Spaghetti with sausage and zucchini

After dunno-how-many months, the cooking finally started again. Actually the husband was the one who "pushed" me to start cooking coz he had been harping on how long it has been since he last had home-cooked pasta. *Thanks for the 'vote' of confidence, dear!* ;p

Since it would be a meal for 6, I chose something simple and easy to cook.

Spaghetti with sausage and zucchini (adapted from "Thirty Minute Pasta by Giuliano Hazan)
Serves 4

Ingredients :

½ medium yellow onion

3 tablespoons butter

8 ounces plain pork sausages

12 ounces zucchini

Salt

1 pound fresh tomatoes

1 pound fusilli (shells are also good)

1/3 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Directions :

1.     Fill a pot for the pasta with about 6 quarts of water, place over high heat and bring to a boil.

2.     Peel and finely chop the onion. Put the butter in a 12-inch skillet, add the chopped onion, and place over medium-high heat. Saute until the onion just begins to turn a rich, golden colour, about 5 minutes.

3.     While the onion is sauteing, remove the casing from the sausage and break it up into pieces. When the onion is ready, add the sausage to the pan. Break the sausage up into small pieces with a wooden spoon and cook, stirring often, until the sausage is slightly browned, about 2 to 3 minutes.

4.     While the sausage is cooking, wash the zucchini. Remove the ends, cut into quarters lengthwise, and then cut across into ½-inch chunks. When the sausage has lightly browned, add the zucchini. Season lightly with salt and cook until the zucchini begins to brown and is mostly tender, 6 to 8 minutes.

5.     While the zucchini is cooking, peel the tomatoes and coarsely chop them. When the zucchini is ready, add the tomatoes and season lightly with salt, and cook until most of the liquid the tomatoes release has evaporated, 8 to 10 minutes.

6.     When the tomatoes are halfway done, add about 2 tablespoons salt to the boiling pasta water, add the fusilli, and stir well. Cook until al dente.

7.     When the pasta is done, drain well, toss with the sauce and the grated cheese, and serve at once.

Sausage and Pasta

As I've mentioned before, it will be expected to see repeated ingredients from a previous dish as I can't vary the amount to be bought to suit to just the two of us. So, here it is again, the last Polish sausage from dinner previously. I adapted this from a real simple recipe, and the difference is that, the original calls for beer, but mine has chicken stock instead. Coz the husband and I are not beer persons. However, I might still give the beer version a try some time.

Sausage and Pasta (adapted from here)

1 serving

Ingredients :

- sphagetti for one

- 1 Polish sausage, sliced

- 2 cloves garlic, minced

- 1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced

- about 1/3 cup of chicken stock

- pepper to taste

- red pepper flakes (optional)

- dried parsley for garnish

Directions :

1) Heat up some olive oil in a pan. Saute the onion for a few seconds. Then add in the garlic and sausage to saute for about 3-4 minutes.

2) Add pepper and red pepper flakes (if using) to taste.

3) Add the chicken stock, cover, and let the liquid reduce to a little less than half on high heat. You can cook the pasta while the sauce is reducing.

(Note : I didn't add any salt because the chicken stock and the sausage provided enough saltiness for me, however, you can always adjust it according to your taste after you add in the chicken stock)

4) Serve the sausage and onion over the pasta. Make sure you get the sauce over everything. Enjoy!

Sausage and Mushroom Sphagetti

When it comes to cooking, I like to have a bit of time to plan ahead. Time to think of what to cook, time to look through my recipes collection slowly and see which is the one that will catch my attention that day. But once in a while, dinner plans will pop up at the last minute and I just had to come up with something fast. And so, here is my quick and easy sausage and mushroom sphagetti :

Sausage and Mushroom Sphagetti

2 servings

Ingredients :

- sphagetti for two

- 2 Polish sausages, sliced (I bought 3 Polish sausages for $5.50 from Cold Storage)

- 1 pack (~125g) white mushrooms, sliced

- 4 cloves of garlic, minced (coz the husband likes a lot of garlic in his food)

- half a bottle of pasta sauce (from the 397g kind, can adjust according to your preference for the sauciness)

- handful of fresh basil leaves, chopped

- black pepper

- grated Parmesan cheese

Directions :

1) Cook sphagetti according to the package instructions. 

2) Meanwhile, heat up some olive oil in pan and stir-fry the sausages till the oil is released. Dish out the sausages and set aside, leaving the oil in the pan.

3) Add in the mushroom and garlic, and fry till the mushroom is almost cooked. Add in the cooked sausages and fry for a few seconds.

