minutes. Serve and top with grated parmesean and a big salad (if you are more effecient than me).

MMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmm.

On a side note, DO NOT substitute the cream for anything. ANYTHING!! Half and Half will not work in a pinch. The tomatoes are too acidic and will curdle any dairy product without enough fat content. Cream is the only thing that can stand up to tomatoes. Otherwise it will just look like you added ricotta cheese to the sauce. Though that might be good in a pinch now that I mention it....

I hope you will try this. I definitely don't feel 'bad blood sugar' vibes after having this dish. The veggies, meat and fat certainly stand up to the pasta. I always feel full and happy after eating this. You could also easily add in other veggies! Great additions might be fennel, eggplant (I have done that with success!), summer squash, etc. I am sure you could come up with a ton.

Enjoy!

This post is shared with Traditional Tuesdays and Fat Tuesdays, Real Food Wednesdays

Recipe: Savory Sausage and Eggplant Casserole

I cannot deny fall any longer. School has been up and running for 3 weeks already, the carnivals and harvest festivals are everywhere. And in one week buildings around the city will legally have to turn on the heat if the overnight temperatures fall below 55 degrees. (Or something like that.)

Yet saying goodbye to summer has been bitter this year. Perhaps it was the killer tan I had this year during the days when I actually got sun. Perhaps it was the time off from work. Perhaps it was because my DH was home for several weeks this summer playing with the kiddos and helping out around the house. Our schedule was leisurely, our fridge was full of fresh fruit and although it was wickedly hot much of the time the sun felt clean and clear on our skin. Now here I am sorting through my closet, up to my ankles in corduroy and opaque Spanx, and I can't find any excitement about it at all.

This time of year DH is always playing Simon and Garfunkel and reminding me how they conjure fall for him. His memories of all-boys Catholic prep school will forever endear him to the fall season. Starting school gave his life structure and meaning. I normally find excitement this time of year in pull on boots, corduroy skirts with over sized belts or sweaters that hit just below the waistline. Oh! And brightly colored cardigans. But this year. I just keep looking at my sun dresses and white pants with melancholy.

Eggplants and tomatoes are the fruits of a dying season. Nurtured by long hot days they seem to come of age just as the days begin to shorten. While tomatoes are coaxed into being for much longer seasons by farmers who know that the tomato is a cash cow, eggplants are free to do their own thing. Not every person you know will eat an eggplant this season. And my family and I might only have 2 or 3 in any given late summer. But they are some of my most favorite of all vegetables.

Eggplants cook down into a mush that is not sweet and not bitter, but yet a bit of both. They are also usually cooked in so much olive oil that this fatty and creamy texture is cooked right into the vegetable pulp. The following recipe is not one that will be kind to your waistline. It is quite the fattening dish. But it is one that will help to coax out some of those tears that you have been unable to shed over summer's demise.



Sausage and Eggplant Casserole
FOR THE SAUCE:
1 pound sausage (preferably pork, but that isn't entirely necessary, definitely ethically raised though)
1 peeled and cubed eggplant, about 3-4 cups (any variety)
1 medium sized onion, chopped to a medium dice
2-3 cups prepared tomato sauce
1/2 cup finely chopped kale (in a chiffonade if you will)

FOR THE POLENTA:
5 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups dry polenta
1 cup heavy cream

FOR THE TOPPING:
Fresh mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses

In a larger skillet than you think you need (that has a lid), begin to cook your sausage. When the sausage is cooked through but not yet brown, add your onion and eggplant and stir. Cover and cook until the eggplant begins to soften, maybe 30-40 minutes. At first the eggplant will soak up all the fat in the pan. But as it cooks it will release it all back into the dish. Notice I didn't say drain the fat from your sausage? Well, that is why this recipe is so good. The fat is crucial to the flavor of this meal. If your sausage is very lean like turkey sausage, add about a quarter cup of olive oil during browning. This oil will prevent burning, don't remove any of it.

When the eggplant becomes very soft add the prepared tomato sauce and the chiffonaded kale. The reason for the stipulation on the kale is that while you want to add some more vitamins to this dish, you don't want it to be thick and chewy. The idea is that the kale will melt into the sauce. You can completely omit it if you prefer. Allow the sauce to cook for another 45 minutes to an hour until all the flavors have combined.

In another pot, bring your 5 cups of water up to a boil with the teaspoon of salt. When the water is at a rolling boil, add your polenta while whisking to avoid clumps. Allow polenta to cook. I recently saw on TV that polenta that is fully cooked naturally pulls away from the pan when stirred. It reminded me of when bread dough comes together. I added my cup of cream when this happened. It is worth it to note however, your polenta will likely not look like bread dough coming together. It just won't be quite so amorphous and sticky. It will get very thick when fully cooked. Undercooked polenta is NOT delicious.

