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

Tomorrow is my Blogger-versary!!

It fills me with much pride to say that Wednesday is my blogger-versary!! That is right. I have been clacking away at the computer for almost a year now. And since the whole point of this blog was to get off processed foods in a year, let’s ask the most important question of them all, are we off of processed foods?

The answer is yes, and no.

What a cop out, huh?

Let me try to explain. First I will give you a small recap. At this time last year I was a passionate CSA member whose heart thumped loudly when I came too close to a carrot. But behind my veggie fervor, many of our calories came from frozen pizza, chicken nuggets, potato chips, paninis, crackers and cookies, packaged cereals, ice cream….well you get the idea. For as much devotion to vegetables as I spouted, I fell into every food trap there was. I wasn’t paying attention to what I was eating and I was buying separate food for the kids thinking that was all they would eat, I didn’t want to deprive them…insert your best excuse here.

My desire to eliminate processed foods came from the rationale that if I made it myself, that I would make food 10 times more healthy and of better quality than the ‘chefs’ in the food industry were doing for me. Plus I could see to it that no icky chemical preservatives, dyes or other non-food ingredients were allowed to come to the party. Through cooking at home I could better nourish myself and my family. My mission was both nutritional and emotional. I was looking not only for a few good recipes, but really how do I regain control of my kitchen from the money-grabbing executives who had convinced me to fill my shelves with overly pasteurized sugar laden adulterated food!

I made a To-Do list of everything in the house that I wanted to examine. I said I would eliminate foods altogether, or attempt to regularly make them myself in my own kitchen or…learn to make peace with them as is. The worst offenders in the kitchen, the ones that had to be completely eliminated: American cheese, Nutella and ice cream, fishy crackers. These are not simple foods to make. They are complicated and require a lot of work to make them. And they contain a lot of yucky ingredients. Out they went. Though I have found a local ice cream that we like, but with it being so high in sugar, it only makes an appearance every 3-4 months instead of every week like the good ole’ days.

Next was another small group: hot dogs and crackers. Both these items I had originally thought I would just eliminate. But I have since found an excellent grass fed hot dog from Hawthorne Valley Farm, whom I have blogged about before. I have started buying them. But instead of having them twice a week, we have them once every other week or so. I feel good about these hot dogs and the people I am buying them from. Same goes with crackers. I didn’t buy crackers for months until I found Ak-Mak crackers. They taste good, they are organic and they are completely whole wheat. So, they are back in the game.

And then there is pasta. I have made pasta several times. It is easy. Well…relatively. I have the best of intentions but I don’t always get to it. I like my homemade version because it is far higher in protein than store bought. But I do keep a box of store bought around for those nights when my train runs late. Sometimes the best laid plans fail and you have to cook a 5 minute dinner.

There is one item that has stuck around in spite of itself, pretzels. The pretzels I buy are the Utz Organic variety. I believe they are 50% whole wheat and 50% regular white flour (oh for shame). But the kids really love them. And I buy one bag a month. I have no intention of making homemade pretzels (yet). And I am happy with them. I can put it into perspective. I am not trying to win any awards in food perfection, so the pretzels stay. We do not eat enough of them for me to consider them a problem food.

However when I wrote that post I never imagined all the things in my cabinet that were highly processed and potentially problematic that I ended up adding to that list: conventional mayonnaise, soybean and other vegetable oils, bouillon. This year has been about discovery for me. And finding alternatives to some of these foods, especially making my own broths at home, has been a deeply enriching experience.

The To Do List: Pasta

Remember the To-Do List? I bet you don't! I wrote a post about the To-Do List back when I had fewer than 20 RSS subscribers. I might have even written that post before I set up my RSS feed!

I am not sure why it took me so long to try making pasta. I grew up eating only homemade pasta. Every few weeks my father would bust out the pasta machine, roll out long strips of dough and turn flour into a meal. But I have never made pasta at home. I think my hesitance to make pasta at home is because I thought I had to have a pasta maker. I felt that some heavy, silvery set of gears that can be vice gripped to the counter top was integral to the process of making pasta. And indeed it is, for some people. But I have no room for bulky machinery. I barely even use my stand mixer because I don't have enough counter space to keep it out, it must stay locked away in the pantry. Then I read this interesting blog post. And I suddenly realized that one could make pasta at home without another piece of one use wonder equipment! Life has opened up to me!

