Arepa with Chorizo and Creole Sauce (Arepa con Chorizo y Hogao) and Green Beans with Almonds, Smoked Paprika and Cumin

Last weekend was the first weekend in some time that we visited the farmers' market behind the Museum of Natural History.  Every time we go to the farmers' market Brady drags us to his favorite vender, Roaming Acres, for a free snack (homemade ostrich dog treats) and a smoked ostrich tendon dog chew.  They look bizarre but he loves them and I would rather he eat ostrich tendon than cow penis (aka pizzles) or cow snout (aka moozles).  As luck would have it, they happened to be sold out of his smoked ostrich tendon but we decided to try some of their fresh sausages for us.  The farmer recommended their Colombian chorizo so we bought a package.  The only problem was that neither of us had ever tried Colombian chorizo (and the farmer had warned us that it had a very different flavor than Mexican or Spanish chorizo) so we had no idea what it tasted like or whether it would be crumbly and loose like Mexican chorizo or firm like Spanish chorizo.  We basically had no idea whatsoever what to do with our sausage after we got home.  So it hung out in the refrigerator for a few days until I was inspired enough to spend a few minutes poking around for recipes.  This one won because it sounded different and interesting, but was still pretty easy to throw together.  Then I had to decide what kind of side to serve with our arepas.  We haven't made green beans in awhile so I picked some up at the store with the idea that we would make a play on green bean almondine.  I decided that we would season our green beans simply with cumin, smoked paprika, garlic and lemon juice, all of which I thought would work with the flavor of the arepas.  And just like that, dinner was in the bag.

One thing I will say about these arepas - they were really easy to put together.  They required a number of pots, pans and trays (one each to cook the sausages, the hogao and the arepas themselves), but irrespective of the number of pans and dirty dishes, they came together with very little effort.  And they were satisfying.  I'm not saying they were the most delicious thing we have ever made, but I enjoyed them.  For those of you who are curious, Colombian chorizo is firm like Spanish chorizo but it lacks that paprika-flavor and is not smoked, cured or otherwise cooked.  Except that both products are raw/uncooked and I didn't think that it was similar to Mexican chorizo, which is much spicier and crumbly.  I liked our variation on the green beans too.  They had nice flavor and weren't hard to throw together.  And I think their crunch and bright flavor were a nice match for the heavier arepas.  The flavor of the green beans was just similar enough (thanks to the ground cumin) to work, while still providing a really interesting and bright pop of flavor.  The green beans added texture and were just substantial enough (I think salad would have felt too light).

Recipes after the jump!

Roast Romanesco Cauliflower with Chistorras

A few weeks ago we picked up some chistorras at Despana and we had to figure out what to do with them.  We served them one night with cheese and crackers and then I had to think of another use for them.  Since chistorras remind me of chorizo I decided to use them like I would use chorizo and roast with vegetables.  We had a head of romanesco caluflower in the fridge so I figured why not roast the chistorras with the romanesco cauliflower.  So we tossed the cauliflower with the usual assortment of ingredients - evoo, crushed red pepper flakes, s&p - and roasted them halfway before throwing in the chistorras.  I had never tried romanesco cauliflower on its own before but it was a really interesting and eye-opening experience.  I took my first bite of the romanesco cauliflower and was instantly stumped.  It tasted like popcorn to me.  I can't explain it.  It had a very different texture from normal cauliflower (a little more delicate) and the taste was much sweeter and perhaps a touch nuttier.  The chistorras added a nice porky, spicy (not in the sense that it was hot, but more in the sense that it had a lot of flavor and spices) flavor, which gave the dish some real depth of flavor.  And the lemon added that hit of acid and brightness to balance out the richness of the chistorras and the sweetness of the romanesco cauliflower.  I thought it was really cool combination.  And I was intrigued enough by it that I couldn't resist picking up another head of romanesco cauliflower for further experimentation!

Recipe after the jump!

