Oven Fried Chicken

Fried chicken is one of those things I only get to eat once or twice per year, usually at  family parties.

But I look forward to it because, in my opinion, chicken was meant to be fried. The crispy golden breading that comes from immersing the chicken into a pool of smoking hot oil goes perfectly with the moist, rich texture of the meat.

Sadly, because it’s too high in fat, in my house we don’t eat legitimately fried chicken. I remember one time I burned the dinner so I went out and bought some Popeye’s chicken. My wife simply refused to eat it.

But this recipe is lower in fat, doesn’t require a deep fryer or a dangerous pan full of hot shortening, and still results in a crispy delicious chicken.

Although I love to eat fried chicken for dinner, what I love even more is wrapping the leftover chicken in wax paper the next day and bringing it on a picnic. This recipe is suitable for both.

I served this oven fried chicken with some smashed potatoes and with a red cabbage cole slaw (recipe to follow) to round out a perfect summertime dinner.

Oven Fried Chicken

1 Chicken, cut into 8 peices

1/4 cup Unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tsp Paprika

1 tsp Granulated garlic

Pinch of Cayenne pepper

1 tsp Sea salt

1/4 tsp Fresh cracked black pepper

1/3 cup Margarine (or butter for the truly indulgent)

1. Preheat oven to 425F. Rinse chicken peices and pat dry with paper towels. In a bowl, combine flour, paprika, gran garlic, cayenne, salt and pepper. Dredge chicken peices so that they are completely covered with seasoned flour mixture. If you prefer, you can use the “Shake and Bake” method by putting all the dry ingredients into a large plastic bag, then putting the individual chicken peices in the bag, sealing it and shaking it around so that each peice is completely covered with the coating. You will get the same result.

2. Place margarine in a 9″x13″x2″ casserole pan and place in oven. When melted, remove from oven and arrange chicken peices in the bottom of the pan, skin side down. Return to oven and bake for 35 minutes. Remove from oven, turn peices over and bake another 15 minutes.

Red Cabbage Cole Slaw

4 cups  Red Cabbage (about 1/2 head)

1 Carrot, peeled

1/2 White onion

1/2 Green bell pepper, ribs and seedes removed, fine dice

1/2 cup Reduced fat Mayonnaise

1 TBS Apple cider vinegar

2 tsp Granulated sugar

1 tsp Whole celery seed

1/4 tsp Sea salt

Fresh cracked black pepper to taste

1. Use a box grater to grate the cabbage, carrot and onion into a mixing bowl then add the green pepper. In a separate mixing bowl, make the dressing by whisking together the mayonnaise, vinegar, sugar, celery seed and salt.

2. Combine the dressing and the cabbage mixture and toss together with a spatula until it has a consistent texture. Season with pepper to taste. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes before serving so that flavors can meld together.

Ironically, up until a few months ago, there was a fried chicken restaurant at the end of our street (It recently closed and was replaced with a cash for car titles business!). Whenever I would walk the dogs past there, I would linger a few moments so I could absorb the smells of the frying chicken.

A fella can dream, can’t he?

 

Braised Beef Brisket

Braising a beef brisket is one of the easiest one-pot meals you can make.

It’s affordable, convenient and also delicious. It’s especially recommended if you are having company because you can assemble it hours before your guests arrive and it will sit patiently in your oven until you are ready to serve it.

The brisket comes from the chest of a steer, cow or bull. it is a triangular peice of meat  that on its own is quite tough. That’s because it is a muscle the animal uses a lot.

Meat that is naturally tender — such as the beef tenderloin or the chicken breast — are composed of muscles the animal rarely uses. Since chickens don’t fly, for example, their breast meat does not get much use.

But muscles that are used a lot — such as the leg and shoulder — build up strong connective tissue between the muscle fibers. This causes the meat to be tough to chew.

But you can dissolve this tough connective tissue by cooking the meat for a very long time. And in order to keep it from drying out, you can cook it partially submerged in a liquid. This is the precise definition of braising.

You can braise a beef brisket — which is the same cut of meat used for corned beef, incidentally — in just about anything. Some people use beer, others a tomato-based broth.

