Chicken & Sausage Cacciatore Carbonara

There’s a pretty decent little Italian restaurant on San Antonio’s far north side that has some very tasty offerings. In particular, I like their take on sausage cacciatore. After taking some home and having it for lunch the next day, I realized that I could probably do a pretty fair job of it myself. So here we go with an enhanced version…

INGREDIENTS
4 chicken thighs, boned, skinned, cut into chunks
4 links Italian sausage, about 12-16 oz. total; 2 wholes, 2 crumbled
2 green bell pepper – stemmed, seeded cut into half-strips
2 red bell pepper – stemmed, seeded cut into half-strips
1 lg. red onion, cut into strips
1 lb mushrooms, cleaned, cut in 1/3” slices - prepared
tomatoes 28 oz can, crushed, or 1 each 15 oz.r can of stewed & puree
4 cloves garlic, minced
Olive oil
1Tbsp Oregano
1 Tbsp basil
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp rosemary
1/2 cup red wine – Marsala, Chianti, etc.
1/2 cup cooked and chopped bacon

Optional Garnish:
chopped flat-leaf parsley
s&p
Parmesan cheese, grated


METHOD
See Mushrooms 101 for mushroom instructions.

Set a large skillet over medium heat.I quickly put together a simple tomato sauce by adding some olive oil and minced garlic in a large skillet and adding the tomatoes. To this I added some salt and pepper and and the herbs let that simmer.

After simmering and reducing for a while, the sauce will thicken and darken, like this. Stir occasionally so that it doesn't scorch. Now's the time to add the wine and stir all together, then let simmer some more.

Remove cooked mushrooms from their pan. Fry the crumbled and the link Italian sausage until the grease has rendered and the sausage is just starting to brown. Remove the sausage and drain the grease.

Slice the link sausages into 1/4" slices and finish cooking the pieces. When done, drain the grease and reserve the sausage pieces with the crumbled sausage.

Next, take the cut up chicken thighs and pepper both sides lightly. Place the chicken in the pan, waiting until it is lightly browned to turn.

When both sides are finished, remove from the pan and drain. Remove meats to plate/bowl and reserve.

Reheat the pan and add about 1-2 tablespoon of olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the peppers, onions and garlic.

When the vegetables are soft and start to brown, add the sausage stirring to incorporate it. Cook the vegetables and the sausage together for a few minutes. Once all incorporated, add in reserved cooked mushrooms and stir well.

By this point, the tomato sauce ought to be nice and thick.

Add your marinara sauce to the pan vegetables and sausage pan a little at a time while stirring, until the dish reaches desired consistency.

Finally, add in the bacon and mix it all well. Serve hot over pasta. I used whole wheat fettuccine, as it's a little better for you than the regular type.

A moment of silence...

R.I.P.

I have searched high and low, and apparently this is the LAST of the home-made sausage from the freezer. The bratwurst is all gone; the Polish sausage is all gone; the breakfast pan sausage is all gone - above is I believe our last package of home made chorizo. Mourn with me as it is slowly devoured here at Casa Gordita over the coming days, and rejoice that the planning for the next sausage day is in the works!

Sausage and Potato Salad

If you want a change from the typical mayonnaise or mustard based potato salads, give this a try. Potatoes, sausage and a vinaigrette mix together to make it filling, tasty and fresh. This makes 4 healthy servings.

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Times:

Prep

10 min

Inactive Prep

10 min

Cook

35 min

Total:

55 min

For Salad:

• 1 pound potatoes
• a couple teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
• half-pound Polish or similar sausage, sliced into 1/8-inch-thick rounds
• 4 chopped scallions, use all green and white parts

For Dressing:

• 1 tablespoon spicy brown mustard
• 3 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

• crumbled bacon bits for garnish (optional)

Method:

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the potatoes; boil about 25 minutes or until tender. Drain and let cool. Cut potatoes into 1 – 1½” chunks and place in a large bowl.

In a large skillet, heat the 2 teaspoons oil over medium-high heat. Brown the sausage slices. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate to drain. Add the sausage to the bowl with the potatoes along with celery and green onions.

For the dressing, in a small bowl, whisk together the mustard, garlic, salt, pepper and vinegar, and then slowly whisk in oil. Add this and the scallions to the potato mixture and toss to combine. Add bacon bits if desired as topping. Serve warm or at room temperature. this is also very tasty with red potatoes.

New Weapon in the Arsenal

Santa Claus was good to us this year, a 22.5" Weber Smokey Mountain bullet arrived just before Christmas. Of course, the weather was damp very windy, so it was the centerpiece of the living room for a couple of days. It sat there, unmoving, like the monolith in the movie "2001". In preparation for the first fire, Christmas Day was spent cranking out 10 lbs. of bratwurst. Nine lbs. was vac'ed for freezing, and the rest refrigerated for the big day.


