Easy Sheet Pan Sausage Dinner

Some days you just don’t feel like fussing too much but want a good, home-cooked meal. This one, that takes just a half hour’s time from start to finish, fits the bill perfectly. In addition to Italian sausage, I choose to add fennel, one of my favorite vegetables, plus small Yukon gold potatoes, red peppers and onions. Everything gets tossed into a sheet pan, drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted at 450 for 30 minutes. I was inspired to make this after seeing a post from my friend Stacey, who used cabbage with the sausage, which also works really well.  Feel free to use cabbage, fennel, peppers, mushroom chunks or even Brussels sprouts. They would all taste great with the sausage.

Stacey also made a mustard sauce that paired well with the sausages, so I followed her lead. I didn’t use the soy sauce the recipe called for, but it was delicious anyway with just the other ingredients. Even though we’re just two people at dinner these days, I always cook at least five or six sausages. We normally finish all the vegetables, but there are always a couple of sausages left over that make great lunch sandwiches the next day. Forget corned beef and cabbage that’s boiled to death — this is so much better – and a dish you’ll want to make again and again. Beer optional, but highly recommended.

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Easy Sheet Pan Sausage Dinner

printable recipe here

Ingredients

• Five or six large links of Italian sausage
• vegetables of your choosing:
• small Yukon gold potatoes
• onions
• fennel
• red peppers
• cabbage
• Brussels sprouts
• olive oil
• seasoned salt (I make this every year by drying my fresh herbs and mixing with Kosher salt)
• freshly ground black pepper
• FOR THE SAUCE:
• 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tbsp grainy mustard
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp honey
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• sea salt & pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Place the sausage in a large pan.
3. Slice the potatoes in half and place them cut side down on the pan so they will brown well.
4. Slice the red peppers in large pieces and scatter around.
5. Cut the fennel into large chunks an place on the pan.
6. Cut the cabbage into quarters and place on the pan.
7. Drizzle a little olive oil on everything (not too much because the sausage will release some oil too).
8. Sprinkle some seasoned salt and pepper over everything.
9. Roast in the oven for 30 minutes, flipping everything after 15 minutes.
10. Meanwhile, while the dinner cooks, make the sauce by combining all the ingredients and whisking together.
11. Serve separately on the side, or drizzle over everything if you prefer.

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Passatelli In Brodo

No, it’s not mealworms, as one of my readers on my Instagram page suggested. They’re passatelli, a specialty from the regions of Le Marche and Emilia Romagna, where my mother is from. They’re considered a pasta, but there’s no flour in the dough — unless you count the bread crumbs. In addition to bread crumbs, they’re made with parmesan cheese and eggs, and they’re typically served in a chicken or beef broth. I used a recipe from Pasta Grannies Cookbook and there’s even a video of one of the grannies making passatelli here. You mix all the ingredients together until you have a stiff dough that you can roll into a ball. I used leftover bread crusts from mostly whole wheat bread, hence the brown color. If you prefer a lighter color, use only the interior of white bread that’s been dried on the counter for a while until it crumbles easily in a food processor. After adding the parmesan cheese and egg, it will be a lighter beige, or pale yellow color.

You then press it through a potato ricer, or passatelli maker. I used to have a wimpy ricer and unfortunately, the metal bent much too easily with a stiff dough. But since buying this new one from Fante’s in Philadelphia (they do mail order), it’s not a problem. 

Alternately, if you have a meat grinder, use that, as one reader of my Instagram page suggested. Still, the dough was so stiff I found it hard to push it through the ricer, until I moved the ricer handles to the edge of my table and used my body weight to press down on it. I kept a plate on the chair below to catch the passatelli as they came out. I ended up with this amount, perfect for two people.

Drop them into gently simmering chicken broth (if it’s a vigorous boil, they’re likely to disintegrate), and cook only a minute or two, until the passatelli pop up to the surface.

Serve at once, with more grated parmesan cheese on the side. It’s comfort food on steroids, what my husband claims hits him at “the cellular level.”

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Passatelli In Brodo

Author: Ciao Chow Linda via Pasta Grannies

printable recipe here

Ingredients

• 40 grams (1/3 cups) dry bread crumbs
• 50 grams (1/2 cup) parmesan cheese
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• hot homemade chicken broth

Instructions

1. Mix all the ingredients together until they form a stiff dough.
2. Roll it into a ball and let it rest for at least 1/2 hour.
3. Take some of the dough and place it in a potato ricer or meat grinder.
4. Press hard to push through until the passatelli start coming through.
5. Cut them off and place on a plate until ready to cook.
6. Have the chicken soup at a low simmer.
7. If it’s boiling, the passatelli may disintegrate.
8. Lower the passatelli into the hot chicken broth and cook only for about a minute or two, or until they float to the surface.
9. Serve immediately with extra parmesan cheese.

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Pork Chops in a white wine-mushroom sauce

There are days when you have no idea what to eat until an hour before dinner when you open the refrigerator to see what’s languishing in its depths. This recipe springs from such a day, when I had defrosted the pork chops and found some mushrooms in the fridge, on the brink of spoiling. Hunting around for the other ingredients was easy since there’s always wine and chicken broth in the house. If you haven’t got any chicken broth go ahead and substitute a little water instead. If you haven’t got white wine, dry sherry or marsala could easily be substituted, although the taste would be dramatically different with the sweetness of marsala. Get the rice going before you start this dish though, because it will take you only a half hour start to finish.

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Pork Chops in a white wine-mushroom sauce

Author: Ciao Chow Linda

printable recipe here

Ingredients

• 2 pork chops, trimmed of most of the fat around the edges
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• salt, pepper
• 1/2 lb. sliced mushrooms, crimini or baby portobello (or whatever you like really)
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 large shallot, minced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1/4 cup chicken stock
• 1 small squirt of Kitchen Bouquet, optional
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch, mixed with a little water or chicken broth
• salt, pepper, minced parsley

Instructions

1. Pat the pork chops dry with a paper towel and season with salt and pepper.
2. Add the olive oil to a skillet and when it is hot, add the pork chops and let them brown for a couple of minutes on each side.
3. Remove after they start to turn brown.
4. Do not cook them all the way through.
5. Add the butter to the skillet, then the sliced mushrooms.
6. When the mushrooms start to become a little limp, add the shallots and garlic, season with salt and pepper, and cook until transparent.
7. Put the pork chops back into the skillet with the mushrooms then pour in the wine and chicken stock.
8. Add the Kitchen Bouquet, if you have it.
9. Lower the heat to a slow simmer and cook just until the pork chops are cooked through. It should take no more than five minutes.
10. Mix the cornstarch with a little water or chicken broth and add to the pan a little at a time, until the sauce starts to thicken.
11. Sprinkle with parsley and serve with rice or noodles or mashed potatoes.

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