I quickly emailed my father for his recipe. He said he started with 2 cups of flour and four eggs and about a tablespoon of olive oil. So I started there, with a trusted family recipe. Only I made some slight alterations--because you wouldn't expect anything less from me! No really, it is not that bad this time. I just made it different by using whole wheat flour, something my dad never does. I used 100% white whole wheat flour. I remember watching Mario Batali making pasta, and he always made the flour into a pile, and carved out a well. I cracked my eggs in, one, two and three--whoops! My third egg spilled over the wall of my well an all over my counter. Eggs look so solid when they are cracked into a bowl. But they run like water when they have nothing to contain them. Rats! I scooped the egg back into the messy flour. The recipe called for 4 eggs. But I figured that 3 eggs would just make a slightly smaller batch. Plus I was using extra large eggs. I hate that everything seems bigger than natural in the US (even though I love my country--have I mentioned that?). I never trust foods in bigger forms. But recently I discovered that my recipes were just coming out better when I used extra large eggs. I don't know why, but it works on everything from muffins to custards.

Once I got the egg scooped back into the flour, I added some oil and went to town. You want pasta to have some tooth. So I kneaded the dough to develop the gluten. But pasta dough is not like pizza dough. It is thicker and tougher. I continued to add flour until the dough was no longer sticky. I took my ball of dough and broke it into 4 smaller pieces. And then I rolled each piece out in turn. It took significant upper body strength to get each piece of dough to roll out thin enough. But that works out well for me because I haven't hit a real gym in like 7 or 8 years. And I am looking for some compelling upper body workouts that center around my interests. No pain no gain right??

After I got each sheet rolled out I rolled it into a flat packet. And I used a serrated bread knife to cut the roll-up into thin strips. I first tried just a serrated steak knife--But don't do it. The force is better distributed in a longer serrated knife. My strips were smaller and straighter and overall better looking after I switched.

Then, because I have no pasta rack, I dried the strips on a cutting board. I just let them hang out on the board for a couple hours. But then I got freaked out about the raw eggs even though that seemed counter intuitive, and my father has let every batch of pasta air dry for years and years. And I did get the recipe from him! Oh well. I put all the semi dry noodles into a plastic bag and parked them into the fridge.

Make no mistake. These are not your restaurant angel hair noodles. These noodles are thick and not altogether straight. They are brown from the wheat germ, and they felt heavy and toothy.

We didn't eat them right away. We had other wheat dinners and I have this thing about not eating pasta too often. I try to space it out over the course of a week. And I don't think we have ever had pasta more than twice in one week. Not because I am bragging about that. I am a little nuts about the wheat and grains. But I have to explain why I didn't have this post up sooner! Last week it was imperative that I make my friend D a lasagna because she had a baby. Yay! Congrats! And if you are going to the trouble to make one lasagna, you really ought to make two. So we had already made pasta for dinner on Monday, plus leftovers. It was Friday before I was read to have pasta again. And even that I felt like was too many nights eating pasta for dinner. But I took one for the team.

I usually have some frozen spaghetti sauce put up for a weeknight meal. So I brought out my last batch and took out my homemade pasta. It was ugly stuff. A week of drying out in the fridge took it's toll on my precious strippy strips. Then it hit me. I had no idea how much pasta I had made. I usually buy 12 oz boxes of pasta and I know my family will eat about 8-9 ounces, so not quite one package, two-thirds if I don't want any leftovers. But here I had this ziploc bag of homemade pasta, how much should I make??

I brought out the old Weight Watchers scale and laid a plate on top. I measured out 9 ounces of pasta. Judging by what was left I think I made about 11 or 12 ounces of pasta. 9 ounces didn't look like enough. But scales don't lie.

My pasta looked so ragged and handmade (not in the good way). I was scared that it would crumble and fall apart in the water. Some strips had already broken into shorter pieces as I was drying and bagging them. I threw it in the pot and held my breath. I usually boil pasta for 10-12 minutes. I did the same with these bad boys. They did not break, they lolled gently in the water. I tried one to test it, gave them another 2 minutes and drained. Only because they were so thick, the noodles were rather al dente. Too bad I didn't realize this until after I was eating them at the dinner table covered in sauce. Oh well, better luck next time.