Started off with a medium sized load of briquets, using a chimney full of lump in the center for the starter. This is one version of the Minion Method - allowing the charcoal to catch over time rather than firing it all at once. Four chunks of mesquite (not shown) were placed throughout the load to start sequentially as the charcoal burned.


Next, two gallons of water were added to the water pan to keep the humidity up and to act as a "thermal flywheel" in helping to regulate the temperature over time. The racks were added, and I topped it off to let it come to temperature.

Once the smoker hit 235 degrees, on went the four reserved brats (with a leftover spud) and a rack of spares in a Kansas City trim. the other small pieces of meat shown below represent about half of the trim from doing the KC trim. Some people, unbelievably throw this stuff away. These pieces cook much faster than the ribs and were reserved for "cook's treat". There has to be a reward for all the hard work, after all!


These ribs were done "Texas style" - i.e., without saucing or foiling. Here's the way I do it. After trimming the rack to it's final form, the meat is dried well with paper towels. At that point it is liberally coated with Worcestershire sauce, and rather than a traditional rub, I use Bolner's 'Fiesta' brand Fajita Seasoning. There are no red pepper or sugar components, it's almost like a steak seasoning with extra garlic. Give it a try!

The WSM maintained 225 to 235 degrees throughout the smoke session. The temperature was about 55 degrees and there was a 5-10 mph wind. I only had to adjust the lower vents once during the course of the smoke.

Notice the Thin Blue Smoke - just like it ought to be...


Below is the result - four perfectly smoked brats and a great rack! The little sausage spud and the "cook's treats" didn't survive the afternoon, however. They were consumed in the course of "quality control".


The WSM cranked out an excellent smoke ring on the ribs, as shown below, which was great to see as these were very meaty spares. All in all the first smoke on the new cooker was a great success!

Walkabout Mini-Fatties

This has been poking around in my mind for some time, so I finally decided to give it a shot. I know there are many of you out there that love a good fattie, or would like to. No, I'm not talking about THAT kind of fattie, but the kind that you cook in a smoker. As delicious as they are, they have one drawback - they aren't all that handy to eat neatly and they tend to be a bit messy. Well, here's my attempt to fix that problem. And no, walkabout doesn't mean they are made with kangaroo...

INGREDIENTS
1 lb. of my homemade sweet & spicy Italian sausage
4 pre-packaged mozzarella sticks
1 pkg egg roll wrappers
4 oz. marinara sauce
fresh Parmesano Reggiano cheese
fresh Peccorino Romano cheese
bell pepper, julienned
onions, julienned
sun-dried tomatoes, julienned
oregano, basil, salt & pepper



METHOD
First of all, prepare your mise en place. That's fancy French chef talk for "get all your stuff ready first!"
Roll the sausage out into a thin layer. As these are going to me small fatties, the sausage needs to be pretty thin while still staying together. Divide the sausage into individual thin sheets, about 4 1/2" by 6" inches. Apply a decent stripe of marinara, add your spices, onions, and grate the Parmesan and Romano onto the sauce.
For each fattie, add the strips of pepper and tomatoes, and the mozzarella stick. You might need to trim off a bit of the cheese depending on the length, or the size of your wrappers. I had to cut off about 3/4" of mine so the wrappers would be long enough.
Roll up your fattie nice and tight, sealing the ends well. Twist then into shape in a wrapper and put them in the fridge to set up. Once nice and firm, unwrap them and get them in the smoker. Realize as small as they are, they won't take very long and so won't take up a lot smokiness. Check them after 20 minutes, and take their temp every 5 minutes until the sausage is at 160 degrees F. Take them out and let them cool on a rack, and wick away any external grease with paper towels.
Once cooled, roll each fattie in a couple of egg roll wrappers. Two sheets makes the package a little more substantial for easy handling. Moisten the final flap of the wrap with a little water, and press it tight to seal.
Wet your fingers again, and wet the inside and outside of the ends of the wrapper that extend past the meat. Now fold them in a bit at a time, overlapping the folds and sealing the ends of the wrapper.
When you are all done it should look something like this:
Now it's time to heat up your oil. Get it to 360-370, and understand that your fatties won't be in it long! Prepare a place to drain them when removed from the oil. One trick I learned is to put a couple of paper towels in a sheet pan, then put a cooling rack on it - upside down. This way, the oil will get absorbed into the paper towels without sticking to them, because the rack is there. Using it upside down allows oil to flow tight into the paper, without having to accumulate and drip through an air space.

Put them in the oil carefully, two at a time, to keep from dropping the oil temperature too much.
Pull them out when they are the shade of brown you like, and place them on your draining pan to shed the remaining oil.
That's it! Pass 'em out and eat em'. The egg roll wrappers are nice and crunchy, and if you paint them inside with garlic butter before rolling - instant garlic bread!

