Pesto Pasta with Chicken Sausage and Brussel Sprouts

When I was a child, probably seven or eight years old, my grandmother cooked a pasta dish that I loved. It was linguine and broccoli in sauce. But what kind of sauce? I wasn't sure. It was mostly clear with flecks of green. I liked it so much that it stuck with me for years, but for some reason my kid brain never asked what it was called. By the time I was old enough to ask, no one remembered the dish.

Once at a restaurant a few years later I ordered linquini in a white clam sauce thinking that was it. Nope. I was severely disappointed. Surprisingly, the mystery was solved just a few weeks ago when I cooked...

The Pin: Pesto Pasta with Chicken Sausage and Brussel Sprouts by Gimme Some Oven
Difficulty: 4 (1 = Easy, 10 = Hard)

Lo and behold! I'd found the mystery sauce. It was pesto! I don't know why, but I haven't had a proper pesto sauce since I was a kid. After my first taste of this dish, I instantly recognized the flavor I'd had so many years ago. It's funny the things your brain remembers.

Let's cook with pesto!

It's pasta makin' time!

I've made this dish three times now, and yes all three times I used jarred pesto. I know, lazy cook! I thought about making my own. I really did, but then I'd have to find a recipe for pesto, and it involved using the food processor and... oh look, that jar of pesto is already in my cart. Well too late now! Jarred it is!

The recipe calls for "orecchiette (or any pasta)." I've never been able to find orecchiette, so I went with any other pasta. In this case farfalle, bow tie pasta. The recipe also says, "4 chicken sausage links (I used spicy Italian)." For some reason, I've never found Italian chicken sausage, so I used Cajun.

Saute the garlic and sausage,

I've never tried chicken sausage before this dish. It's surprisingly good.

Roast the brussel sprouts,

The burn gives it flavor!

Cook your pasta, and throw everything together in a bowl.

Use a large bowl. It makes a lot of food.

Then eat!

Left: Mine - Right: Gimme Some Oven

This is a good dish with a few caveats.

1. The ratio of sausage/sprouts to pasta is way off. The dish either needs less pasta, or more meat and veg. In taking the picture in the big bowl, I had to keep stirring to get the brussel sprouts and chicken sausage on top. Otherwise, they were buried in the mounds of pasta.
2. I've made this dish three times now, I Iike to add a touch more pesto than called for by the recipe. Not a lot more, but two or three table spoons more make a huge difference.
3. When adding the cooked brussel sprouts, you may want to pick out any stray burnt leaves. Mine were incredibly salty.
4. If you're thinking of substituting regular pork sausage for the chicken sausage, I have one word of advice for you: DON'T. I love spicy Italian pork sausage, so the second time I made this I used it instead of the chicken. It was... okay, but it's much better with the chicken sausage. The pork sausage overpowers and clashes with the pesto.

My husband also enjoyed this dish, though he requested I make it with broccoli next time instead of brussel sprouts. He'll east brussel sprouts, but he's not a huge fan.

Final Rating: 6.5* (1 = Bad, 10 = Awesome)

* My husband wanted me to rate this a 5, but I think it deserves better. If I were to include my changes (including the vegetable substitution), I'd bump my rating up to 7 or 8. Cook at your own discretion. 

Stuffed Mushroom

If you read my last post (Ice Cream Cake!) then you'll know the 11th was my husband's birthday. And what a birthday he had! Eight hours of MEPS! You see, Matt is the process of changing military branches. After three years in the Army, he (and a couple of the guys from his former unit) is joining the Navy. Unfortunately, the transition from Army to Navy isn't going as smoothly as we'd like. We're in a sort of military limbo where Matt is out of the Army but not yet in the Navy, so we're hanging out in Fayetteville (Fort Bragg) waiting for things to get moving.

After spending his special day at MEPS, a fun-filled day of waking up at 4:30 a.m., stripping in front of lots of strangers, and getting poked, prodded and tested, he then got to drive the hour and a half trek home. Great way to spend a birthday, right? Since he was having such a lousy day, I decided to have a little surprise waiting for him when he got home. The ice cream cake was the first part. Part two was...

The Pin: Stuffed Mushrooms by The Girl Who Ate Everything
Difficulty: 4 (1 = Easy Peasy, 10 = Frickin' Hard)

I figured stuffed mushrooms would be a nice snack when my husband arrived home. Plus, he mentioned a few weeks ago that this was one of the recipes he'd like to try. So away we go!

LOVE stuffed mushrooms!

The recipe calls for white mushrooms. When I was shopping for this cooking adventure, I simply wrote "mushrooms" on my list. At the store, I assumed baby bella mushrooms (the best mushroom of all!) were the ones I was looking for. Well, I was wrong, but I'm guessing the substitution didn't make a huge difference. The recipe also calls for 24 ounces of mushrooms. I used 8 ounces because there were only two of us eating them. For the stuffing, however, I made the full suggested amount because I was worried there wouldn't be enough otherwise.

Saute, mix, stuff, etc. So I was way off. There was more than enough stuffing. I could have cut the stuffing ingredients in half and still have had a bit left over. I tasted the left over mixture, and I was somewhat... hesitant about the outcome of this recipe. I didn't love the flavor, but I was hoping Matt would.

The nice thing about this recipe is that you can prep everything, and stick them in the fridge which is exactly what I did. I prepped these bad boys in the morning and popped them in the oven when my husband was about 30 minutes away from home. I was pretty close. They were done about four minutes after he arrived.

Someone ate our mushrooms! Oh wait, that was us.

How were they? Did Matt like them? I think the best way to answer that question is to show you the conversation I just had with my husband.

Me: "Remember those stuffed mushrooms? On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate them?
Matt: "Did you buy stuff for those today? I want those again. Make them for me."

For him, that's a rave review. And I agree, they were really good. When I tasted the mixture prior to baking, I wasn't thrilled. It tasted like warm cream cheese. Baking the mixture and including the mushrooms tamed the cream cheese and brought out the flavor of the sausage and onion. The cream cheese baked gave it a... well, a nice creamy texture. Yumm!

These also reheat well. We couldn't finish them, so we reheated them the next day in the toaster oven. They were just as tasty. Per my husband's request, this is definitely one I'd do again.

Final Rating: 8 (1 = Bad, 10 = Soooo Good!)