Both are great, but for this recipe I simply braised it in beef stock and some mirepoix, which is a combination of seared carrots, celery and onion. Add a couple of potatoes midway through the cooking cycle and you’ve got a wonderfully tender one-pot meal that’s perfect for parties.

Because the beef and potatoes is a little heavier, I balanced the plate with some light zucchini quickly sauteed with white onion and garlic.

Braised Beef Brisket

2 to 3 lb Beef Brisket, fat cap removed

2 TBS Barbeque seasoning

2 TBS Extra virgin olive oil

4 Carrots, peeled and rough chop

1 white onion, peeled and rough chop

3 stalks celery, ribs and leaves included, rough chop

2 TBS Additional EVOO

1 bay leaf

16 oz Low sodium beef stock

1 lb Red potatoes, quartered

1. Season brisket on both sides with barbeque seasoning. Put cast iron pan on fire. When hot, add EVOO. When smoking, place brisket in pan, being careful not to burn yourself on the hot oil. Char on both sides until golden brown.

2. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375F. Place large pot on fire. When hot, add EVOO. When smoking, add onions, carrots and celery. Cook until onion translucent, about five minutes, stirring occasionally. Add beef stock and bay leaf, then lay brisket on top of mirepoix. Put lid on pot and put entire pot in oven. Cook 90 minutes.

3. Remove pot from oven and add potatoes. Return pot to oven and cook an additional 50 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 200F and hold until ready to serve.

4. To plate, remove brisket to a cutting board. Use a slotted spoon to heap a pile of the potato/mirepoix mixture in center of plate. Use a sharp carving knife to cut thin slices of brisket against the grain and place on top of vegetables. Garnish if you wish with chopped parsley.

What easy meals do you like to make when company is coming over? Share your ideas in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Corned Beef Hash

A confession: One of my guilty pleasures is corned beef hash.

The kind that comes out of a can and looks like dog food. I know, right?

Whenever my wife and I go out to breakfast at our favorite diner – or anywhere for that matter – I always order the same thing: Corned beef hash and eggs over easy with Greek toast. It’s become sort of a running joke between us that someday I will order something else, but that day has never arrived.

I just love the way corned beef tastes, especially when it’s all mixed up with the eggs and the hash browns. Health food, it’s not. But I could eat it every morning if I wasn’t afraid I would die of a heart attack before I turned 50.

After this weekend (St. Patrick’s Day, remember?), I found myself with some leftover corned beef and potatoes. So I thought, why not try to make “healthy” corned beef hash? At least healthier than the kind that comes out of a can.

Chef’s tip: In most restaurants that serve breakfast, the corned beef hash they sell still comes out of a can. They are just really big cans.

Anyway, it turned out delicious, although it didn’t hold together the way the canned stuff does. I think if I had a meat grinder attachment for my Kitchen Aid, I would have put it through the grinder to get that kind of consistency. But the flavor was still superior to the canned version and the crispiness as perfect.

So a belated happy St. Patrick’s Day to everybody. Now I have to figure out what I’m going to do with all this cabbage!

Corned Beef Hash

1/2 lb corned beef, cooked

2-3 red potatoes, cooked

Fresh cracked black pepper

1 TBS sunflower oil

1. Chop corned beef until fine. Cut potatoes into small dice size. Combine in mixing bowl and season generously with black pepper. You probably won’t need to add any additional salt because the corned beef already has a lot of salt in it.

2. Put cast iron skillet on the fire. When hot, add oil. When smoking, place corned beef hash in pan, being carefuly not to splash yourself with the hot oil. Use a spatula to form a rough patty shape.

3. Fry corned beef over medium heat until bottom is brown and crispy, about 3 minutes. Carefully flip patty with spatula then fry other side until brown and crispy. Remove to plate lined with paper towel to remove some of the grease, then transfer to serving plate.

I made hash browns out of the leftover red potatoes by passing them through a box grater, seasoning them and then frying them until crispy in a cast iron skillet. The corned beef hash and hash browns can be made ahead of time and kept warm in a 200F oven if you are making breakfast for a big group of people and want to make eggs to order.

What sort of guilty pleasures do you indulge yourself in every once in awhile? Share your story in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

 

Easy Tuna Tetrazzini with Spinach

The weeks between the end of the holidays and the beginning of Spring always seem like the busiest time of the whole year.