I guess you could have a little dipping sauce available, but not if you want to go walkabout....

. . . . .

It's hard to tell the scale of these things with no point of reference, so here's a shot of my hand on the plate, a Walkabout Mini-Fattie, and my miniature cheese grater.







Now you have some convenient Walkabout Mini-Fatties - eat them with no muss and no fuss!

Migas

Time for another Tex-Mex treat, only this time it's for breakfast (usually). Migas (mee-gahs -"crumbs" in Spanish) is prepared many different ways with differing ingredients, and mine are probably never the same twice. But it's a rich mixture of textures and flavors, and any decent plate of migas is always a treat. It seems that migas always contains eggs and corn tortilla strips - everything else is flexible.

I can't stress how important the practice of mise en place is in efficient cooking. A good discussion of it can be found about 1/3 of the way down the page here. In all but the simplest dishes, it makes cooking much easier and more stress-free, especially if things have to go fast at times. What is it? It is the of practice of gathering and preparing all your ingredients, tools and utensils ahead of time.

Anyway, here are the fresh ingredients for the migas I made this morning for breakfast. Large plate, clockwise from top: minced jalapeno, diced tomato, bell pepper, onion and red and yellow bell pepper. Also showm are shredded cheese, 6 eggs, pre-fried bacon and chopped sausage, fried strips of red corn tortillas, and in the center - cilantro.
Start off by sauteeing the various peppers and onions until they just start to soften. It should only take a few minutes and a little bit of oil.Next, I added in the bacon and sausage. Keep cooking until it is all well-heated. While this is happening, break and scramble the eggs. Save the tomatoes for later.

We're going to move fast now, so it's good to have everything ready to go. Add in the eggs, mixing to incorporate.Now as the eggs are starting to cook, stir in the tortilla strips and incorporate. Just before the eggs have completely set, stir in the tomatos. Adding them at the end will preserve the color, testure and taste of them as opposed to tossing them in at the beginning. A nice fresh touch.

Keep a close eye on the food; be ready to plate at any time. The one thing you don't want to do is overcook the eggs, as most people always do. Remember, they will keep cooking a bit after pulling form the pan, so leave them a bit soft.

Plate up the migas, salt and pepper to taste, and add the cheese right away if you are using it. Here I topped the whole thing with torn cilantro leaves and Búfalo hot sauce. Serve immediately. Prepare for appreciative comments.

Chorizo Tradicional

If you don't know about chorizo, you need to. It is a spicy fresh Mexican sausage, unlike the dried Spanish chorizo or similar sausages from other Latin cultures. A great chorizo, without fillers, cereal added or made from strange animal parts can sometimes be tough to find. Solution? Make it yourself!

INGREDIENTS
4 ancho chiles
4 New Mexico chiles
1 3/4 lb pork butt, 20-30% fat, fine ground
1/2 cup onion, minced
3 T white vinegar
10 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 t cumin seeds, toasted and ground
3 t dried Mexican oregano
2 t salt
2 t fresh ground black pepper
1 t ground coriander
1 pinch of canela

METHOD
Turn on your oven and set it to 300 degrees. Discard the stems and most of the seeds from the peppers.

Put the pepper pods on a baking sheet and roast for 5 minutes. Watch them so they don't blacken. Put all the softened chiles in a blender, and spin 'em until they are evenly ground.

In a large bowl, mix together the chiles with all of the other ingredients, then mix well into the meat. Cover the mixture and refrigerate for at least a day. You can use it as it is, or stuff it into casings. It'll be good for about a week in the fridge, or a long time if sealed well frozen.

Here's a quick shot of the test sample being cooked for taste-testing:

Green Chorizo de Chiles Verdes

If you love chorizo, and cilantro and green peppers, this is the chorizo for you!

INGREDIENTS
1 mild green chile, New Mexico or Poblano, roasted and pureed
1 jalapeno, finely minced (use a Serrano if you want a bit more heat)
1 3/4 lb pork butt, 20-30% fat, fine ground
1/2 C finely minced fresh cilantro
1/2 cup onion, finely minced
4 T cider vinegar
8 green onion tops, finely minced
8 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 t cumin seeds, toasted and ground
2 t dried Mexican oregano
2 t salt
1 t fresh ground black pepper
1 t ground coriander


METHOD
Mik all ingredients together in a large bowl. Cover and refrigerate for at least 12 hours, a day is better. You can use it as it is, or stuff it into casings. It'll be good for about a week in the fridge, or a long time if sealed well land frozen. The cilantro flavor tends to fade a bit after the first couple of days, though, but you can add a little more freshly minced at the time to perk it back up.

