Pasta with Home Baked Goodness

Miss L had me over for a delicious dinner. She made Baked Pasta as a deviation of Martha’s recipe. Ours didn’t include chicken sausage but Miss L has made it with it, or with chicken instead. The possibilities here are endless.

This was so good because of the strength of flavors but none were overpowering. Baked pasta warms the heart, especially in pink sauce with fontina. Yum!

Miss L was the perfect host by laying a premade dip (thanks to Trader Joe’s) and pita chips while dinner spent the last few minutes baking. Miss H poured the wine and the night began!

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Ingredients

Serves 8
-Coarse salt and ground pepper
-1 tablespoon olive oil
-1 medium red onion, chopped
-4 cloves garlic, minced
-1/4 cup vodka (optional)
-1 can (28 ounces) whole tomatoes with juice, lightly crushed with hands
-1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
-1/2 cup heavy cream
-1 pound rigatoni
-10 ounces baby spinach
-12 ounces smoked chicken sausage, halved lengthwise and sliced 1/4 inch thick
-6 ounces fontina cheese, 4 ounces cut into 1/2-inch cubes and 2 ounces coarsely grated
-1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

  1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion; cook until translucent, about 3 minutes. Stir in garlic. Remove from heat; add vodka, if desired. Return to heat; cook until almost evaporated, 1 minute.
  2. Stir in tomatoes and oregano; cook until tomatoes are falling apart, 10 to 15 minutes. Add cream; cook until warmed through, about 5 minutes. Season sauce with salt and pepper.
  3. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cook pasta in the boiling water until al dente, according to package instructions. Add spinach, and cook just until wilted. Drain, and return contents to pot.
  4. Add tomato sauce, sausage, and cubed fontina to pot; toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Divide evenly between two shallow 1 1/2-quart baking dishes.
  5. Top with grated fontina and Parmesan. Bake until browned and edges are crisp, 20 to 30 minutes.

This dish reminded me I don’t eat enough rigatoni or enough pink sauce. Martha kindly reminds her readers this makes enough for two smaller pans (to freeze one). The noodles were cooked perfectly and they absorbed the right amount of sauce to keep the flavor throughout.

I really liked this dish and thought it would be a great one to share with friends because this dish actually enables the host to enjoy the guests while it does it’s thang. There’s nothing worse than missing your company because you’re stuck in the kitchen.

Apple Sausage Pizza with Beer Sauce

I love pizza in all forms. You’d think my family had pizza night growing up. Since we didn’t, I seem to make it a lot or at least make calzones a lot. This pizza was a great fall flavor and was adapted to use ingredients on hand. Mr. J doesn’t eat mushrooms so I out they went and we had some red onion so in that went!

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I’ve tried dough of all sorts. I still claim that fresh-refrigerated dough is best. The refrigerated dough in a can comes in third. Today, I gave Jiffy Mix a try which was a surprising 2nd choice. The dough instructed me to mix with water and then keep it at 85-degrees. I put it on the back burner where the oven vents. I found it extremely sticky and feared too much flour would make it wicked hard. Spray a piece of plastic wrap with non-stick spray to keep it where it belongs.

Ingredients

– pizza dough
– wheat germ for the bottom of the pizza so it doesn’t stick
– 2 links of sweet Italian sausage
– 1/2 red onion
– 1 small granny smith apple, sliced thin
– 1 cup of cheese (I used a mix of mozzarella and cheddar)
– 1 cup of beer (I used Blue Moon)
– About two tablespoons of coarse grain mustard
– About 1 tbs sour cream

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Directions:
Remove the casings on the sausage and brown it in a skillet. Add onion half way through  Remove the sausage and onion and add the beer.  Let it reduce by half and then add the mustard and black pepper.  Let the sauce cool a bit and add the sour cream.  Meanwhile by rolling out the pizza dough into some flour until it’s evenly thin.  Sprinkle wheat germ onto the pan before spreading dough out. Top it with some sauce before topping with sausage, onion, apple and cheese.  Drizzle with the beer/mustard sauce. Bake for about 15 minutes.