The kids adore pasta. And the transition to whole wheat pasta has been far easier than expected. A year ago I swore that I just couldn't do whole wheat pasta. I had tried it, I hated the flavor AND the texture, and that I could do healthy whole grains everywhere else but pasta. Then when we started the blog I started buying only whole grain pasta. Strangely, no one minded. DH didn't bitch at me about the grainy texture. And while the kids definitely looked at me liked I was keeping a secret from them, they ate it. And now they don't know any different. I was also pleased how well they took the next leap from store bought to homemade. Given the difference in my wild free form pasta from the eggless, perfectly extruded stuff they are used to, I was shocked that everyone cleaned their plate. The pasta was really really good. very tasty. But it was anything but soft.

For next time: I will use a little more olive oil to give the dough some conditioning. I will also try and roll the sheets a little thinner before cutting the strips. That's easier said than done because rolling out the sheets was, like I mentioned, like doing upper body work at the gym, but one must strive for perfection. I will also cut the strips thinner. Because if I can only make the sheets so thin with a rolling pin, I can reduce necessary cooking time by making say, linguine rather than fettuccine or tagliatelle. I don't even know what I did. Some of my strips were tagliatelle, some were like lasagna noodles (just kidding).

I will also try and make this pasta in larger batches. No joke, it was quick. It took me about 45 minutes from when the first pile of flour hit the counter to when I was cleaned up and the noodles were drying. But I don't really want to have to do that every week. Once a month would be more doable on my schedule. Maybe this will be a good opportunity to commit to eating pasta less? I like that my pasta has many eggs in it. So it is higher in protein than the store bought stuff. But it is still a grain based meal, very filling and lower in protein. While we ate alot of pasta last week, we usually have it only once a week. Perhaps now I could try and get down to once every other week? It is a thought. I am not opposed to grains in a general sense. But while I know that they have their place in my diet (I really do feel better and more energetic when I eat some every day), grains like to take over. They can be addictive. I have to keep them in their place, so to speak.

And finally, let me say that I am proud of this experience. While we are getting really comfortable finding what 'real food' options work for us on a busy working parent schedule, I love challenging one more convenience food. I can now take flour and eggs and turn it into pasta. Take THAT food industry. That's one more thing I don't need you for!

This Post is a part of Real Food Wednesdays at Kelly the Kitchen Kop!

Squash and Pasta

I had three weeks worth of CSA squashes in my cupboard last week. I had two delicata squashes, one kabocha and one butternut. I have run out of "orange ice cubes" for smoothies, and I was worried that they were going to go bad. So I needed to roast them all. The guy at the farmer's market suggested that rather than cutting the squashes and roasting them cut side down on a baking tray that I could go ahead and cut them in half, scoop out the seeds and put them back together and wrap them in tin foil and bake them in a 350 degree oven. I also added a little sunflower oil. That worked perfectly! Everything roasted beautifully and soft. And there were no hard ends where the squash dried out. It took about and hour and fifteen minutes for them to all cook through. I will never roast a squash differently now!

I made orange ice cubes for smoothies out of the kabocha and the butternut. But the Delicatas I did a little something different. This recipe came out so well that I might start making it every week. I buy squashes, or get them from the CSA. I love them, but maybe my heart isn't totally in it. We do alot of simple mashed squash as a side dish. And the kids do NOT eat it. I haven't made a great squash recipe that everyone really really loves. But now, that has all changed.

Squash and Pasta

4 ounces of bacon

1 medium onion chopped

2-3 small carrots

1-2 small zucchini

2 delicata squashes (or substitute any other squash), cooked and mashed

1/2 pound ground sausage, browned (I had some leftover cooked turkey sausage, this is optional, but you could brown it with the bacon or just do one or the other...)

cream to taste

8 oz whole wheat pasta

Dice the bacon (and sausage if you are using) and brown. Once it is very brown, remove the meat and drain off about half the fat. Saute the onions and carrots in the hot fat. When they are soft, add the zucchini and cook for a few minutes. Add the cooked and mashed squash and mix everything up. Put the lid on and cook until the vegetables are all soft. Then add the cooked sausage and the cooked bacon and a little cream (just because I like to be excessive). When it is all combined, add the cooked pasta.

Even the kids ate this one. Thing 2 ate it with relish. He even put a zucchini into his own mouth-which he has never done before. He has eaten mashed and hidden veggies, but this was a veggie in plain sight and he fed himself! Thing 1 ate somewhat more reluctantly. But he did finish his dinner and ate all the little bits. And DH? He asked me to make this for his family. There is no greater compliment!

Thank to my good friend DP for making this recipe at a recent Halloween party. Leave it to me for adding bacon, sausage and cream. I might just be going to hell!