4) Add in the pasta sauce and basil, and stir to combine all the ingredients together, until the sauce has been heated up.

5) Turn off the heat and add in the cooked spaghetti to the sauce, or vice versa. Season with black pepper and your desired amount of Parmesan cheese. Serve.

Creamy Mushroom and Ham Pasta

Apologies first to those who might stumble accidentally upon this post, thinking there is some wonderfully delicious creamy pasta. Well, I may not have the perfect photo, but I have the recipe.

I know. You are probably wondering where is the "creamy" part of this dish. It looks so 'pale' and not that appetizing. You might even wonder whether those are tiny bits of scrambled eggs. I guess they are. Sort of.

After the success of the creamy shrimp pasta the night before, I decided to be more 'adventurous' and try my hand at cream + egg combi. (since I still had about half cup of sour cream leftover from the day before) I often read about how difficult it is to make a cream sauce with eggs in it, coz the amount of heat needs to be right so that the eggs won't scrambled, but remain smooth and creamy, like that of a carbonara sauce. But as you can see, mine didn't turned out like that at all.

I was thinking whether or not it was a good idea to put up this 'failed' attempt. But then, it might be a good reference for me, if, and when, I decide to try it again in the future. Also, it didn't taste as bad as it looks. Lucky for me.

Creamy Mushroom and Ham Pasta (recipe adapted from : The Australian Women's Weekly Pasta Cookbook)

4 servings

Ingredients :

- 250g fusilli pasta

- 1 tablespoon olive oil

- 1 medium brown onion, chopped finely

- 4 bacon rashers, sliced thinly (I used 2 slices of ham instead)

- 2 tablespoons of pine nuts (Couldn't find this, so I omitted it)

- 250g mushrooms, sliced thinly

- 1/2 cup sour cream

- 1 egg, beaten lightly

- 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

- 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Directions :

1) Cook pasta in a large pan of boiling water, uncovered, until just tender; drain.

2) Heat oil in pan; cook onion, bacon and pine nuts, stirring until onion is soft. Add mushrooms; cook, stirring, until mushrooms are soft. Stir in combined sour cream, egg, cheese and parsley; stir over low heat until heated through. Serve over pasta.

Pork Cannelloni

I would like to apologise for the terrible photo. It is really difficult to get a good shot at food with pasta sauce and baked cheese, everything always look like a mess no matter from which angle.

With that said, I always thought that it is not very common to use pork in pasta dishes. But I had a pack of minced pork bought the day before, as I was planning to make something else. However, I couldn't get the main ingredient so the pork ended up in here.

Since I couldn't find the frozen lasagna sheets, I thought using the hard ones might do. I just need to soak it in slightly salted hot water to soften it. But somehow, that didn't work very well, and the lasagna sheets were a little too chewy. Luckily, they were still edible and not that bad. The following is made up of bits and pieces of instructions I had read up on different cannelloni recipes.

Pork Cannelloni

2 servings

Ingredients :

- 4 (17cm x 12cm) lasagna sheets
- 1 cup minced pork
- 1 tablespoon bread crumbs
- 1 egg
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 tablespoons of stock
- 1 bottle 575g pasta sauce (I used less than that amount)
- Shredded Parmesan cheese
- Shredded Mozarella cheese
- salt and pepper to taste

Directions :

To make the pork filling,

1) Brown the chopped onion and garlic in olive oil and add the meat, spreading it out well across the frying pan so that it cooks evenly.

2) Season with salt and pepper. Add in the stock, cover and leave to cook over a low heat until the stock has evaporated. Turn off the heat and add the bread crumbs, mix in with the meat, and leave to cool. When the meat is cooled, add in the egg. Mix well.

Note : As the stock and the pasta sauce are already salted, I would suggest to just add a tiny amount of salt at this stage. Or maybe not add any at all. It all depends on how salty you like your pasta to be.

To assemble the cannelloni,

1) Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius.

2) Spread the some pasta sauce over the the baking dish.

3) Taking a lasagna sheet, spoon the desired amount of meat at one end of the sheet. Roll up the sheet around the meat and place the seam side down over the tomato sauce in the baking dish. Repeat with the other lasagna sheets and the rest of the pork.

4) Cover the cannelloni with the rest of the pasta sauce and sprinkle with Parmesan and Mozarella, before placing a sheet of aluminium foil over the top and placing in the oven.

5) After 10 minutes, remove the aluminium foil and leave to cook for another 20 minutes, or until the cheese begins to brown.

Note : For my case, the cheese browns in less than 20 minutes.