Fettuccine with Creamy Sausage Tomato Sauce

Again, another long break! Work has been too busy to cook and blog.  So I have been cooking, just not blogging! I am trying to use the holidays as a chance to get caught up and clear some of these pictures out of my phone!
This was a delicious treat that I made that does NOT fall into the category of health food.  But we were both craving a delicious pasta without heading out of the apartment, so I used this recipe from Epicurious without really changing much.  It was creamy, hardy, and an excellent treat for a cold day.  It's a rare day that I cook with cream, but this was worth every calorie. 

Here's what I used:

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 shallots, chopped
• 2 large garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 pound sweet Italian sausages, casings removed
• 1 cup whipping cream
• 2 14.5-ounce cans diced tomatoes in juice with Italian seasonings
• 1 tablespoon dried sage
• 1/2 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper

• 1 package of fresh fettuccine

• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

I started by chopping my shallots and garlic and adding them to a hot pan with a swirl of olive oil.  I let those sweat until they were softened, about 3 minutes.

Then I added the sausage, working to break it up into small pieces with the back of a wooden spoon.  The smaller the better here, so that it can hold all the delicious sauce. It took about 10 minutes until the sausage was no longer pink in the middle.  Then it's time to add the rest of the sauce. If it looks extremely greasy here, you can use a big metal spoon to get any sausage grease out of the pan - I got about one small spoonful out before I added the rest of the sauce ingredients. 

To this, add the cream and incorporate before adding the tomatoes (make sure you crush them with your hands as you add them), the tomato juices, sage, and red pepper. Stir and incorporate, bring just to a boil, and turn the heat down to simmer for 15 minutes. 

Meanwhile, get your pasta water boiling so that you can add it at the appropriate time (8-9 min out for dry, 3 min out for fresh pasta.)  While I remembered to reserve some pasta water, I did not need to use it. Once the pasta is cooked, strain and add directly to the sauce to coat.  I like to use my silicone kitchen tongs to make sure all the pasta is evenly coated. You can add a little salt and pepper if you need to, though I did not have to add any additional salt. Instead, I topped with a little salty parmesan cheese to serve. 

Buon Appetito!

Linguine and Meatballs with Homemade Tomato Sauce

Hello everyone! Sorry for my conspicuous absence... work got a little crazy combined with sending me out to LA.  It was a great chance to catch up with great friends who I haven't seen in far too long.  Andrew and Tuany took me to the coolest restaurant I've been to in a long time, Bazaar, and I'm now re-inspired to find more of those gems in NYC!
So after a long day of being outside on what felt like the first real fall day in quite some time, hubs and I both had a craving for old school spaghetti and meatballs.  I went with linguine and meatballs, actually, and after a bit of time (maybe an hour?), this was a delicious take on an old favorite.  Adapted on the go from, of course, my trusty Epicurious app.  What would I do without it?!?

Here's what I used:
For the sauce:
2 28-oz cans of whole San Marzano tomatoes, with the juice
1 really large yellow onion or 2 smaller yellow onions
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/2 tsp salt
For the meatballs:
1 lb ground beef or other ground meat of your choice
1 cup breadcrumbs - I used the Italian mix
1/3 cup chopped parsley
salt and pepper
2 eggs
2 cloves of garlic
1 cup ground parmesan (not shredded - I actually chopped up a block of parm really, really finely since I didn't have ground on hand)
1/3 cup milk

And of course, your pasta.  I only cook what I think we'll eat and then I just have to make the pasta fresh with the leftover meatballs and it tastes like brand new.

To begin, you want to get the sauce started.  Get a large stock pot out and add both cans of tomatoes.  In all the cooking shows I have watched over the years, cooks swear by San Marzano tomatoes, and I have bought into the hype.  I have no idea if they are better than the domestic or not, and they are more expensive, unfortunately.  If someone loves a domestic brand, I would love the name.  I do think the San Marzanos give it that New York pizzeria taste, so I cough up the extra $2-3 bucks a can.  Then I quartered my large yellow onion.  I diced one quarter, and threw the other 3 quarters in there whole (you will remove them and discard later - if that bothers you, then dice finely and add to the sauce.)  Add the 1/4 cup of butter (half a stick) and get the sauce going to a nice simmer and start on the meatballs.

 In a big bowl, add the breadcrumbs and the milk together and stir until combined.  Let this stand for 10 min while you prep the rest of the ingredients. Monitor to see if you have excess milk.  My breadcrumbs absorbed all of the milk, but I did not use fresh breadcrumbs.  I used store-bought Italian blend. If you have extra milk, then combine the rest of these in a separate bowl so you can drain the milk out later.

 To my breadcrumb mixture, I added the chopped parsley, salt and pepper, and parmesan.

Now it's time to incorporate the meat.  I had been hoping to do a ground beef / ground turkey or pork blend (which I think would be delicious) but I got caught walking home in the rain without an umbrella, so ducked into the only nearby grocery store - the Korean market - which didn't have anything but ground beef.
Anyway, put one pound of whatever combination of ground meat you like in a separate bowl.  In a glass measuring cup, I cracked 2 eggs and whisked in the chopped garlic. Add that to the meat and combine thoroughly.  Then add the meat mixture to the breadcrumb mixture.