Fried Rice with Chicken and Chinese Sausage

When I was younger I hated fried rice.  I'm not sure why I hated it, except that (1) I loved plain white rice and I thought putting things in it or on it (including soy sauce) ruined it and (2) I disliked cooked carrots and peas so I couldn't understand why you would add them to any dish.  It took me years to grow to appreciate fried rice and even now, I have to admit that I prefer plain white rice with any meal.  I'm happy to eat fried rice as a meal in and of itself, but if I am going to order family-style and share a bunch of dishes with friends or family, I would prefer to stick with plain white rice as the accompaniment to my meal and not fried rice.  True story.  So I almost never order fried rice at a restaurant because I just don't see the point.  Somehow it is an entirely different story at home, where we make fried rice from time to time.  But I think that fried rice serves a purpose for me at home that it doesn't serve at a restaurant.  Fried rice for me is an amazing way to repurpose leftovers (both rice and protein) and is also a comforting, homey meal.  At restaurants I generally want meals that I cannot or for whatever reason prefer not to make at home.  Somehow in my mind, fried rice is not a restaurant-quality dish.  And to be perfectly honest, so many restaurants make such inferior, mediocre fried rice that I wouldn't order it even if I considered it to be a restaurant-quality dish.  I guess that's the rice snob in me rearing its ugly head.  This fried rice is wonderful because it has a variety of flavors and textures - I love the chunks of egg, the sweet sausage and the marinated chicken.  And you can really modify it to suit whatever it is that you have in the fridge.  No peas?  No problem.  I considered adding some dried shiitake mushrooms like we did in this Stir-Fried Rice with Pork and Shiitake Mushrooms, but I got lazy.  I also considered adding more soy sauce or other liquids to season the rice itself like we did in this Thai Fried Rice and this Fried Rice with Chinese Sausage and Chicken Adobo.  But I generally prefer my fried rice on the dry side and I wanted a more clean/pure fried rice, so I left the soy sauce out as well.

Recipe after the jump!

Spicy Long Beans with Sausage and Mushrooms

One of the thing I love most about Asian grocery stores is the rather random assortment of fun ingredients like long beans.  I always think about buying them, but I never do because I end up buying pea shoots, yu choy or gai lan.  About a month ago I finally pulled the trigger and bought some.  Then I got busy at work and forgot all about them.  They turned up in the bottom of the crisper about a week or two later, moldy and gross.  Fail.  But I decided this past weekend to try again so I picked up another bunch.  And we finally made long beans!  One of the things that immediately drew me to this recipe (aside form the long beans of course) was the fact that everything in the recipe is a staple that we keep in the pantry or refrigerator.  We didn't have to go out to buy anything.  Go us.  However, this recipe used up the rest of our sesame oil so before we can make it again we need to stock back up.  Here's hoping that I remember to pick up some more sesame oil on my next trip to the grocery...

I am pretty impressed with our first attempt at long beans.  They were really tasty and interesting.  Every time we make a dish with dried shiitake mushrooms I am reminded of just how much I like them as an ingredient.  We made Stir-Fried Rice with Pork and Shiitake Mushrooms back in February that was absolutely delicious, which I totally attribute to the earthy, funky flavor of the mushrooms.  The same held true here - I loved the flavor of the mushrooms.  The preserved vegetables added some funk of their own to the dish too, but in a slightly different way.  The mushrooms are more deeply umami whereas the preserved vegetables are pungently salty and garlicky.  I also thought that the ground pork and Chinese sausage together were a really nice combination.  The Chinese sausage is rich and porky, but sweet and has a nice crisp texture to it, while the ground pork is meaty and homey.  I thought this was the type of dish (with slightly different proportions to be heavier on the green beans and lighter on the meat) that I could totally have seen myself eating in a back alley restaurant in China with plastic stools and little tables set up outside on the sidewalk.  It was totally satisfying and not at all pretentious.  Two thumbs up.  I told Alex that this is my favorite recipe we have made from this particular cookbook yet.  The Five-Spice Chicken with Sugar Snaps was pretty good, but as far as I am concerned this dish was better.

Recipe after the jump!

Turkey Sausage, Red Onion, and Shiitake Mushroom Pizza

Meal number one in the new, non-Asian leaf we have turned over - pizza.  And a great pizza at that.  Restaurant-quality pizza.  For which I give a lot of the credit to the sausage and the dough.  The turkey sausage came from DiPaolo Turkey Farm at the Greenmarket and I think it is better than most pork Italian sausages.  Their turkey sausage is just so incredibly flavorful and somehow is less dry than other turkey sausages.  It has a ton of fennel seed and other spices to really make it special.  If the sausage hadn't been so flavorful the pizza wouldn't have been nearly as good.  The same goes for the dough (which I picked up from Eataly) - because the cooked pizza crust had the perfect taste and texture.  I guess some of the credit there goes to the pizza stone too.  That pizza stone is a pain in the butt and weighs a ton, but it can really make a difference to your meal.  Aside from the dough, the pizza just had a really nice flavor profile.  The onions gave the pizza some sweetness, the sausage gave it spice and a certain meatiness, and then the mushrooms made the pizza taste earthy and hearty.  I also loved the hint of fresh rosemary in every bite. 