Pour your cooked but still hot polenta into a casserole dish. Spread evenly over the bottom. Do not wait for your polenta to cool before you put it in the casserole dish. Cooled polenta will take on whatever shape it was in while cooling. You MUST get it into your casserole dish while it is still warm. Layer your sauce on top of the polenta, and also spread in an even layer. Lastly top with cubed or sliced fresh mozzarella cheese and grated Parmesan.

Bake the casserole in a 350 degree oven until the cheese has become melted and yummy looking on top.



Serve, and try not to eat the whole freakin' pan. It will be hard. But you can do it. Think of the amazing lunches and leftovers you will have!!! And yes, you are reading correctly, this recipe takes apx 2 hours to cook. It is definitely a weekend effort. But it does freeze beautifully. Even better, make a double batch and eat one and freeze one!

The Things did NOT eat this meal. Neither one said they liked sauce that night. Go figure. They are difficult to understand and even more difficult to anticipate. Oh well, more for me!

Enjoy!!

This post is shared with Melt in Your Mouth Mondays and Traditional Tuesdays and Real Food Wednesdays and Simple Lives Thursdays

'Hoarding Food' or '5 Ways to Stock Up for Winter Even If You Don't Have a Garden'

Indooring gardening failures aside, I am quite concious of the challenges that await me during the winter months ahead. Last year we had trouble eating locally and seasonally during the off season. The winter was long and punishing. By January we were seriously tired of winter vegetables. By February our Winter CSA share was over. And by March I had virtually given up. Deeper into the season, it seemed like every vegetable we bought was from California save our apples, onions and potatoes, oh and the occasional butternut squash. Pastured meats and milk are available year round, but instead of a 50/50 farmer's market/ grocery store split to my food spending, it ended up being more 25/ 75. I prefer to buy local, but that wasn't the biggest issue. It was that in an attempt to eat more local, we ate fewer vegetables overall. Winter veggies are hard to prepare. They require chopping and peeling and boiling. And insanity or not, I felt some guilt buying things that were technically out of season for my locality. But eating locally just wasn't working for me 100%.

So this year I am trying to take action now. I only have one fridge and in it a moderately sized freezer. I store all our meat in the freezer which doesn't leave a ton of space for frozen vegetables but I am trying to stock up on items that I know we won't have in a couple of months.

1-Frozen Greens I have mentioned it before, but we have gotten alot of greens this summer at our CSA and I haven't quite gotten through all of them. So I have chopped and frozen much of the kale I got this year. I have made pesto from the basil and spinach. And I have heard that one can even make pesto from swiss chard. I have to try that since I have two bunches of chard on hand and I am going on vacation soon. Pesto freezes so beautifully! That'll be delightful on a pizza in mid winter.

2-Chicken Feet Pastured chicken is a truly seasonal item, available only in the summer and early fall. I have mentioned before that we just don't eat as much chicken these days. Chickens are expensive to raise ethically. I find the pastured varaities for around $8 a pound. That's high, but then you have to buy a 5 pound bird? There you have a special occasion, $40 meal. Then consider that much of the bird is inedible, even if you make stock from the bones. That's the reason we are eating more pastured beef. Beef is cheaper and I can buy a pound at a time as I like. But chicken feet are a wonderous thing! The dairy farm that provides my milk also raises pastured chickens. And while the feet would be throw away parts for many producers, they make the BEST chicken stock! I regularly buy up all of her feet. And at $6-$7 for a bag of feet that produces 4 quarts of stock that stands up as thick as jello, I'd say that's a bargain. But the chickens will only be around a few more weeks. So I need to stock up on feet if I want them during the winter.

3-Pasture Butter I normally buy Organic Valley's Cultured Butter, a great product. But every summer they produce a green foiled Pasture Butter. It became available in June and when I first bought it, I noticed the difference right away. The smell is sublime and the color is a deep yellow like egg yolks when the butter is melted. I don't have access to pasture butter year round. My dairy does not currently produce butter. And while I could make my own from the Milk Thistle cream, $8 for a half a pound of butter seems especially steep when I consider the effort expended. I mean, I do have a full time job and two kids. If I ever win the lottery maybe I will start making my own butter. But until then I don't think it is a viable solution. Even the local butter by Ronnybrook Dairy (another exceptional dairy) is only okay. It is good, but I happennto like the OV Pasture butter better. Since it is a seasonal product I have been slowly stocking up all summer. I currently have 7-8 pounds of butter in the freezer. We go through about 1/4-1/2 a pound of butter every week (who am I kidding, 1/2 a pound) so I figure I have 14 weeks of butter. I think I'd like to get just a teensy bit more. Thank goodness my ice cube maker isn't working because that has freed up space for butter storage.

