Roasted Vegetable and Sausage Medley

         

















I bookmarked a lot of roasted vegetable recipes today and it made me really want roasted vegetables. I made tonights dinner up as I went along. It wasn't until the vegetables were in the oven and I could smell it that I decided on goat's cheese and it wasn't until I was already putting the first bite in my mouth that I decided it was done. As I was mixing it together I was battling whether or not to put in on top of pasta or eat it as is. This is a constant battle I have with myself. I decided for tonight that I'd eat it without pasta and it was great. I have left overs so perhaps I'll try it over a little pasta tomorrow, which I think would be just as good!

1) Cut up your desired vegetables for roasting into bite size pieces. I used sweet potato, cauliflower, red pepper, onion, and mushroom. Also chop up some garlic and fresh thyme (or dried thyme).
2) Mix the vegetables, garlic and fresh thyme in a bowl with enough olive oil to coat, along with some salt and pepper and hot pepper flakes.
3) Spread evenly on a baking sheet and put into the oven at 400 for 30 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked (that should be enough time). If you want, take it out half way through and give the vegetables a little mix.
4) While the vegetables are cooking, fry up some sausage. I used hot italian sausage. I wanted to keep the sausage in rounds so I fried it whole and when it was almost done I cut it into little bite size rounds and them continued to cook it.
5) In the same bowl that had the vegetables/oil put in a couple handfuls of spinach. Toss to get the left over olive oil on it. When the sausage is finished cooking, add to the bowl. When the vegetables are finished roasting, add to bowl and toss.
6) Add desired amount of goat's cheese and toss again. Top your serving with some fresh goat's cheese.

As I said above, this is great on its own or would be delicious a top some pasta or even quinoa. Also any vegetables would be good in it!

UPDATE: So I tried it last night with pasta and today for lunch with quinoa. I enjoyed both, but I liked the quinoa addition more.

For the pasta, I simply cooked desired pasta and before straining reserved 1 cup of pasta water. In the pasta pot, off heat, I put some of the left overs back into the drained pasta and added some extra goat's cheese. I stirred it around and added some of the pasta water so the goat's cheese would evenly coat the pasta.

For the quinoa, I just cooked quinoa per package directions and then tossed it with the left overs and some extra goat's cheese.

Honey Mustard Glazed Chicken in a Blanket with Savoury Garlic Sweet Potato Mash

No internet at home right now... stupid bell. It's okay though, because last night I made a delicious dinner.

I found the recipe for these bundles of joy yesterday while not paying attention in class (sorry mom and dad) and it seemed so yummy I had to make it for dinner. They're very simple to make and extremely delicious.

I used only one chicken breast, cut into pieces, and about 5 strips of bacon. For the glaze I used about 3 tbs of honey and 2 tbs of dijon, tossed in a small crushed garlic, a pinch of hot pepper flakes and some pepper. I didn't put any extra salt in because I assumed the bacon would be salty enough.

It says 12 minutes aside, but I did about 15 minutes aside and broiled them a little at the end on each side to crisp them up. I took them out of the oven at 12 minutes and there was a lot of grease so I carefully poured some of that out and put them back in for a little longer.

Sweet potatoes, as the name says, are a little sweeter. With the honey on the chicken, I didn't want to make them the 'normal' way with brown sugar etc, so I made garlic sweet potato mash. It was very good. That recipe says to put sour cream in it, but I omitted that and they tasted great.

Quinoa Meatloaf

I'm going home in two days and really don't want to go grocery shopping so I'm trying to cook things with what I have in my cupboard/fridge.

I took out some ground beef to defrost earlier with the plan to make nachos for dinner, but decided I really didn't want nachos in the end. I didn't want pasta because I had pasta last night. I didn't have potatoes or rice. Just quinoa. Quinoa and ground beef seemed like an odd paring to me until I went to yummly.com which allows you to put in what ingredients you want to be in a dish and it gives you a bunch of options. A quinoa chili came up, which I considered, but was lacking most of the ingredients. Then I found one for a quinoa meatloaf. I wasn't even sure if I liked meatloaf, but I didn't see why I wouldn't.

I played with the recipe a little because it looked kind of boring. For the vegetables I used leeks, red pepper and (frozen) corn because that is all I had. I fried up the leeks and red peppers with garlic. I put the corn, still frozen, directly into the ground beef. I had cut the recipe in half because of the amount of ground beef I had so guessed for the ketchup and worchestershire sauce measurements, and I used 1 egg. I put salt, pepper, a little cumin, chili powder, basil, thyme and tarragon in the meat mixture for the spices. To finish off the meat mixture, I shredded in some cheddar cheese. If I make this again, I'll put more cheese in because the bites that had a little cheese were delicious!

I took it out at 30 minutes and then let it sit for a bit, but decided it wasn't done. I put it back in for 10 more minutes and when I took it out again I could tell it looked done. It was nice a firm. It was pretty delicious!

Rigatoni with Broccoli and Sausage

Found this recipe and I had a lot of broccoli I needed to get rid of and tons of sausage in the fridge, so I decided to make it.

The recipe is very simple. Too simple for me. I decided to add onions and mushrooms after the sausage had cooked, as well as some extra garlic. I also used hot Italian sausage instead of sweet. I omitted the anchovies because a) yuck and b) I didn't have any.

In the oil sauce, I added some hot pepper flakes and a little thyme. As well, instead of just using parmesan for serving, I put a bunch in while I added some of the pasta water. I believe this better coated the pasta and gave it the yummy parmesan flavour!

It was a light pasta, due to the virtual lack of a sauce, but very flavourful and enjoyable!