Here's a quick shot of the test sample being cooked for taste-testing. The veggies didn't get minced enough, unfortunately:

Snack Sticks

Another experience in the sausage world - snack sticks. I'm going to spare everyone the tedious meat preparation, seasoning and grinding - that pretty much is the same for most types of links.

I rounded up a nice fresh pork butt, prepared a good seasoning mix, and loosened up the casings. Since I don't have a stuffer, and I was only making 5 lbs. of sticks, I re-cleaned and prepared the Jerky Cannon. For those of you unfamiliar with such a thing, it is like a giant, food-safe caulking gun with interchangeable ends. Here's a picture of it next to dozen eggs, to give you the idea of the size of the thing:
Usually it is made for forming jerky, but with a sausage tube it works great for filling snack sticks. Here is the stuffed casing, freshly made:
After running down the length of the casings to even out any over- or under- filled sections, I loaded it all up on a tray for an overnight rest in the fridge:
Once out of the fridge the next day, it had firmed up quite a bit. I then proceeded to cut it all into sticks, getting ready for cooking:
Here they are, after getting to 154 degrees internally. I then gave them a shower to cool them down quickly, and let them sit out for a couple of hours to reach equilibrium:
And finally, it's time to enjoy the rewards of all this activity - eats! These are mighty tasty, but I think the next batch will benefit from the addition of a bit more garlic and red pepper flakes. After all, who wants dull snack stix?

Home Made Sausage!

Well, after picking up a 400 watt grinder from Cabela's on a half-price sale, I figured finally that I'd bite the bullet and use it for something. I did all the reading I could on the subject, and went to work. All those great masters on the boards must know something. I carefully washed all the grinder's parts and all of the utensils, boards and containers that would get near the meat. Then, all the grinder parts went into the freezer, along with the already-cubed meat and fat.

For the meat, I used a mix of 7 lb. pork butt, 2 lb. top round, and 1 lb. of extra pork fat. I had decided to go with a package mix for this first attempt. I'm sure I'll do my own mixes later, but I was trying to reduce variables here. I chose the LEM Backwoods Fresh Sausage Seasoning. The package makes 15 lbs, but I'll only be using 2/3 of it.


After about an hour, I emptied the freezer and reassembled the grinder, using Pam as a lubricant. I also took out the semi-frozen meat, which ought to make the grinder run a bit easier.


I took two stainless steel bowls, and put ice cubes and a little water in one to create an ice bath for the bowl of ground meat. Now it was time to get down to grinding! I ran this through the 8mm plate.


The finished mound o' meat, being seasoned with the LEM mix proportioned for 10 lbs. of meat. Notice the grinder head is gone, it's parts back in the freezer again. The worst part by far was the mixing by hand of all that near-freezing meat! My hands were freezing after this, but I got the spice mix well incorporated. Before it got put up, a small test patty was created to check the taste. It was excellent.


I'll spare you with the pictures of me trying to get the collagen casing on the stuffing horn. Even though I sprayed it with Pam as well, it was still a chore. I'm sure that no small part of my difficulties lie in the fact I'd never done it before. Next time it'll be better.

Here's the start of the stuffing routine after removing the grinder guts and installing the stuffing horn. Yes, I remembered to tie off the end of the casing!


Finally finished! Below lie 9 lbs. of fresh sausage. For now. More under lessons learned.


The finished product - 8 lbs. (yes 8 lbs., not 9 any more) of links in FoodSaver bags and headed for the deep freeze. All except a few random-length end-links and some loose sausage meat for patties.


LESSONS LEARNED
1. Next time, I think I'll try mixing the meat cubes well and seasoning them before grinding, and then grinding and stuffing in one operation. Either that or use my Jerky Blaster with a funnel adapter for stuffing. Even with the plate and knife removed, the finished mix seemed way too fine. Not like hot dogs, but not like the sausage I wanted, either.

2. All went very smoothly until the stuffing started. Having never done this before, I had nothing to guide me. As it turns out, I was putting too much meat into the casings. Several times during the link-twisting stage I had a blow out. This explains why the 9 lbs. of links turned into 8 lbs. - from rescuing and retying links. I need to get a lot better at this before I try natural hog casings, I think.

3. I think I also need a lot of practice twisting links off of the stuffer. all the ones I tried seemed to want to untwist when they moved around as the stuffing continued. Have to think on this a bit.

All in all, a qualified success. I think that some will be hitting the smoker tomorrow for the acid test. I can't wait to eat them, or to make the next batch. I have 5 more pork butts in the freezer, waiting their turn...

* * * UPDATE * * *

I pulled some sausage out of the freezer and after thawing, tossed it on the smoker with sn experimental rack of ribs. It was absolutely delicious! As I mentioned above, the texture was a little too fine, but it sure was tasty.