Easy winter wins

I haven’t posted a recipe for a long time. And since it’s been cold winter at least where we are, I decided to toss in a few ideas that will warm your table.

One cold January day our friend Stuart sent me a photo of his dinner dish with “Sausage, potato, pepper, onion bake. Tasty and easy.” I bet his were turkey sausages.

But this reminded me that I had hot Italian sausages in the freezer that needed to be used. I had onions and potatoes but no peppers, so decided to use whatever I had in stock. Mushrooms, broccoli and cherry tomatoes to add to the colours.

Hot sausages go well with red wine. The potatoes will cook slower than the rest of my ingredients, especially in wine.

So, I sliced them in 1/2cm circles, cut the rest of the ingredients, sprinkled with olive oil and salt and added about a glass of red wine, enough to cover the bottom of my pan.

If you are using frozen sausages, best and easiest is to slice them while still frozen.

It takes about 5 min to prepare and about 30 min to bake in the oven at 400F. It was absolutely delicious.

A few days later pulled out the frozen lamb sausages that Alex had bought from the Bulgarian store in Toronto before Xmas last year. They were to be used too. At that time, I had peppers of many colours and created my version of the pepper and sausage fast dinner (or in our case lunch) dish.

Note that colours are paramount for any dish to look and taste great!

Sausages with vegetables

The recipes below are for two people.

Ingredients for hot Italian sausages dish

2 hot Italian sausages, sliced (any uncooked sausage mild or hot will do)
About a glass of red wine
2 small potatoes
Half a cup of mushrooms (2 or 3)
About a cup of broccoli
A small onion, sliced in quarters
About a cup of baby carrots (any carrots will do)
About a cup of cherry tomatoes
1 to 2 tbsp of olive oil
Salt vegetables to taste

Note: You can use other vegetables that you have handy or prefer. Instead of potatoes, use sweet potato for example. Add garlic if you like it, etc. If sausages are turkey or chicken use white wine.

You can also use boiled potatoes, just cut them into larger pieces.

Ingredients for lamb sausages dish

2 lamb sausages, sliced
A small onion, sliced in quarters
3 different colored peppers
2 small potatoes
About a glass of wine
Black pepper
1 to 2 tbsp of olive oil
Salt vegetables to taste

I didn’t use salt in any of the above since the sausages are salty enough.

Preparation

It is really easy. Chop the vegetables you use into big chunks. Slice the potatoes in thin circles. Oil your baking pan lightly, mix all the ingredients inside the pan. Add salt and pepper if you are using. Add wine to cover the bottom of the pan. You may not need a full glass. If it is too much you’ll end up with stew, not bake. Mix everything and set in the preheated oven (400F).

Bake until ingredients are cooked (between 20 and 30 min, depending on your oven)

Easy, peasy!

Bon appetite!

Chicken thighs with frozen peas

Another really easy dish I often make in the winter

Have some frozen peas? And some chicken?

Ingredients

It really has 3 ingredients only:

Frozen peas
Chicken thighs or breasts or drumsticks. With or without skin – your preference.
A cup of cherry tomatoes
Salt and/or curry (I used my Moroccan spices). You can use ground peppercorns instead of curry
Olive oil enough to lightly cover the bottom of your baking pan
Optionally wine. White is probably better, but I had red wine left from previous days and it worked well.

Preparation

This one is really easy. Place the frozen peas in the lightly oiled pan. Mix the tomatoes in it.

Top with your preferred chicken pieces, spiced and herbed to your taste. Pour a bit of wine (for my pan it was about 1/3 of a cup).

Place in the oven preheated to 400F. Bake for about 40 min or until chicken is cooked.

Pasta with dried wild mushrooms

There is more than one way to boil pasta! The classical one is cooking it is a lot of salted water. That is not what I do usually with mine.

This was Alex’s favorite and perhaps mine too. The wild mushrooms give zing to the simple pasta dish. It is absolutely delicious!

I have a big jar of dried wild mushrooms bought at Costco. Follow the instructions to reconstitute the dry mushroom. Do not throw out the water! It is the key for this nutty taste. Use cheese cloth or another fabric to strain the water and get rid of the little particles. Chop the mushrooms into small pieces.

You can use any type of pasta but I use spaghetti. There is a trick in boiling the pasta. Cook it only half of the time that you usually will cook it in salty water.