One-Pot Wonder

We did make this once last year, and it was so good! We had some left over sausage and fish, and thought we'd give it a try again. Alas, again I forgot to take a picture! At this point, I'm going for 1 for 5 on the picture... but I digress. The first time we made this meal, we saw Rachael Ray make it on her show on Food Network and improvised based on what we saw, but this time I went by the recipe. Since the recipe is available online, I will just add some pointers and things I did differently.

Sausage and Fish One-Pot

For Rachael Ray's 30-minute meals, I find that they always take me longer or stress me out because I'm trying to take only 30 minutes. So, I try to pre-chop as much as I can; I would recommend starting by chopping anything which needs to be chopped.

Ingredients I used or changed:

I swapped mild italian sausage for hot because that's what I had; in retrospect, I could have thrown in some crushed red pepper to make up for the lost heat. Perhaps next time...

I used larger red potatoes.

I probably used 3/4 cup instead of 1/2 of Meridian Chardonnay (reminds me of home - SLO).

We had cod in our freezer, so that was the fish of choice.

I think I followed the directions pretty much spot on. We didn't have bread this time around, and I did miss it as an extra utensil for scooping things on to my fork, but didn't miss the starch. I would recommend sourdough if you decide to go for bread.

The absolute best part of the meal? One pot!!

Oh Pasta, How I Love Thee

My mom gave me Giada De Laurentiis' book Giada's Kitchen New Italian Favorites for Christmas and marked a recipe that she had made some weeks before. She said it was so hearty and flavorful. There was just one problem... I don't really care for most kinds of beans. But I decided to give it a try and, I'll admit, I've found another type of bean I don't mind eating! Unfortunately, I'm bad at taking pictures and even worse at keeping New Years' resolutions, so no picture, but I'm determined to blog anyway! Here is Giada's Orecchiette with Sausage, Beans, and Mascarpone.

This recipe is super super tasty and takes as long as the time it takes to boil the water and cook the pasta!!

Ingredients

1 lb orecchiette or other small shaped pasta (I used shells)

2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 lb turkey sausage, casings removed

1 small onion, chopped

1 (15 oz) can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

2 tbsp chopped fresh oregano leaves

1/2 cup mascarpone cheese

salt and pepper

Cook

Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and salt the water and cook until tender, but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, 8 to 10 minutes. Drain the pasta, reserving 1 cup of the cooking water. (For me, the sauce was done before the pasta, so I added a couple ladlefuls of the water and then just took the pasta out of the water with a strainer and dumped it directly into the sauce.)

Meanwhile, in a large, heavy skillet, warm the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and onion and cook, using a wooden spoon to break up the sausage into bite-size pieces as it browns. Continue cooking until the sausage is golden and the onion is tender. Add the beans and oregano and cook for 2 more minutes. Add the reserved pasta cooking water and stir, scraping up and brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the mascarpone cheese and stir until it dissolves into a light sauce. Season with salt and pepper and add the pasta. Stir until coated and serve.

Serves 4 to 6 (I think we got 5 dinner servings out of it)

Enjoy!