Just another typical meal in our household:
All ingredients were just what we had on hand, you can tweak as you please:
- 1 Kielbasa cut into ~1/4 inch thick slices. I always prefer the smoked pork variety, but DaNece has a weird aversion to anything other than 100% beef… If you can’t seem to find it at the store, just look for ‘smoked sausage’, that should treat you all right.
- about 10 red potatoes cut into eighths (or gold, or idaho, whatever your preference is)
- 1/2 orange bell pepper sliced (you can use whatever pepper you have handy)
- about 1/3 bunch of spinach washed, drained, dried and chopped
- 1 shallot sliced (1/3 of a finely died sweet onion would work just as well)
- 1 can of corn
- butter
- milk
- some sugar
- some salt/pepper
- misc. spices
- everything nice (okay, this is optional)
How to make it:
- Boil water. We threw the potatoes right in at the beginning so they would cook faster.
- Heat up two pans. One to super-duper hot, and one to medium.
- Toss the kielbasa into the super duper hot pan. I generally have to work in two or three batches to keep the pan temperature up when cooking the sausage. I also generally keep a grease lid over the pan as the sausage is fatty and will spit and sputter. Flipping to keep from burning.
- Toss the shallot into the medium heat pan with some olive oil or butter. Cook until translucent, stirring occasionally.
- Once the kielbasa is browned on both sides remove it to a paper towel covered plate to drain grease. Cover with more paper towel.
- Once translucent, add spinach to shallot pan (if you have some minced garlic now would be a good time to add that as well). Allow to spinach to wilt and cook. Personally I add a pinch or two of sugar to the spinach to remove the bite off of it, but cook it how you like it. A little salt and pepper goes a long way in here as well.
- Once the potatoes are fork-tender, remove from water, add a tablespoon or three of butter, a splash of milk, some salt/pepper, and mix your heart out! Adjust to personal preference.
- Add spinach/shallot mixture to potatoes and stir.
- Heat up corn in microwave or on stove-top. Whichever you prefer.
- Re-heat spinach pan with a little dab of oil to high heat while you plate the rest of the meal. Once hot, toss in the sliced bell pepper with a touch of salt and sugar. Cook to taste. I like mine crisp and not too sweet. The acid in the pepper really cuts through the thick sausage taste well.
Great meal, done fast, and we didn’t have to make any special trips to the store. :)
6 comments:
Just the kind of meal I'm aiming for these days. Put together whatcha got. Improv can be so tasty!
Melissa - Left to myself I would plan out all our meals. This week has been mighty lazy though, so we are kind of winging it all week long. :)
The sad thing is that this is as exciting as life gets around here... not planning my menu. OOOOOoooo
That looks lovely! I am going to attempt to remake Megan's Pene pasta with roasted cauliflower and sausage...The richness and surprise of the cauliflower combined with the pasta and sausage makes up for not adding heavy amounts of cheese (although, I have my soy Parmesan, Romano, and mozzarella handy) I'll let you know how it goes.
Sadira - Sounds like a winner of a meal to me! :) Cauliflower is SOOooo good.
Of course I would probably make a cream sauce with some shallots... but I don't have the aversion to dairy. :)
Sounds a good meal. I'll give it a try and thanks for sharing. The quick and easy part is attractive too.
Jarart - Glad you like it. :) Kielbasa is always a standby in our house. If you want really easy just cook some kielbasa, boil some cabbage, and add a bit of ketchup to the sausage. That's what I grew up on. :)
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