It’s as if life says, “Okay, now it’s really time to get down to business.” Somehow workdays get busier and evenings begin to fill up with events and responsibilities that weren’t there only a few weeks ago.

From a cooking perspective, this gets complicated. That’s why in winter I always simplify matters with casseroles and crock pots.

Casseroles and crock pots allow you to prepare ahead of time for times you know you’re going to be stressful. Two or three meals can be prepared at once, then stored in the refrigerator or even the freezer until they are needed.

My crock pot has certainly gotten a workout in the past couple of weeks, so it was time to focus on hearty and filling casseroles. But casseroles don’t have to be the same old familiar standards time and time again.

This recipe is a twist on the tuna casserole recipe we’ve all had thousands of times before. It takes familiar ingredients and mixes them up in a way that’s fresh, delicious and unexpected. The tuna could easily be replaced with leftover chicken, ground turkey or beef, or even pork.

Easy Tuna Tetrazzini with Spinach

8 oz dry whole wheat linguine, broken into thirds (half box)

1 10-1/2 oz can cream of celery soup

1 10-oz box frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained

1/2 cup milk

2 6-oz cans white chunk tuna in water, drained

1/4 cup oven roasted tomatoes (or jarred roasted red peppers), rough chop

1/2 tsp granulated garlic

1/2 tsp onion powder

1 tsp Italian seasoning

1/4 tsp hot sauce

Sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper to taste

1/4 cup Italian-style dry bread crumbs

2 TBS grated parmesan

1 TBS unsalted butter

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Spray 9-inch square casserole dish with pan spray. Cook linguine according to package instructions, drain and run under cold water to stop the cooking process.

2. In a mixing bowl, combine pasta, soup, tuna, milk and tomatoes. Season with granulated garlic, onion powder, hot sauce and Italian seasoning and mix. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer to baking dish.

3. In a small bowl, combine bread crumbs, parmesan and butter. Use your fingers to mix the butter into the dry ingredients until the butter chunks are the size of small pebbles. Sprinkle evenly over casserole and bake in oven uncovered for 45 minutes or until golden brown and bubbly.

What kind of dishes do you like to cook to make busy days more manageable? Share your ideas in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Crock Pot Italian Meatballs

One of the few things I actually look forward to during Chicago winters is using my crock pot more frequently.

I’ve written before about how the crock pot is a central element of winter cooking in my house, but usually by this point in the winter I’ve already cycled through most of my slow cooking repertoire: chili, pulled pork, red beans and rice, chicken stew, etc.

So I’m always excited when I find a new recipe to try in my crock pot. In this case, it’s a very old recipe cooked in a new way: Italian meatballs cooked all day in the crock pot!

I was pleasantly surprised with how flavorful they turned out. Not only did they not fall apart — something I was worried about given the seven hours they cooked — but the flavors of the meatballs leached into the sauce, giving it a complexity and depth of flavor it ordinarily wouldn’t have.

Plus the sauce naturally reduced over time, concentrating the tomato flavor in a very interesting and delicious way. It started to have that intensity that tomato paste has, without the over the top acidity.

I served it over whole wheat spaghetti, but you could use any pasta you like. A quick note: A few years ago when whole wheat pasta first started to appear on the shelves, a lot of it tasted like wet cardboard when it was cooked. Recently, however, the manufacturers must have figured out how to make it more appealing because it now tastes every bit as good as pasta made with white flour, but with much more nutritional value.

Crock Pot Italian Meatballs

3/4 lb ground beef

3/4 lb ground pork

1 small white onion, diced small

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2 tsp Italian seasoning

1/4 cup Italian-style dry bread crumbs

1 egg, slightly beaten

1 28-oz jar marinara sauce

1 box whole wheat spaghetti

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Line sheet pan with foil and spray foil with pan spray. In large mixing bowl, combine the beef, pork, onion, garlic, Italian seasoning, bread crumbs and egg and mix well with your hands. Shape into 24 1-1/2 inch balls. Place on sheet pan and bake 35 minutes.