4-Sweet Corn Corn is such a wonderful thing. This summer it has been especially plentiful and exceptionally sweet. Our CSA has been providing 4-5 ears per week. That's enough to feed our need for corn on the cob, but not enough to store. So I hve started to buy extra ears at the FM. I plan to take the corn, cut it off the cob, blanch it in hot water for thirty seconds and then cool it, bag it and freeze it. So far though all those extra ears of corn have just gone into my family's bellies.

5-Dried Herbs Fresh herbs have been so wonderful to have around this summer! I have enjoyed dill in my potato salad, hottttt cilantro and jalepeno salsa and basil and kale pestos. But all good things must come to an end. So slowly I have been trying to dry the inexpensive bunches of fresh herbs that I can get at the farmer's market, dill, basil and even chamomile. I have saved some small glass spice jars for storage. Though it has been tough. Drying the herbs means that I can't just eat them fresh.

So there you go! 5 Ways that even a city girl with an itty bitty freezer can store local foods to get ready for the winter. Thus far my husband has been very supportive of my 'crunchy' eating habits, but he has been unwilling to buy a stand up freezer to compliment the tiny one we already have. His biggest problem? That the freezer won't fit in the kitchen and would have to live in the living room. Well...I guess he has a point!!

This post is shared with Real Food Wednesdays and Healthy 2Day Wednesdays and Simple Lives Thursdays and Fresh Bites Fridays and Fight Back Fridays

Super Green Pesto with Cashews and FINALLY How to Store Basil

If you are anything like me then your fridge is stuffed with beautiful greens that aren't your spouse's favorite and your kids won't touch with a ten foot pole. You also, now that it's July, might be starting to get some small basil bunches in your CSA of farmer's market. But basil here in the northeast isn't out of control yet like it will be in a couple of weeks.

I am completely sick of sauteed greens. And it's too hot for kale soup. In my fridge I had a half a bunch of spinach, some kale leaves and a small bunch of basil. So last weekend I whipped out the food processor and decided to make some Super Green Pesto.

SUPER BASIL NEWS ALERT!!: I think I finally discovered how to store basil. After years of struggling to keep basil from turning black or liquifying, I had just stopped buying it. I assumed basil was meant for people who had green thumbs and back yards full of sun. But in the summer it looks too yummy, I can't resist. Most of the TV chefs recommend cutting the stems and storing on the countertop in a glass of water like a bunch of flowers. For me, this resulted in foul smelling water and slimy inedible basil within 48 hours. Then I tried something different. I took my small bunch home from the farmer's market and soaked it just like my other greens in a sink full of water with some vinegar. I shook off the water and stored it in a plastic bag in the fridge in the crisper drawer. A couple of the leaves turned brown, but 90% of the bunch was happy and healthy a week later when I used it!! Finally. It only took me ten years to figure that one out.

Super Green Pesto with Cashews

1 Small bunch of basil
5-6 large leaves of kale
About 2 hearty handfuls of spinch
One garlic clove
Lemon juice (about 1 tablespoon)
A handful of raw cashews (about 1/3 of a cup)
Olive oil (about 1/2 of a cup)
Salt and pepper to taste

Chop or Chiffonade your kale, place it in your food processor. Add the basil leaves, spinach leaves, garlic clove, lemon juice and a drizzle of oil. Pulse until chopped but not pureed.





Add your raw cashews. Raw nuts are softer and will better attain the consistency you are looking for. Run your processor while you drizzle in the remaining oil. Your pesto may need more or less oil to achieve the consistency you want. I don't like a super oily pesto.




Scrape down the sides and incorporate everything. Add some parmesean cheese if you like. I didn't though. Add you salt and pepper to taste and give it a last run. There you go!





Rather than pouring over pasta, I sauteed some scallions, summer squash and snow peas. Just before they were done I added a healthy amount of the pesto and dropped a couple eggs on top. I covered the pan and let the eggs cook. It was a wonderfully light summer dinner but would make an equally good breakfast.

Pesto made entirely from basil can be too strong and not so high in nutrients. This is a great way to use your CSA greens and kick up the nutritional value of your basil pesto. It also freezes really well. I used half and froze half.

Enjoy!!