The taste of this pizza had almost nothing to do with our skill as chefs, and everything to do with the quality of the ingredients.  I'm calling this pizza my quasimodo pizza since there was a bit of an incident when I transferred the pizza onto the pizza stone.  Generally Alex and I roll out the dough on a cutting board, then using the rolling pin we transfer the pizza to the back of a cookie sheet that has been liberally dusted with cornmeal.  The cornmeal acts like little ball bearings and turns the cookie sheet into a ghetto pizza peel.  But due to the weight of the toppings the pizza stretched out while I was trying to transfer it from the cookie sheet to the pizza stone, and so the stretched out pizza ended up flopping off the end of the stone.  I took a spatula and flipped the extra crust back on top of the pizza and called it a day.  So I may not be a perfect pizza chef, but who cares when the results are this tasty?

Recipe after the jump!

Lentil Salad with Hot Italian Sausages

So this dish was one of those dishes that came together somewhat randomly.  I had hot Italian sausages defrosted in the fridge, but I didn't want pasta.  And I couldn't decide what I wanted to serve with hot Italian sausages.  If had merguez defrosted I would have made couscous.  But I didn't.  I briefly considered making spaetzle with my Italian sausage, but quickly decided that even if I had spaetzle (which I wasn't certain that I did), it skewed a little too close to pasta.  Since our last few meals have been so heavy I wanted something, anything to lighten up the Italian sausages a little.  And then while I was headed home on the train it occurred to me that I could make lentils to go with my sausages.  Actually, the recipe that gave me the idea was one that I have made in the past - Salmon with Lentils and Mustard-Herb Butter, which involves salmon served over a bed of lentils.  But given that we were serving Italian sausage, rather than salmon, I wanted to give the lentils a little more acidity to cut through the richness of the sausages and make the flavors a little bolder.  So I decided to throw in a little red wine vinegar, an onion, some garlic, and a lonely parsnip we had hanging out in our fridge.  Lentils are healthy, right?  I mean, a salad would have been lighter and potentially healthier, but lentils are packed full of protein and fiber.  

I thought the dinner was nice.  It was filling and hearty, without making me feel gross and full afterward.  It was a good meal for a cold, snowy winter night.  Was it something new and groundbreaking?  No.  But it was a really nice use of some of the items in our fridge and cupboard.  The fresh parsley was a really nice touch because the brightness and freshness of the parsley cut through what otherwise could have been a rather heavy dish.  Actually, I think that the combination of mustard, red wine vinegar, and fresh parsley was a wonderful counterpoint to the spicy sausages and the starchy lentils.  In the sake of full disclosure, we also ate the leftover braised red cabbage with our meal.  It was a really nice combination.

Recipe after the jump!

Whole Wheat Penne with Italian Sausage, Spinach and Broccolini

I have to admit that this pasta was not exactly what I intended to make tonight.  I really intended to make pasta with Italian sausage and broccoli rabe, but it appears that either I bought the broccoli rabe and left it behind at the store, or I never actually bought it in the first place and only thought that I did.  I'm not sure which option is better.  I guess the latter because while it might make me delusional, at least I didn't waste any money on vegetables that didn't make it home with me?

This is the perfect type of pasta to really fill you up and stick to your ribs, without making you feel heavy and gross.  I was absolutely, positively starving when I got home from work today.  It was one of what I call my "insatiably hungry" days where I can't help but eat everything in sight.  Granted, this time my insatiable hunger is probably due to the amount of time I have spent tromping around in the snow with the dog the past few days.  Who knew that playing in the snow could be such a work out!  This pasta was exactly what I needed - simple, hearty, delicious, and filling.  It also didn't take a lot of time and effort to cook, nor did it require any unusual ingredients or extra shopping trips.  Instead it is something of a fridge clearing pasta that you can throw together with almost anything you have in the fridge.  Because we used whole wheat penne and lots of vegetables (we substituted broccolini and baby spinach for the missing broccoli rabe), I didn't even feel that guilty about eating going back for seconds!  I guess we could also have substituted turkey sausage for pork, but that might be taking things entirely too far.