2. Place meatballs in crock pot. Cover with marinara sauce and cook on low for 6 to 7 hours, stirring occasionally.

3. Cook pasta according to package instructions, drain and return to pot with a little EVOO. To plate, place a heaping pile of pasta in the center of a pasta bowl, then use a kitchen spoon to arrange meatballs and sauce on top. Garnish with parmesan cheese.

Do you make any unusual recipes in your crock pot? Why not share your ideas in the comments section below? And thanks for looking at my blog!

Mini Turkey Meatloaf

When I found these miniature aluminum loaf pans at the dollar store, they were so cute I just had to buy them. I knew I would figure out a way to use them later.

Well, it turns out they were just perfect for mini turkey meatloafs. I simply made a batch of my turkey meatloaf recipe, then instead of using a regular sized bread pan, I stuffed it into six of these tiny disposable loaf pans.

The batch made enough for six mini meatloafs. I cooked off three and froze the other three for another time. Perfect!

I threw the pans away when I was finished with them, but you could clean them and re-use them if you wanted. They were six for $1.50, so I didn’t feel too bad about tossing them, though.

The individual meatloafs were both delightful and delicious. And they are perfect for when you have guests with diet preferences — no onions, for example — because you can make their meatloaf mix separate from the rest. Everybody’s happy!

We almost always have turkey meatloaf rather than the normal kind made with a mixture of ground beef and pork because it’s lower in fat and, in my opinion, there’s almost no difference in flavor once you add the seasonings and smother it in tomato glaze.

I served these mini meatloafs with Rosemary Roasted Red Potatoes, and steamed broccoli crowns.

Mini Turkey Meatloaf

2 lb ground turkey

1 yellow or white onion, diced

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1 egg, slightly beaten

1 TBS Italian seasoning

1 tsp granulated garlic

1 TBS sea salt

1/4 tsp cracked black pepper

For the Glaze

1/2 cup ketchup

1 TBS mustard powder

1 TBS brown sugar

1/2 tsp Worchestershire Sauce

1/4 tsp Tabasco or hot sauce

Preheat oven to 375F. Combine meatloaf ingredients in mixing bowl using your hands. Spray mini aluminum bread pans with pan spray, then stuff them with the meatloaf mix until filling is even with the top of the pan. Cook for about 40 minutes. Meanwhile, stir together glaze ingredients in small bowl and set aside. Remove meatloafs from oven and pour and scrape off the separated fat and gloop on top. Carefully remove them from the pans by inverting them onto a baking sheet, then thoroughly brush each mini meatloaf with glaze. Return to oven and cook until glaze starts to get tacky, about 10 minutes.

Added bonus: Turkey meatloaf is excellent the next day on a sandwich. It can be served cold or heat it up for a minute in the microwave before putting it between two slices of bread.

Programming Note: It’s the start of a new year, so here at Budget Cooking Blog we are launching a new feature. “Wines on Wednesday” will be spotlight inexpensive yet extraordinary wines for under $10/bottle to complement some of the dishes we’ve been cooking. “Wines on Wednesday” also will give tips on how to select the best wines, and how to successful pair wines with food to enhance your dining experience. Look for “Wines on Wednesday” starting this Wednesday on Budget Cooking Blog!

Improving the Cheeseburger

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, as a professional chef it can be dispiriting when the cheeseburger is the number one seller on your menu despite all the effort you put in creating interesting and exotic dishes.

One way to overcome this is to make your cheeseburger more exciting. If people are going to order it anyway, why not make it something special? So today’s blog is all about finding ways to improve the humble cheeseburger.

Bacon Mushroom Swiss Burger

Probably the easiest way to improve the cheeseburger is to use a better quality meat. I’m not talking about $15/lb Kobe beef or even ground up Certfied Angus Beef. This is supposed to be a budget cooking blog, remember?

No, to improve the quality of your cheeseburger meat, look for ground beef that has a higher fat content. That’s right, higher! Ground beef that is 75:25, which means 75 percent protein to 25 percent fat, will be juicier and have a much better mouth feel than leaner ground beef, such as 85:15 or 90:10. Fat makes beef taste good. If you ate 100 percent lean ground beef, it would taste like sawdust.

