Recipes by Ingredient + Prep – Page 33 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Chicken Sausage Yogurt Salad in Pita Pockets

I discovered chicken sausages by accident. When we invited a few of our friends to our summer rental in Ulster Park upstate, I bought them for the lone vegetarian guest. I honestly thought they were vegetable sausages because the typeface of the packaging focused on the herbs and spices. Artichoke sausages it said; cilantro and garlic sausages, even. I just didn’t notice the smaller “chicken” word underneath. I blame bad design!

They came out of the grill and the meat eaters ate them all anyway. I liked them for the spices and adding them to a salad required less salt and pepper because of the flavor they already had.

I bought a few more during this week’s heat wave to pack a light and summery lunch to work. I used English cucumbers here which are not waxed and can be eaten with the peel–they’re the ones you see wrapped in clear plastic. When I ran out of pitas, I ended up just eating the leftover as a simple salad. You can use any plain yogurt for the dressing, but I found that the Greek kind was best because it’s less sour. Wrap the pitas tightly in foil and they make great picnic lunches for your group of friends–as long as they eat chicken.

Ingredients:
spiced chicken sausage with cilantro, sliced
whole wheat pita pockets, lightly toasted
1 small tub plain Greek yogurt
1 small English cucumber, diced
1 tomato, chopped
a handful of mixed greens
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
lemon juice
mint leaves, finely chopped
salt, pepper

1. Using a small skillet, fry chicken sausage over medium heat until golden brown. Set aside.
2. While cooking the sausages, combine all the vegetables and mint in a bowl as if making a salad. Season with salt and pepper. Toss with a dollop of Greek yogurt and mix well. Drizzle with lemon juice. Add chicken sausage and toss again.
3. Slice off the top edge of the pita bread to open. Don’t waste that piece; put it inside the pita, too. Spoon in the yogurt salad with chicken sausage.

Mark Bittman’s Pea Dip

Mark Bittman’s pea dip recipe was such a big hit with our friends, I’m posting our revised version up. This is smoother and less chunkier which made it just right on top of grilled slices of bread and as a side to a perfectly cooked leg of lamb.

Ingredients:
1 box of frozen peas
1 cup vegetable stock, or as needed
3 tbsps pine nuts, toasted, then roughly chopped
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan
4 cloves of garlic, minced
a handful of mint leaves, chopped
lemon juice
oil, salt, pepper

1. Put peas in a pan with just enough stock to come half way up their height. Cook for about 3 minutes, or until peas are bright green and tender. Put cooked peas in a food processor or blender, and add just enough cooking liquid to start purée.
2. When purée is relatively smooth, add pine nuts, cheese, garlic, mint and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Purée some more. Taste and adjust seasoning, then thin with more liquid if necessary. Squirt some lemon juice before serving.

Stuffed Zucchini

My new Microplane Ultra Coarse grater came in very handy when I was making this recipe. It’s not often that I find a giant zucchini on my desk at work, but Lisa brought me one of the bounties from her garden earlier this week. Zucchini bread and stuffed zucchini were both suggested by co-workers. I opted for the latter because I already had the ingredients handy; ground pork and bacon were in the fridge.

I’ve never owned a grater before–I’ve always used a vegetable peeler if I needed grated cheese when cooking and I simply shaved the cheese off. For a recipe like this, a peeler would have taken me an extra 10 minutes; it took less than one with the Microplane for me to grate all of the Piave I needed.

I realized how easy my cooking life would have been if only I’ve purchased one years ago. Without putting too much pressure on the grater, the Piave cheese I used with this recipe easily fell on the plate like soft snow. I loved the rubberized stand at the end of the grater: it kept it steady against a plate even when my cheese wedge came down to a small knob. The hefty handle also had a very firm grip–my hands didn’t even feel like they did any work.

Now I just have to find more recipes that require grating everything I can get my hands on!

Ingredients:
1 large zucchini, halved lengthwise, each chopped in 2 or 3 large pieces
1/4 lb of ground pork
4 strips of bacon, chopped
shiitake mushrooms, roughly chopped
1 small wedge of Piave cheese
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
red chili flakes
salt
oil

1. Take each zucchini piece and spoon out the flesh to make them hollow like boats. Roughly chop including the seeds. Set aside. Place the boats on a lined baking sheet and brush with some olive oil. Preheat the oven to 350º.
2. Make the filling. In a large skillet, render some fat by cooking the bacon pieces. Add garlic and sauté until brown. Add the onions until soft. Add the ground pork and brown while occasionally stirring to avoid burning. Season with chili flakes.
3. In the meantime, pass the zucchini flesh through a sieve to remove excess water. You might have to do this one more time before adding to the filling. When ground pork is cooked through, add the zucchini flesh to the skillet, stir until well-combined and keep cooking for another 5 minutes.
4. Salt the zucchini boats. Spoon the filling into the zucchini boats without pressing in. Finish off with a generous sprinkling of grated Piave. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until the zucchini boats have heated through and a crust has formed at the top. Best served hot so the filling doesn’t dry up.

Recommended tool/s:
Microplane Ultra Coarse Grater

Pasta with Sundried Tomatoes and Arugula

Dear, Anna. Believe it or not, the sun-dried tomatoes I used in this recipe are still from the batch you sent me a year ago after your trip to Argentina. I only had a handful left but I felt bad about throwing them away. After a few minutes in hot water, they softened up and I was able to chop them in smaller pieces. Off they went with some heavy cream and into my stomach for dinner tonight. Thanks again, Cia.

Ingredients:
2 cups of penne pasta
1 cup of sundried tomatoes, soaked in hot water, drained, roughly chopped
a few handfuls of arugula
pancetta, chopped
1 cup of heavy cream
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 small red onion, sliced
a handful of basil leaves, chopped

1. Cook pasta in salted boiling water until al dente. Drain pasta and set aside.
2. While cooking pasta, render some fat by cooking the pancetta. Remove the pancetta and set aside. Using the fat, sauté garlic until brown and then add onions until soft. Add the sun-dried tomatoes and add return the browned pancetta.
3. Pour in the heavy cream and simmer for 10 minutes. Mix every so often to avoid drying up. Turn off the heat and fold in the arugula to wilt. Add the drained pasta in the skillet and mix well. Toss with basil before serving.

Fusilli with Octopus

My supermarket in Harlem had these octopus in cans on sale. The idea of a cephalopod in a can sounded odd but the ingredients list didn’t have any weird stuff in it except for octopus and olive oil so I thought it wouldn’t do me any harm to buy a couple for less than $3.

With some fusilli pasta boiling in a pot–you can use any pasta you have handy–I sautéed leftover vegetables I already had in the fridge: mixed greens, dried mushrooms, parsley and garlic scape. The dish turned out really well and it served two meals with a few glasses of Verdejo wine.

Ingredients:
2 tins of octopus in olive oil
2 cups of fusilli pasta
1 cup dried mushrooms, soaked in water for 15 minutes, then drained
a few handfuls of mixed greens
1 garlic scape, chopped
1 small red onion, sliced
a handful of parsley, coarsely chopped
a small wedge of Piave cheese
red chili flakes
oil, salt, pepper

1. Cook pasta in salted boiling water until al dente. Drain pasta and set aside.
2. While cooking pasta, heat some oil in a skillet. Sauté garlic scapes until fragrant and then add onions until soft. Add octopus with its oil and toss. Add the mushrooms, the mixed greens and the parsley until well combined. Season with chili flakes, salt and pepper.
3. Add the drained pasta in the skillet and mix well. Serve with grated Piave cheese.