Meaty Monday: Sausage & Peppers Bachelor Style

It has been a tough couple of weeks at work. Lotsa hours and not much time to cook; any time I've had free I've been pickling (fermenting) the last pickings from the veg garden. Meanwhile, Chuck has been waxing poetic about the foods he used to cook for himself before we met, and finally, this week, he made his version of sausage and peppers for his work-weary wife (me). It is SO good having a husband who can cook. He always tells me about so many things he cooked as a bachelor, but after nearly 9 years of marriage, I've tasted very few of them. Maybe I'm a little overbearing in the kitchen?  ….nah.

I know the stewed tomatoes and the single pepper would make my Italian forebears roll in their graves, and although this dish is far from authentic, it IS a very good, family pleasing dish that is even better made in advance and reheated to serve. Make it some lazy Sunday to reheat for your own Meaty Monday. Or better yet, get your mate to make it while you nap… I love it; and I love it that he made it for ME.

Note: This one will be a winner with kids as it stands, with its simple clean flavors. If you like a spunkier dish, use hot Italian sausage, a clove or two of chopped garlic, and a couple of additional bell peppers. This is juicy, not saucy, so its best served over crusty bread or soft polenta. Parm or Romano on top never hurts either. Please remember this is an Americanized version of the traditional Italian American dish, so feel free to adjust it to your family's tastes.

Sausage & Peppers Bachelor Style

Sausage & Peppers Bachelor Style

6 hearty servings

2 lb. Italian-style pork sausage, cut in 1" pieces

2 Tablespoons olive oil

3 cans Del Monte stewed tomatoes, traditional or Italian style

1 medium onion, diced

1 bell pepper, any color, sliced lengthwise

1/2 teaspoon dry oregano

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

salt and pepper to taste

In a  4 qt. covered sauté pan or Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium heat, and add the onion and pepper and cook until the onion is translucent. Add the sausage and cook until browned. If there is more than  3T of fat in the pan, spoon it off, and discard.

Add the stewed tomatoes and the oregano and garlic powder, and simmer 40 minutes. Taste for seasoning and add salt and / or pepper to taste.

 

Almost Chuck's Sausage with Mushrooms & Peppers

Almost Chuck's Sausage with Mushrooms & Peppers

You ever have people tell you how much better their version is of one of your dishes? I live with one of them. He who shall not be named, nearly always has something to say about how much better his Sausage and Peppers with Mushrooms is compared to mine, but has yet to prove it. We've been married nearly 8 years and except for a few batches of Italian meat sauce and a few steaks, my retired husband has never put his money where his mouth is. Granted, he is a wonderful baker and is responsible for much of the extra 10 pounds I can't seem to budge,  but its all big talk.

He's told me so many times that in his dish, he uses sweet Italian pork sausage, and canned stewed tomatoes. My original version of this dish uses pork sausage, too, but never stewed tomatoes because I think they're much too sweet with the added sugar. But since I'm trying to cut a few calories here and there, this one uses chicken or turkey sausage. And in an effort to appease him, half of the tomatoes added are stewed. To play up the sweetness, I added basil and a bit of ground fennel. And it's delicious. Really delicious. Beat that, buddy.

Note: Different brands of diced and stewed tomatoes tend to have more or less juice in them. You may need to simmer a few minutes longer if yours are very juicy. This dish is gluten free, and dairy free as prepared; if you want to serve it with a starchy food, like a bread or grain, choose according to your dietary needs.

Almost Chuck's Sausage with Mushrooms & Peppers

Serves 4

1-1/2 pounds of sweet (or hot) Italian chicken or turkey sausage links
2T extra virgin olive oil
1 med. yellow onion, 1/2" dice
10 oz. sliced cremini mushrooms
1 red bell pepper, 1" dice
1 green bell pepper, 1" dice
Kosher salt
2 large garlic cloves minced
1 14oz. can diced tomatoes
1 14 oz. can stewed tomatoes
1/2 cup red or white wine
1T dried basil
1/2 tsp. ground fennel
Fresh ground black pepper

In a large, 12" frypan, heat the oil over medium heat, and then brown the sausage links about 5 minutes per side. Remove the browned sausages to a plate to cool slightly, and into the pan add the onion. paper, mushrooms and garlic, sprinkle with a pinch of salt and sauté until the onions and peppers soften.