Avocado Pepper Jack Burger

The second way to improve your cheeseburger is to season it. This may seem obvious, but a lot of people skip this critical step. You need to season both sides of the burger with a good amount of salt and pepper in order to bring out the full flavor of the beef. If you want to mix a little S&P into your ground beef before forming into patties as well, then that’s a bonus!

A third way to make cheeseburgers taste better is to toast the burger bun. Rub it with a little olive oil or melted butter and put it into your frying pan or on your grill for less than a minute to give it a little crust. That way, when you bite into the burger, there will be a satisfying little crunch.

Burger Set Ups

Burger set-ups are a restaurant secret that speeds up service. Before the customers arrive for the lunch or dinner rush, the cook lines up hundreds of little individual piles of lettuce, tomato and onion. When the orders start flying, the cook need only grab one of these and place it on the bun as the food goes out the service window. This same technique can speed up your dinner service as well.

Incidentally, unless you are working at McDonald’s, use red leaf or green leaf lettuce for your setups, not shredded iceberg lettuce. It may be the cheapest, but that stuff has little to no nutritional value. Plus it just screams fast food.

The final method to add dimension to your cheeseburger is to offer a variety of toppings. There are restaurant chains that have built their entire business model around this idea. Not only can burgers be topped with a variety of cheeses — American, Swiss, cheddar, pepper jack and blue cheese are some of the most popular choices — but other interesting toppings can be offered as well.

These include sliced olives, avocados, mushrooms, sliced jalapenos, sprouts and grilled onions. There’s even a famous Pittsburgh chain that tops its signature burgers with cole slaw, French fries and even a fried egg!

As long as we are breaking traditions, how about throwing out the French fries and serving your next cheeseburger with something different, like this potato casserole.

Cheesy Potato Casserole

Cheesy Potato Casserole

3 russet potatoes, pre-baked and shredded

1/2 white onion, diced

2 scallions, sliced

8 oz cheddar cheese, shredded (about 1-1/2 cups)

8 oz cottage cheese

8 oz sour cream

1 tsp granulated garlic

Dash of hot sauce

Dash of Worchestershire sauce

Sea Salt

Fresh cracked black pepper

2 TBS butter

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Combine shredded potato, cheese, cottage cheese, sour cream, granulated garlic, onion, scallion, hot sauce and Worchestershire sauce in a mixing bowl and gently mix together with a spatula. Season to taste with salt and pepper and mix again. Spray a casserole dish with pan spray and transfer mixture to casserole dish.

2. Combine bread crumbs and butter in a small mixing bowl and cut together with a pastry cutter or just between your fingers until the texture is pebbly. Sprinkle over casserole.

3. Cook covered for 40 minutes. Remove cover and cook an additional 10 minutes to toast up the bread crumb topping. Remove from oven and allow to rest for about 10 minutes before serving to let casserole set up a little. If you serve it right away, it will be goopy.

What are some interesting ways you liven up everyday dishes? Share your ideas in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Turkey Club Sandwich

As a chef, I like to imagine that my customers are attracted to the most exotic and masterful recipes I concoct from my imagination.

The truth is, most people order the turkey club.

Every day in every restaurant, the chef and manager look at the menu mix, which is a list of all the items sold the previous day listed in order of their popularity. Depending on the restaurant, the number one item is almost always the most pedestrian dish. The fact is, most people just aren’t that adventurous.

In most of the restaurants where I worked, we served breakfast, lunch and dinner. Despite working hard to make sure we offered interesting and inventive items on the menu every day, the number one menu item invariably was either the turkey club or the cheeseburger. These are simply the restaurant facts of life.

So today, I’m going to show you step-by-step instructions on how to make restaurant quality turkey club sandwiches in your own home. Turkey clubs are basically triple decker bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwich with turkey. Simple, you say? Ah, there’s always a trick!