This post is shared with Simple Lives Thursday and Food Renegade's Fight Back Fridays

A Few Interesting Facts About Quinoa

I can’t remember when I bought my current bag of quinoa. It might have been last summer after I hit a good stride with this blog. I had bought quinoa many years ago, so it wasn’t unfamiliar. But that bag I bought last summer, well I never did anything with it. It sat in my cupboard until recently.

Then something made me dig it out. Perhaps it was all the success I had with millet. (Note the sarcasm there, I actually did not have *any* success with millet.) Whatever it was I am so glad that I fished it out of the obscurity of the back of my closet. But, like Elmo, I want to know more about quinoa (can’t you just hear that in your head “Elmo wants to know more about quinoa, heeehehehehe).

Quinoa is NOT a grain. I repeat, NOT a grain, it is a pseudocereal and more specifically a chenopod. A cereal is a grass plant that produces an edible seed, think wheat, rice, corn, etc. A pseudocereal is a broadleaf plant that also produces an edible seed. Pseudocereals include quinoa, amaranth and buckwheat. Pseudocereals can still be ground into flour and consumed like regular grains. But chenopods are not grains at all. A chenopod is a member of the Chenopodioideae or goosefoot family. It is a group of flowering plants in a subfamily of the flowering plant family Amaranthaceae. God I wish I had studied Latin back in High School. The species are distinguished by flowers with no petals and having an achene or utricle in their fruit. In common terms for you and me, quinoa is more closely related to plants like spinach and chard.

But that is not to say eating quinoa is like having a big healthy salad of chard and spinach. You didn’t get out of eating salad yet! But it does help to explain why quinoa has such a different nutritional profile than wheat or corn or rice. For every 100 grams, or 3.5 ounces, quinoa contains 368 calories, 6 grams of fat, 7 grams of dietary fiber, 14 grams of protein (that’s quite a lot when you consider that the same 3.5 ounces of chicken has approximately 25 grams of protein), almost half your folate needs for the day, and more than half your phosphorus and magnesium intake for the day.

Quinoa seeds are coated with a saponin coating. Unprocessed seeds must be soaked for several hours, then rinsed and rerinsed to remove the soapy outer coating. In South America where cultivation is largest, these saponins can be used as detergents for clothing and washing. Boxed quinoas in grocery stores are all fully prepared and do not require soaking.

Recently I saw an interesting article making the rounds on Twitter. It was a NY Times article called Quinoa’s Global Success Creates Quandary at Home. Basically the article states that due to rising global demand for quinoa, global prices for the seed has risen substantially, almost tripling in recent years. In Bolivia, a major producer of quinoa, the grain has become more profitable to sell abroad than at home. So rather than serving as a traditional food to the native people, it gets packaged and shipped to Whole Foods here in the States. This has brought and influx of money into poor farming communities, which is usually a great thing. But like other countries that have experienced recent wealth, the young people of Bolivia would rather eat imported processed foods, and the more traditional peoples can often no longer afford their local quinoa. Quinoa consumption in Bolivia has fallen 34% in the last 5 years, according to the article. Malnutrition is farming regions is becoming a much more serious issue in recent years. But then again, if the community abroad stopped buying quinoa, the farming regions might be forced back into greater poverty. Issues of this nature are almost always complex, with no one perfect easy solution that everyone will agree upon.

Quinoa is gaining in popularity here in the US. I first heard about it maybe 7 or 8 years ago. I tried it and liked it, but I never bought much of it. I encountered it occasionally at a restaurant. But I really enjoyed it when I did. The grains are tiny and although they are soft and savory they kind of pop in your teeth. It is a very satisfying texture. I have most often seen quinoa in cold salads, mixed into raw vegetables. Years ago I tried quinoa mixed with diced carrots and celery and shredded red cabbage, topped with feta cheese and balsamic vinaigrette. I might have to make that this weekend. The nutty flavor makes it easy to mix with virtually anything. Most recently though it was a delicious recipe at the Just Food CSA Conference that made me want to try quinoa again. They served red quinoa with frisee and maybe shallots? It has been a month already I can’t quite remember. It was really good whatever it was. Since then I have been trying new things.

Quinoa with Kale and Preserved Lemon

1 cup of cooked and cooled quinoa

1-2 cups kale, shredded or chopped into thin strips

1 diced carrot

1-2 heaping tablespoons of preserved lemons, minced

Feta cheese

Make the quinoa according to your packages instructions. My package tells me to boil 1 ¼ cups of water and add in 1 cup of washed quinoa. Cover and boil for 12 minutes and then turn off the heat and let stand another 5 minutes. After the quinoa is cooled off a bit, it doesn’t need to be completely cooled, mix together all the veggies and preserved lemon. Top with feta cheese and dress with olive oil. Yum.