Slice the slightly cooled sausage links into approx. 1" chunks and add to the pepper and mushroom mixture. Add the stewed tomatoes, the diced tomatoes, the wine and the basil and fennel and stir well.

Bring to a simmer, cover and cook for 20 minutes. Remove the cover and continue to simmer about 10 minutes longer until the tomato juices no longer look watery.

Serve over pasta, artisan bread or rice.    

Rolling in Braciole

My mom stayed home when I was a kid, and depending on her mood, there’d occasionally be some sort of Italian extravaganza of pasta and meats and sauce for dinner.  My dad and I loved it. A favorite was braciole and rigatoni. The first time I ever heard my mother swear was while she was flattening the beef for braciole and dropped the mallet on her bare toes. It added greatly to my vocabulary at age 7. Sadly, I don’t have her recipe, since she wrote down next to nothing, but this comes pretty damn close. And I DO remember what she said. And it wasn’t damn.

 

We had this tonight with some goat cheese gnocchi made in big batches and frozen (yes, yes, the recipe will show up here sooner or later), and some simply cooked green beans from the last of this years’ garden. Mom would have loved this, especially since she didn’t have to swing a mallet.

Braciole Carlo
My husband, Chuck, aka "Carlo" adores braciole, so this is for you, hon.

4 servings

1 lb. top round beef, braciole-cut scallops in 4 pieces

8 oz. hot or sweet Italian style sausage, patties or casings removed

2 large garlic cloves, minced

1 large green onion (scallion) green and white part, minced

1/3 cup minced flat-leaf parsley

3 oz. stale bread, in fine crumbs

2 oz. Romano cheese, grated, Locatelli Romano preferred

¾ cup+ dry white wine

2 Tblsp extra virgin olive oil

Coarse ground black pepper to taste

4 toothpicks

Two quarts of basic tomato sauce or marinara* (see below)

Brown the sausage meat in a large non-stick sauté pan over medium heat, breaking up with a wooden spoon as it cooks.  You want to render the fat from the sausage a bit and brown it lightly. Next add the scallion and garlic and continue to stir until the green onion softens.

Use a nonstick pan for this, so you won't need to drown it all in oil.

Turn off the heat. Add the parsley, bread crumbs and the Romano. Mix gently to combine and absorb the oil from fat from the pan. Begin to add the wine, slowly, a bit at a time until the bread mixture can be molded easily, but there should be no excess juices seeping out. You may need a few extra tablespoons of wine. If you put in too much, turn on the heat under the pan and let some of the moisture steam away. Let cool away from the burner while you prepare the beef.

Place each beef scallop between two sheets of waxed paper, or in a leftover produce plastic bag (I save them for stuff like this) and hammer them out carefully to less than ¼” thick. Be careful not to make holes in the meat, although a few are inevitable and really don’t matter.  When you’ve done all four, lay them out lengthwise on a counter with one of the short ends towards you.

No swearing, yet.

Place one quarter of the bread crumb mixture on the wider of the short sides, covering about 1/3 of the meat, then roll up to the narrowest end, securing with a toothpick. If the filling comes out a bit, don’t worry, just push it back in.

Wipe out the same non-stick sauté pan, and heat the olive oil in it over medium-high heat. When it shimmers, add the braciole, and brown on all sides.

The braciole won't be perfectly browned, but do the best you can.

While the braciole is cooking, bring your tomato sauce to a simmer in a pan just wide enough to hold the bracciole without crowding. When the bracciole is browned, drop them into the tomato sauce or marinara sauce and braise at a simmer for about 2 to 2.5 hours until tender.

Serve with pasta, gnocchi or soft polenta and a green vegetable.

  

*Quick, Lazy Tomato Sauce

Heat 2 Tblsp of olive oil in a deep saucepan. Add two garlic cloves, minced. Add two 28 oz. cans of tomato puree, one 15- ounce can of diced tomatoes and a half cup of dry red or white wine. If you have tomato paste in a tube, add 3 Tblsp of that, too. If not, skip it.

Bring to a boil, and then reduce to a simmer. Add one heaping tablespoon each of dried basil and dried oregano. Add a small pinch of dried red pepper flakes, and add salt and fresh-ground black pepper to taste. I personally like a pinch of powdered cloves and a teaspoon of anchovy paste added, too, but that’s sort of a family thing.

Simmer for as long as you can, up to an hour, but 15 minutes will do. Makes about two quarts.

Braciole, with goat cheese gnocchi and homegrown beans!