First, toast the bread:

Second, spread mayonnaise on all three slices of bread:

Third, place lettuce leaves on two of the three slices of bread:

Then the tomato slices:

Then the turkey:

Then the bacon:

Next, stack the two slices with lettuce, tomato, bacon and turkey on top of each other and top with the third toast slice:

Here’s the trick part. Think of the sanwich as the face of a clock. Put one toopick at 12 o’clock, one at 3 o’clock, one at 6 o’clock, and one 9 o’clock, then square off the sandwich by using a knife to trim away anything hanging over the four outside sides:

Then cut the sandwich in between the toothpicks in an “X” pattern. Normally, I would use frilly toothpicks but at home I did not have any:

Invert the four peices onto a plate with outside of the bread resting on the plate and the sides pointing toward the center of the plate to form a little bowl in the center:

Fill the bowl with potato chips, French fries, cottage cheese or whatever you want. I used oven-baked garlic parmesan fries. Here’s the recipe:

Oven-Baked Garlic Parmesan Fries

2-3 russet potatoes, peeled and cut into fries

2 TBS vegetable oil

1 TBS granulated garlic

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/4 tsp fresh cracked black pepper

1/4 cup grated parmesan

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Place potato sticks in bowl and toss with vegetable oil, granulated garlic, salt and pepper. Lay out on sheet pan, leaving space between each potato stick so that they cook evenly, and bake 40 minutes.

2. Remove from oven, use a spatula to turn a little, sprinkle with parmesan and return to oven for another 10 minutes. These can be made ahead of time and held in a 200F for up to an hour. Serve with ketchup on the side.

Garnish the sandwich with a pickle spear and voila! A restaurant-style turkey club in your own home.

What kind of restaurant favorites would you like to duplicate in your home? Share your ideas in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

One Pot Rigatoni with Broccoli and Italian Sausage

There are an infinite number of ways to make pasta, but sometimes simplicity is the best option.

I’ve been making this simple recipe regularly since a roomate first showed it to me more than 23 years ago. Until then, pastas for me were always prepared with a dense red ragu sauce, a creamy al fredo sauce, or perhaps a sweet clam sauce.

The secret to this pasta is that there is no sauce. Just extra virgin olive oil.

Olive oil is one of the most flavorful of cooking oils. It has an excellent flavor that ranges from subtle to overpowering, depending on the grade of oil and where it came from. The best olive oils are called “extra virgin”, which means the oil was made by the first pressing of the olives, it has less than 0.8 percent free fatty acids, and its flavor was declared superior by a blind taste test panel.

I use extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) almost exclusively in my home kitchen – for both dressings and for cooking. It has a lower smoke point, due to its lower free fatty acid content, but I think the flavor it adds is worth the sacrifice. If I really need to sear something super hot, I will use a canola oil. In commercial applications, I use all kinds of oils that are not relevant to the home cook.

The subtle tang of EVOO pairs naturally with the nutty sweetness of parmesan cheese, and that pairing is the basis for this pasta recipe. Until recently, I would use four separate pots and pans to make this recipe, but I learned that with a little planning, everything can be made in one pot. Much less cleanup afterwards!

Usually, I make this recipe with rigatoni because its shape is closest in size to the broccoli florets and sausage peices, so it works better aesthetically. But in the past I’ve also made it with penne and even spaghetti. Use whatever you prefer or happen to have on hand.

If you want to use only one pot for this recipe, it’s important to have everything prepped ahead of time because given the sequence of cooking, it’s hard to stop and start. The traditional term for this is “mise en place” (MEES en plahs), which is French for “Everthing in it’s place”.

Mise en place

One Pot Rigatoni with Broccoli and Italian Sausage

3/4 lb spicy Italian sausage, skin removed and cut into 1″ chunks

1 lb box dry rigatoni

2 TBS EVOO

1/2 lb broccoli

1/2 medium white onion, medium dice

1/2 green pepper, ribs and seeds removed, medium dice

4-5 white mushrooms, sliced

3-4 cloves garlic, crushed

1/2 cup water or chicken stock

1/4 cup EVOO

1/2 cup grated parmesan

1/2 tsp red pepper flake

Sea salt and black pepper to taste

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add rigatoni and cook according to package directions, about 7-9 minutes. Strain in a colander, but don’t rinse with water. Occasionally give it a shake to keep the pasta from sticking together.

2. Return pot to fire. When hot, add 2 TBS of EVOO. When smoking, add onions and peppers and cook until onion just start to be translucent, about three minutes, stirring frequently. Add sausage and cook until meat begins to brown, about another three minutes. Add mushrooms and cook until mushrooms start to brown, about another two minutes, then add garlic and cook another minute. Then add broccoli, stir so that everything is covered in oil, then add water or stock, cover and cook until broccoli is soft, about 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occasionally. During the last minute, return the pasta to the pot and toss, then cook the final minute to reheat the pasta.