Ramping Up

I grew up in the south, so I have always viewed the months of April and May as springy, getting into sandals, and everything in bloom kind of months. Even March can be warmish in the south. But certainly these are the months of green grass before the deluge of summer when the 90-100 degree heat turns even the most well cared for lawn brown and dead.

I have lived in the northeast for almost 13 years now. Almost as long as the years I spent growing up in Tennessee, and certainly I remember more of my time in New York since I have spent it as an adult rather than say, learning to walk, or speak and read english. One of the things I appreciate the most about the northeast are the seasons. Spring in West Tennesse is a short 4 week period of time when everything pollenates at once and the weather goes from 45 to 75. The mornings are still very cold and the afternoons can blaze with heat, and the hayfever is disasterous. Still this is preferable to the summer months of 95 degree heat coupled with 90% humidity (when it is not raining). I don't think I had a good hair day until I moved.

In New York, the allergens are easier. Flowers pollenate first and then the trees, and they seems to come in waves making it easier to handle. There are some trees that flower first and then sprout their leaves while others burst forth leaves first and flower at some later point. I don't know when, but instinct tells me they have to reproduce some how. We also get several weeks of weather that bounces around among the mid 50s and the mid 70s. My favorite is what I like to call "Inside-Outside" where the weather outside feels exactly like room temperature. This is particularly relaxing because the whole world feels just as comfortable as your own cozy living room. May and early June afford the best shot for "Inside-Outside" and that happens to be right around my birthday, so needless to say it is my favorite time of year.

So with all this meterological bliss, you'd think that the farmer's market would have an overwhelming amount fresh fare just plucked from the obliging earth. And my upbringing in warmer climes leads me to think this too. However May is deceptive in the northeast. The ground has just started to warm up enough to grow vegetable plants, but nothing has begun to flower, so there are no true "vegetables" or products of a plant's attempt at reproduction. What you find are just the leaves of those plants or the plants themselves.
In May at the farmer's market in New York you'll find greens and spinach (mostly baby and some adolescent spinach), baby lettuce greens, and asparagus. You'll usually find apples and potatoes available year round, but once you buy these in April and May it is pretty obvious that they are last year's crop. Not to say that there is anything wrong with those apples and potatoes. Kept in cold storage apple and potatoes hold up pretty well, but nothing holds a candle to a golden yellow potato plucked from the ripe soil of Washington or Columbia County, NY in say mid to late August. De-lish.

Last week I tried to formulate a weeks worth of meals around asparagus and spinach, salad greens and potatoes. This is tough because Thing 1 simply won't eat most of these things (can you believe he doesn't like potatoes? What kind of kid doesn't like potatoes?). I was looking to try something new, and I found it....ramps.

I had heard about ramps on the Food Network. There are cults formed around these hard to cultivate funky little oniony things. They are kind of like really pungent spring onions. They smell a little like garlic, but taste totally different. They remind me most of the clumps of funny smelling chivey-onion grass that I used to pull out of my back yard in Memphis as a kid.
Now DH is not a lover of garlic. We eat a lot of it, but on his terms, cooked or roasted, rarely raw. It upsets his stomach and he can smell it for days. I once ate falafel for lunch, and he had worked late that day and didn't come home until after midnight. Even though I was asleep in bed, he said our bedroom stunk like garlic. For me, if it is not smeared on my upper lip, I can't smell it. This being said I wanted to prepare something simple. Ramps and asparagus sauteed in olive oil with pasta would fit the bill.

No recipe needed here. I took the ramps and their leaves (the woman at the farmer's market laughed at me when I said I wanted her to cut the tops off them. I didn't know they were edible!!), and sauteed them in olive oil. Though they smelled pungent and funky when fresh cut, sauteeing them made them really mild. I added some sliced leftover chicken (recycling). I boiled the pasta and in the last 3 minutes I threw some asparagus spears cut into bit size pieces into the pasta water. Then I drained those and added them into the oil with the ramps and chicken. I added salt and pepper and lemon juice and let them soak up all the yummy sauce. Red pepper flakes would be good here too. I served this with a hefty sprinkling of parmesean cheese.

Thing 1 didn't eat all of it. I think he only ate the pasta, but there might have been a ramp clinging to it somewhere. And he didn't buy it when we told him that the asparagus was broccoli (his favorite veggie) But I am turning a blind eye, enough was consumed and there was no self-induced vomiting. DH inhaled it. This one is a keeper.