Sausage Bake

I am continuously on the lookout for new and exciting flavour combinations and because so much had been - NOT ALLOWED - anything is new to me. Cherry tomatoes may have been bought every now and again with the sole purpose of being eaten out of the packet. If I'd attempted to cook them, I would have been met by screwed up faces. Now that I am free to cook almost anything, I can experiment all I wish - and I do. I'll admit that I haven't always enjoyed everything, but with a new philosophy of anything goes I can honestly say I am no longer missing out.

 

Tomato and Sausage Bake

700g ripe cherry tomatoes

1tsp each of dried thyme, rosemary and oregano

1 bay leaf

 1 clove of garlic, peeled and chopped

4 of your favourite sausages

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

 

Salt and pepper to taste

1.       Preheat your oven 190˚C/375˚F, place all the tomatoes and the sausages into a roasting pan, if you can place all your tomatoes in one tight layer and then sprinkle all the herbs on top, drizzle with olive oil and vinegar then season with salt and pepper. Carefully toss it altogether making sure that the sausages remain on top. Put it in the oven for 30 mins, take it out give it a good shake and then return it to the oven for 15-30 minutes.

2.       If the sauce is too loose when you remove it from the oven, remove the sausages and place the roasting pan on the hob and reduce the sauce a bit, to the right consistency. Return the sausages to the sauce and serve with crusty bread, rice or mashed potato.

 

 

My husband is let loose in 'my office'

In January 2011, my knee was playing up again, the pain had started just before Christmas, but because of the girls I was trying to “get through it” but the pain was that bad, I had to go to the doctor, I was told to rest and keep it elevated. Anyway that meant for the next few weeks (it was actually more like 10 weeks) my husband was let loose in the kitchen. He would bring a chair through to the kitchen and sort out a stool, so I could rest my leg. I know he was humouring me because the kitchen is my domain, or ‘My Office’ as my husband and one of his best friends call it, after all, all I did was bark orders at him, from the recipe book – but he could have done it alone, he was just including me in one of my few pleasures. It was a miserable time.

Ravioli And Shrimp

½ large onion, finely diced

2 tbsp butter
1 tsp cornflour
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 bay leaf
1 whole clove
½ tsp dried basil
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
1 pack fresh ravioli
400ml single cream
500g cooked shrimp
1 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
1 tbsp minced chives
 

1. In a large skillet, sauté the onion in the butter until tender.
2. Put the tomatoes in a blender, process until pureed, add the brown sugar and flour, then process again, now add it to the onion, add the bay leaf, clove, basil, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, then cover and simmer for about 10 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, cook the ravioli according to the instructions. Take out the bay leaf and the clove, from the sauce, reduce the heat again and slowly add the cream and then the shrimp, stir and heat through. Drain the ravioli, serve with the sauce and top with parmesan and chives.

Messy Sausage and more pasta!

Right I’ll be perfectly honest, unless you are American you may find some of the ingredients, for this next one a little obscure and hard to get, although alternatives are possible – manicotti is cannelloni pasta shells, while in America I found manicotti to be almost toblerone shaped and ridged, where as cannelloni is cylindrical and smooth, either will work equally well though. Sausage meat in Germany, from what I can tell doesn’t exist….. and if it does I haven’t found it yet, although always keeping my eyes peeled for that all elusive ingredient. So I sort of make my own, this is a perfect way round the inability to find sausage meat, it’s simple but messy – buy your favourite sausages, and squeeze the meat out of it’s skin… Hey Presto…. Sausage meat…. How cool am I?

Sausage Pasta

1lb sausage meat (that’s an awful lot of sausage squeezing)

2 cups cottage cheese
1 package manicotti or cannelloni shells
1 (26 oz) jar tomato sauce (whichever type you like)
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1 tsp sage

1, Preheat your oven to 350˚F (180˚C), and grease a baking dish big enough for all you pasta. In a large mixing bowl, mix together, the sausage meat, cottage cheese and sage. Once it’s well mixed, stuff it into the pasta shells, then place in your baking dish. Top with the tomato sauce.

2, Cover and bake, for about an hour, or if you have a thermometer the centre to the shell should have reached 160˚F (80˚C).

3, Uncover the pasta bake and sprinkle with the mozzarella, and bake for a further 10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and bubbling.  

Spaghetti bolognese

I would class spaghetti bolognese as a classic recipe, popular everywhere! I could go into the origins of where it comes from and include the traditional recipe, however that isn't really what this blog is about, my mission, so to speak, is to blog about MY antics in the kitchen, besides you can wiki it, in fact here's a link, I hope! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_bolognese and get the information if you like... I like my bolognese simple, I sometimes add a little sour cream or creme fraiche and a tin of tomatoes, but it entirely depends on my mood and what I have to hand at the time. I'm slowly but surely, turning into the, little of this, little of that cook, learning as I go, that, things like 3 garlic cloves are great, 4 and you are doing that back of the throat gagging hiss noise (depending on what you are using it for). This of course is just an example and not to be taken literally. Although too much garlic does cause a back of the throat hiss noise - also known through experience. I hate this phrase, but I guess it's very much a case of 'learn by doing.' You learn by doing a recipe, that a little more or a little less is more suited to your palette. I am still learning what flavours go together, and what flavours 'cut into' each other - still really bad at it too.

Spaghetti Bolognese

1 tbsp evoo (extra virgin olive oil)
500g mince
1 large onion
200g mushrooms
500 ml beef stock
tbsp tomato puree
gravy granules to thicken
salt and pepper to taste

1. Add the evoo to a skillet and heat. Roughly chop the onion and then add the onions to the skillet, once the onions have started to soften add the mushrooms.

2. Remove the onions and mushrooms, then fry the mince, once the mince is done add the mushrooms and onions again, along with the tomato puree, stock and gravy granules, bring to a boil then gently simmer.

3. In a large pot, cook spaghetti according to package directions, once cooked drain and place the spaghetti on the plates, season the bolognese if need be and then spoon on top of the spaghetti....

You could sprinkle it with a little grated cheese, or add the cream, tinned tomatoes to the bolognese before you serve.... etc..

Cheesy spinach cannelloni

Just to state the obvious if you are unsure what cannelloni (manicotti) are, they are long tubes of pasta which can be filled with all sorts of things, from cheese and spinach to any kind of ground meat, etc. topped with some sort of sauce and cheese, baked for about 30 minutes.

After I moved out of my ex's house I lived on cannelloni, I wasn't entirely sure what went in it...... It was a frozen meal with spinach, cheese and tomato sauce - plenty of garlic! That's about all I knew! When I found this recipe I was super excited because I could make it myself. Turns out it was inedible, however it was far from brilliant...... It took me awhile to want to try it again and I did some major recipe tweeking. This is what I came up with.

Cheesy spinach cannelloni

butter for greasing

18 no-precook cannelloni

30 grams Parmesan, grated

jar of tomato sauce

FILLING

1 small onion diced

1 garlic clove, minced

500 grams spinach

2 cups ricotta or whipped cream cheese

1. Make the filling, heat the oil, add the onion and garlic, cook for 3-5 minutes until soft, add the spinach and cook on a high heat for 1-2 minutes, then add the ricotta, or cream cheese which ever you are using and salt and pepper to taste

2. Grease an oven proof dish, spoon the spinach mixture into the cannelloni spoon on the sauce, sprinkle with Parmesan and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

Servings: 4