This excellent, simple recipe from Mark Bittman was a huge success at dinner time tonight: Pasta with White Sausage Sauce. I got Bittman’s excellent How To Cook Everything app for free (!!!) a few years ago and have really enjoyed it — I would buy it all over again if I had to, as it’s super-handy to have a high-quality cookbook on my phone.
In the app, Bittman offers a variation on the above dish in which you blanch greens in the pasta water before you cook the pasta, then chop them up and add them to the sausage after its done sautéing but before you toss it with the pasta. We had some youngish Tuscan kale from the farm stand in the fridge, and it balanced out this simple dish like a dream. For the meat, I used Trader Joe’s sweet Italian chicken sausage. The sweetness of the sausage smoothed out the bitterness of the kale, and the kale cut the richness in this otherwise very mild, buttery dish.
This meal might only be a kid-pleaser in my house, as our kids have an unusual fondness of kale and other dark leafy greens (as long as they’re not overcooked), but if your kids are odd like mine, I highly recommend trying this recipe. I only used two of the 5 sausages in the package, so I can get another whole dish from that $4 meat purchase. Yay, frugality! 😉 Also, there are at least two adult meals in the leftovers from tonight — win!
Oh, and it was all extra tasty with Trader Joe’s vinho rose Espiral, which sells for the very attractive price of about $4.50 per bottle and is a juicy, refreshing thirst-quencher that you’ll be happy to drink all summer long. Check out their yummy vinho verde, too!
Now all I need to do is figure out what to do with that giant zucchini that Amelia brought home yesterday. Recommendations welcome!
The Thing With The Stuff 