Arriving home late and hungry with no plan for dinner for me means looking through the fridge and pantry to figure out what I can throw together. This has led and to some of my best and worst recipes. This one is a keeper. The magic in this combination is the olive tapenade or olive salad. You can get a really great olive salad at the Saturday Morning Market from Jays Marketplace. It's an easy meal and you can switch out many of the ingredients for what you have on hand.
Ingredients
2 TB olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 lb Italian sausage
1 can diced tomatoes with juices
1/4 cup olive tapenade or olive salad
1/2 lb pasta of your choice
salt
Parmesan cheese
Directions
In a large skillet brown onion and sausage in olive oil, breaking sausage into small pieces. Meanwhile bring water to a boil in a large pot. Salt water and add pasta. Cook according to package directions. After sausage and onions are browned add tomatoes with juices and olive tapenade or spread. When pasta is finished cooking drain and add to sauce. Serve with grated Parmesan cheese.
I love Italian sausage! I use it crumbled in lots of pasta dishes. A few weeks ago I was watching the Rachael Ray Show and she made Homemade Hot Sausage with Lentil Soup . I wasn't so interested in the lentils, but I definitely was excited about making my own sausage. The sausage turned out to be delicious and very easy to make. It's also about $1.50 per pound less than premade sausage. One of the best things about making your own sausage is that you can adjust the flavors to suit your taste. I love lots of fennel in my Italian sausage, but this caused a problem in my first batch. I didn't want whole fennel seeds in the sausage, but I couldn't find ground fennel in the grocery store. I know you can grind spices in a coffee mill, but I didn't want my coffee to taste like fennel so I tried grinding it in my food processor. Note to self, don't try that again. Fennel seeds are very hard and it took me forever to get just a little fennel dust. Thankfully Savory Spice in downtown St. Petersburg has just about any spice you could ever need including ground fennel. My next batch of sausage was even better than the first because I could pile in the ground fennel.
This recipe is great because you can use it to make many different kinds of sausage.
Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds ground pork, dark meat chicken, dark and white meat turkey or lamb
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes (2/3 palmful)
2 teaspoons sweet paprika (2/3 palmful)
2 teaspoons granulated onion (2/3 palmful)
2 teaspoons ground sage (for pork or lamb) or poultry seasoning (for ground chicken or turkey), (half a palmful)
1 teaspoon fennel seed (1/3 palmful)
Salt and pepper
Directions
Combine all ingredients and chill for several hours or up to two days ahead.
Arriving home late and hungry with no plan for dinner for me means looking through the fridge and pantry to figure out what I can throw together. This has led and to some of my best and worst recipes. This one is a keeper. The magic in this combination is the olive tapenade or olive salad. You can get a really great olive salad at the Saturday Morning Market from Jays Marketplace. It's an easy meal and you can switch out many of the ingredients for what you have on hand.