This post is entered in Simple Lives Thursday at Sustainable Eats (and others!)

And Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday

Potato Leek Soup with Kale Chips

My mother used to make a Baked Potato Soup that was a bomb of pureed potato, sour cream, cheddar cheese, cream and bacon. I always thought of the soup as unhealthy because of how high it was in fat. But it was a special family soup. My mother loved making it and I loved eating it!

Fast forward 15 years and I have changed my views about what is healthy and nutritious. I embrace fats in my diet, especially butter fat from both butter and cream and whole milk (as long as it's a good pastured source). No longer do I think that such a soup should be slandered as unhealthy. There are some considerable alterations that one can make to make this soup more nutritious.

First off, my mother always peeled the potatoes. She was using russet potatoes, or your average Idaho Potatoes. Here in the Northeast, farmers do grow russets, but they are quite a bit smaller here. What I see everywhere are creamer potatoes or waxy potatoes. This time of year you can still find the little 'new' potatoes because the potato season is just beginning. I have gotten a couple pounds of potatoes from our CSA for the last three weeks and they have all been these creamer potatoes with very tender skins. Potatoes with their skins intact are far far more healthy. Potatoes in general I believe receive a bad rap. High in Vitamin C, Vitamin B6, copper, potassium, manganese, iron and protein to start, this tuber may have some carbohydrate calories, but it sure supports a nutritious diet. But skins are where alot of the nutrients lie, so keep them on and learn to love them. In this soup you won't even know that they are there. And I did scrub them very very very well.

Second of all (drum roll), I made my own stock for this soup. Last weekend I boiled a pot of chicken bones on low for four hours just like Sally Fallon told me to. Then I boiled it down to a very thick broth and froze them in my silicone muffin cups. I had forgotten where my ice cube trays were. But the muffin cups worked just fine! After all the bitching and moaning I did about making my own stocks, I overcame. Who here is proud of me??

Lastly, I cut back on the amount of bacon. I used about 4 ounces of true artisan bacon from Flying Pigs at the Union Square Green Market. They still use nitrates, but I am not as worried about them after a reader suggested that nitrates occur naturally and non-naturally. I really am trying to investigate all sources of information for a truly independent opinion. I have read that the non-natural sources have been found to be carcinogenic. I need to do more research there. I simply assumed that if I bought artisan bacon at the farmer's market (at $15 a pound no less) that they would not be using nitrates. Read your labels guys! I do know that the pork is pastured and humanely treated though.

Potato Leek Soup

About 2 pounds of potatoes

4 cups of chicken broth (or enough to almost cover the potatoes)

4 ounces of bacon, diced

3-4 small leeks, sliced

1 cup of heavy cream

In a 3 quart saucepan, place the potatoes and broth. Boil and then cover and reduce to a simmer to allow the potatoes to get nice and soft. In a large frying pan, cook the back on medium heat until crispy. Remove the bits and drain the grease, but leave 2-3 tbsp of fat. Fry the leeks in the remaining fat until soft, maybe 10 minutes. When the potatoes are soft, add the leeks into the potato pot. This next step is much easier with an immersion blender, but you can puree using a food processor too. Add the cream (substitute with milk if you wish, or just add milk if the soup is too thick) and puree the leeks and potatoes and their skins, everything all together. Stir in the bacon bits and enjoy. Like really really enjoy.

As far as the Kale chips go, did you know about this? Who's been holding out on me??? I got this recipe from the guy that was standing behind me in the line to pick up my CSA veggies. When he said it was the only way to eat kale I knew I had to give it a try. Thank goodness I stood next to him.

Kale Chips

1 Bunch of hearty kale, the flat kind (I am not sure you can do this with the curly kind, but I am sure a reader will tell me)

Drizzle of olive oil

Kosher or Sea Salt

Cut the very very woody stems off the kale, but leave an inch or so of stem in place as a 'handle'. Spread the kale in one even layer (no overlapping!) on a sheet pan. I had to use two pans for my bunch of kale, which was not all that big. Drizzle the kale with a little olive oil, sprinkle them with salt. Bake at 400 for about 15 minutes. But check on them. It went by really really fast for me. Then just remove from the oven and enjoy.

I didn't tell Thing 1 that it was kale. I just told him they were chips. He ate the first one (and crumbled it all over my nice clean couch), and then promptly handed me back the stem and said "I like chips, they are good. I am going to get another one." He must have eaten 10 of them when it was all said and done. Did I hear that right? Did both of my children eat dark leafy greens this week? Score two for Mommy.

Don't forget to check out Fight Back Fridays at Food Renegade! There are lots of real food articles to read!