   Before you roll the meatballs, get the sauce ready.  By now, it's probably been on the stove for about 30 minutes.  So take out the big pieces of onion and discard.  I then used an immersion blender to make the sauce nice and smooth, but I think that is more of an aesthetic thing than a requirement.  An immersion blender is so easy to use and makes the sauce nice and silky.  Look at it steaming away!

Once you are ready, start rolling the meatballs into golf ball sized meatballs and add straight to the sauce.  Make sure they are in one layer on top of the sauce.  Once you are done, cover the pot and let simmer for 15-20 more minutes.  Get the pasta going once the meatballs are done and cook according to the package directions.
Once that is done, plate the pasta, the sauce, the meatballs, and top with freshly grated parmesan.  Enjoy! This fed 3, with plenty of leftovers.  It would probably feed up to 6-8.

Cheesy Baked Mushroom Rigatoni (with peas)

Today's weather was absolutely gross in New York City.  After such a wonderful Labor Day holiday, it was tough enough to be back in the office without having to trek home in the pouring rain!! The only comfort was I knew I was going to make something warm, cheesy, and delicious to make it all better. I turned to my favorite, Epicurious, and adapted another recipe for a cheesy baked rigatoni with mushrooms to make it all better.

This one took some time, so I opened a bottle of red and enjoyed the sound of the rain while I cooked. Here's what I used:
1 red onion
1 package of sweet Italian sausage (4 links)
1 oz dried porcini mushrooms (get the dried if you can so that you can use the water that you reconstitute them in. I bought them in the pasta sauce aisle of Whole Foods.)
10 Shiitake mushrooms, though the recipe called for 1 lb white button mushrooms, aka, my worst nightmare. I almost bought cremini but freaked out that they looked very similar to white button mushroom and therefore might taste the same. The shiitakes did okay, but did get a little slimy because they cook for quite awhile. If you are a mushroom expert, you may know a better one to substitute. I used about 10 big shiitakes.
1 TB chopped rosemary
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 can of beef broth (7 oz)
1 cup shredded pecorino romano and I added some shredded Monterrey Jack as well because I had it in the fridge and thought it would be a little melty-er and gooy-er than the pecorino (it was!)
One swirl around the pot of half and half (about 1/4 a cup?)
1 cup frozen green peas
1 lb box of rigatoni

The first thing I did was start a big pot of salted water for the rigatoni and pre-heat the oven to 375.  Then I rinsed the dried porcinis in a small bowl, drained, and added hot water until they were just covered. Let those sit for 20 minutes to reconstitute. You will need this water! Do NOT pour it down the drain when you take the porcinis out! This is where all the delicious flavor comes from.
Then I took the casings off the sausage and chopped to bite size pieces, as well as diced the onion, rosemary, and shiitakes.

Then I heated some olive oil and got the onion going in a heavy pot/dutch oven that can go straight in the oven. I used a red onion, but it will cook for so long that I don't think it matters which type you use.

Once the onion is translucent, add the sausage and cook until it is not pink in the center.  Try to break up the sausage pieces as well as you can.  I had to use a heavy- duty spatula (ok, I actually enlisted hubby to do this while I trekked to the roof in the rain to grab some rosemary.)  It took me about 10 minutes to cook the sausage. While the sausage is cooking, take the porcinis out of the water and give them a rough chop. SAVE the water.  Look how dark it is in the photo below! That is a lot of flavor!

Then I added my fresh mushrooms and cooked a minute or two to soften them.  To that, I added the chopped porcinis, white wine, and rosemary and let it cook down 3-4 minutes until most of the liquid was gone.  Next add the porcini water (I had about 1 cup) without adding whatever grit settled to the bottom of the bowl. Stir that in and add the beef broth. This will now cook down for about 15 minutes, which means it is the perfect time to add your pasta to the boiling water. My rigatoni box said it should cook for 14 minutes.

Not much to look at here, but it was starting to smell DELICIOUS.
Stir occasionally to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom but otherwise it's a good time to shred the cheese, if it's not already shredded.   I got about halfway through this process and I started feeling guilty that this dish was going to be almost all brown and tan (meaning not enough veggies for us!) so I added a half a bag of frozen peas that I had on hand. Problem solved! And they made a delicious addition.
Once the pasta is done, strain it and set it aside just for a minute.
When the sauce has reduced until there is still liquid, but it looks more like syrup than liquid, you are good to go (again, it took about 15 minutes to do so.)  Add the swirl of half and half to make it a little creamy and stir together. Add the pasta directly to the pot and take it off the heat. Stir really well to cover the pasta in the sauce and then gradually fold in the cheese. Yum. Bake covered (or covered with foil) at 375 for 25 minutes.

This was so rich and delicious. The porcinis added such a wonderful flavor and there was just the right amount of creaminess without it being overkill or too rich.  Hubby reluctantly gave out a 10 - he said he is worried to say it was a 10 lest I give up cooking at having reached my goal.  Not to fear, sweetie; I'm just getting started. Enjoy!