Recipe after the jump!

Cassoulet

So I have to preface this recipe with  an admission.  This isn't real cassoulet.  Or at least it isn't traditional French cassoulet (a thick bean stew/casserole containing pork sausages, other cuts of pork, duck and white beans).  Or at least this isn't that similar to the French cassoulet that my host family used to make for me when I lived in France.  This is my version of cassoulet, based on whatever we had in the fridge and/or the pantry, which in this case was 2 legs of duck confit, 4 pork sausages of some sort (we got a Grilling Spectacular package from Dickson's Farmstand a few months ago, which contained 3 different varieties of pork sausage, none of which were labeled), and one lb. of dried white coco beans (which it turns out are traditionally used in cassoulet).  We also threw in some onions, carrots, fresh herbs, red wine, San Marzano tomatoes, and then topped the whole mess with panko bread crumbs.  I really wanted to add some fresh parsley, but unfortunately we were all out.

So this recipe might not be your traditional cassoulet, but it was close enough.  And it was yummy.  This is the type of warm, filling, and comforting dish that would be perfect after a long day of skiing or any other cold weather activity.  Alex and I both gave it a solid B, even though it was more suitable for 40 degree weather than the current temps in the mid-60s.  I really wish that we had some fresh parsley to mix in with the breadcrumbs to lighten things up a touch, and I also wish that the breadcrumbs had formed a better crust on top.  Otherwise, I thought it was a fairly lovely and hearty dish.

Recipe after the jump!

Stir-Fried Sugar Snap Peas with Chinese Sausage

I have a bad habit of buying far too much produce anytime I hit the farmers' market or the grocery store in early summer.  Everything just looks so fresh and delicious.  Even though our fridge was already full to the brim, I couldn't resist buying some more fresh asparagus and sugar snap peas, as well as a gigantic daikon, at the farmers' market behind the Museum of Natural History on Sunday.  So today for lunch I had to figure out how to use some of that produce.  This was the result.  We had to modify the recipe somewhat because it called for far too much liquid, but I am modifying the recipe even further here so the sauce thickens up even more.

The flavors were really good here.  I loved the combination of the sweet Chinese sausage and the sugar snap peas and asparagus.  You have to be really careful not to overcook the vegetables because then they will just be mushy and gross.  Part of the beauty of this dish is tasting the rich, savory and sweet sausage balanced against the fresh crisp vegetables.

Recipe after the jump!

Sausages with White Beans in Tomato Sauce

I have to admit that I am very pleased with this series of recipes.  Somehow it all came together with very little effort from me.  I had everything I needed for every single recipe, with the exception of fresh bread (which you really need to purchase fresh every time if you really want to do things the right way) and some produce.  If the squid salad was nice and summery and light - perfect for a meal on a warm spring or summer day, these sausages were perfect for a cool spring, fall or winter meal.  Luckily, the beginning of this week was nice and warm and it got cooler and damper as the week went on.  So somehow the recipes even ended up matching with the weather.

I have never been much of a bean eater.  I have friends (who will remain nameless), who can eat black beans straight out of a can.  I am so not into beans like that.  Truth be told, the only beans I actually like are white beans and I only like them some of the time.  This dish was a perfect white bean dish for me.  It was hearty and rich, not to mention flavorful, but it didn't tip over into the overly starchy, heavy realm of bean dishes that I really dislike.  And the beans retained some of their bite so they didn't dissolve into mush in your mouth, which is another tendency of beans that I really dislike.  Instead, this recipe had wonderfully savory chunks of Italian sausage stewed in a mixture of San Marzano tomatoes and hearty white beans.  While not a show-stopping 4 star dish, it was tasty and filling.  Not only that, it was remarkably easy and quick to prepare (once you have the white beans made that is).  Come next fall I will definitely be adding this dish to the regular rotation.  I can make the white beans over the weekend and then for an easy weeknight meal just throw them in there with the sausages, sage and tomatoes.  On a busy night in the middle of the work week, that's my kind of meal - beans and all.

Recipe after the jump!