Baked Creamy Chicken Taquitos

I've been bookmarking taquito recipes since forever. I think they're the most delish little taco-like things. I finally got around to following through on making one of the booked marked recipes! I only had 2 tortillas left over however, so they're more just like rolled up tacos instead of skinny taquitos. I've recently found a website called chef-in-training which has a lot of yummy looking things on it. This is where I found the taquito recipe I made today! 

It may seem like a lot of work for a lunch dish, but I had defrosted chicken the night before which I didn't end up using, so I just marinated it with some chili powder, olive oil, lemon, garlic, salt and pepper and then tossed it in the oven. When it was done I shredded it with a fork.

I cut the recipe in half because I knew I only had two tortillas... probably should have cut it down a little more so my taquitos weren't so thick, but oh well! As for following the recipe:

• I didn't have green salsa, so I just used some 'regular' salsa that I had in the fridge. 
• I didn't have any cilantro and didn't feel like going to get any so I just skipped that. 
• I didn't have any Mexican flavoured cheese, so I just used regular cheddar! 

They're delicious. But definitely let them cool first as I just aggressively burned myself. 

Homemade Cinnamon Rolls

I am a huge fan of cinnamon rolls. These were also much easier than I thought to make. My housemate made them last week while I wasn't home and I was very jealous because they looked delicious. A couple of housemates and I were bored last night so we decided we'd make them. We used this recipe for the cinnamon rolls.

For the icing: mix icing sugar, milk and vanilla. Measurements all depend on how much icing you want. About 1 cup of icing sugar, 1 tablespoon of milk (probably a little more, use judgement for the consistency you want) and 1/8-1/4 tsp of vanilla will make enough icing for 3-4 cinnamon rolls.

Chicken Tikka Masala

Tonight I tried my hand at Indian food! I made chicken tikka masala. I ate it with naan, but i'll admit I used  store bought instead of making it.

I followed the recipe completely, besides using hot pepper flakes instead of jalapeño pepper.

At the step that said to 'strain the chicken', the marinade had sort of lost its moisture and therefore nothing really came off.

I made (at the same time) a tofu version of this for my housemate because she really wanted Indian food. I looked up a recipe for tofu tikka masala, and it was completely different ingredients than the one I was using. But I used it for the cooking instructions for the tofu. Once the tofu had finished baking, I put it in a pan with some of the sauce (before I put my chicken into it).

It was very good, but got progressively spicier as I ate it. When I first tried the sauce while it was cooking it wasn't spicy enough so I added extra cayenne/hot pepper flakes. As I poured them in I went 'hmm, that may have been too much'. Turns out it was a liiiiiiittle excessive. Good none the less! 

Baked Pasta with Chicken and Bacon

Original Posts Photo - how cute. 

UPDATED August 3rd 2016:

Apparently on a what I assume was a cold day in February 2013, I didn't know what to make for dinner. I opened my cupboard and saw macaroni and cheese... instead of making it, I decided to make my own version.

Well three years later, it was my inspiration to make my anniversary dinner. Now I thought it was good, how could I not with the ingredients in it? But Conor said he thinks its his new favourite meal that I've cooked for him. That could have been the wine talking... however, I do cook for him a lot so thats got to have some credibility!

Serves 4-5 people

Ingredients
4 strips of bacon, chopped into bite site pieces
1 small onion, diced
2 Chicken breasts, cut into bite size pieces
S&P
Olive oil
2-3 cloves of garlic, diced
2 tbsp of fresh thyme, chopped (or 2 tsp dried)
2 cups dried macaroni (or any other pasta - original recipe done with rigatoni - may need to adjust based on type of pasta used)
2 cups milk
3 tbsp flour
3 tbsp butter
2 cups grated cheddar cheese (or however much of whatever combo you liked - I tossed in a handful of grated romano too because I had it).
Pinch of paprika (maybe 1/8 tsp)
Handful (maybe 1/2 cup) of panko bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease/spray a baking dish. Set aside.

Cut up the bacon into bite size pieces. In a large pot (you will be making the sauce in here later), fry the bacon until it just starts to crisp. Remove and place in a large bowl.

In the same pot, add the diced onions, half the garlic and half the thyme. Cook on medium heat for 8-10 minutes or until onions become translucent. If there is not enough bacon grease and the pan seems too dry, add a splash of olive oil.  Remove onions and put into the same bowl that the bacon is in.

Add a splash of olive oil and then add chicken (may need to do in two batches depending on size of pot). Let the chicken sit undisturbed for a minute or two to get some nice brown color on the chicken. Once cooked, approximately 7 minutes (depending on the size of the bites) remove from pot and add to the bowl with the bacon and onions.

In a new pot, boil water and cook pasta of your choice to al dente. You can start this process sooner, but the macaroni I had only took 3 minutes to cook to al dente.  

In the same pot used to make the onions/chicken/bacon, make a cheese sauce. At a low heat, melt butter and add the rest of the thyme/garlic. Slowly add flour and stir constantly. Here you are making a roux. You want the flour/butter to turn a nice light beige. Let cook for a minute, making sure to keep stirring so it doesn't burn. Slowly add milk, stirring the whole time. You will notice that the milk will make it thick at first, but once you add all of it will seem like it is just milk in a pot. After a few minutes on low/medium heat, this will begin to thicken. Once thickened, add cheddar cheese (as much as you want for taste). Add a pinch of paprika and a pinch of salt and pepper to taste.

Add the chicken/bacon/onions back to the cheese sauce when it is done. Spoon some of cheese sauce into baking dish to coat the bottom. Add half the pasta. Top with more sauce and stir within baking dish. Add the rest of the pasta and then the remaining sauce and stir so everything is coated. You could do this in the pot if your pot is big enough, but mine was not.

Lightly top with bread crumbs and any remaining cheese you may have. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes or until bubbling and then broil (to brown the top) for a few minutes.