3. Remove from heat and stir in EVOO, parmesan and chili flakes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. To plate, mound in center of pasta bowls and top with additional parmesan for garnish.

If you happen to have sliced black olives lying around, they also fit in nicely with this dish.

What tried and true recipes have you been making for decades? Share you wealth in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!

Baked Mostiaccioli with Italian Sausage

Did you ever become completely obsessed with having a certain food? This happens to me all the time.

Last weekend, my wife and I were on our way to a crafts show — good husband that I am, I went voluntarily — when we drove past an Italian grocery called Rosario’s. It’s kind of famous here on the South Side of Chicago, primarily because its sign features pigs jumping into a meat grinder to be turned into sausages, which spell out the name of the store. Here’s a photo:

The pigs used to light up sequentially so the sign kind of animated the slaughter of the hogs, but the lights broke years ago. Good times!

Anyway, Rosario’s had a big sign advertising a sale on mostiaccioli. Immediately, it became embedded in my brain and I had to make mostiaccioli.

Penne pasta and mostiaccioli are the same thing. Penne, which is the plural of the Italian word “penna” which means “feather” or “quill”, comes in two versions: penne rigate, which has little grooves along its sides to help the sauce stick to it better, and penne lisce, which has no grooves. Penne lisce is also known as mostiaccioli, which is Italian for “little mustache”.

Oh, those Italians and their pasta names!

Mostiaccioli also can be served the same way you would serve penne rigate, which is boiled, then poured into a pasta bowl and covered with red sauce and parmesan. But growing up we always had it baked in a casserole with tomato sauce and grated parmesan, then smothered with mozzarella cheese. It’s almost like a pizza casserole, except replacing the pizza dough with pasta. Everything else is essentially the same.

I like my mostiaccioli to have a crispy top, so I let it go longer than it probably should. Other people prefer it stringy, like a pizza. You can decide which way you prefer.

Baked Mostiaccioli with Italian Sausage

1 TBS sea salt

1 lb box dry mostiaccioli noodles (or penne or ziti)

14 oz can diced tomatoes

4 oz can tomato sauce

1 TBS tomato paste

2 TBS EVOO, separate

1/2 white onion, medium dice

1/2 green pepper, medium dice

1 jalapeno pepper, ribs and seeds removed, medium dice (optional)

2 cloves garlic, crushed

4 oz can mushroom slices

4 oz can sliced black olives

1 TBS Italian seasoning

1 tsp granulated sugar

1/2 cup grated parmesan

1/2 lb spicy/hot Italian sausage

8 oz grated fresh mozzarella (about 1-1/2 cups)

1. Fill large pot with hot water, add salt, cover and bring to boil. Add pasta and cook to package instructions for al dente, which is slightly undercooked. The pasta will continue to absorb the sauce while it bakes, so you don’t want to boil it too soft or the end product will be mushy. Drain.

2. Meanwhile, put sauce pan on fire. When hot, add half the EVOO. When smoking add onions and peppers and cook until translucent, about five minutes. Add garlic and cook another minute. Add tomato paste and stir aound until mixed in, then add diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, Italian seasoning and sugar and stir together. Bring to boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook until the tin can taste is cooked out and the flavors meld together, about 10 minutes.

3. Put your cast iron pan on the fire. When hot, add remaining EVOO. When smoking, carefully place the sausage in the pan and brown, turning to brown evenly. Cook until cooked almost all the way through, about 5 minutes.

4. In mixing bowl, combine pasta, sauce, sausage and parmesan and mix well with a spatula. Then pour into a casserole dish and top with the mozzarella. Bake at 375F covered for 30 minutes, then uncovered another 10 minutes to crisp up the cheese. Serve in pasta bowls, garnish with parsley sprigs.

This recipe is also easy to cook in bulk and baked mostiaccioli is a standard at South Side block parties, first Communion parties, church picnics and the like.

What are some of your food obsessions? Please share your story in the comments section below. And thanks for looking at my blog!