Spice up your life, AKA my mouth is on fire

Sure, make fun of me for quoting the Spice Girls. As long as I can make fun of you for recognizing it.

A dear friend turned me onto Emily Bites, a "cooking light" kind of blog with droolworthy recipes. There, I spotted a recipe that made the clouds part and angels sing. That or I was really in the mood for pasta.

Spicy Sausage & Eggplant Spaghetti Bake
From Emily Bites

Ingredients:
1 large eggplant, cut into 1-inch square pieces
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, divided in 2
4 oz dry wheat spaghetti
1 cup red onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 lb hot Italian turkey or chicken sausage, casings removed
1 1/2 cups marinara sauce
2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 cup 2% or skim shredded Mozzarella cheese
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided into 1/2 cup and 1/4 cup
1/4 cup seasoned bread crumbs
Salt and pepper to taste
Cooking spray
Basil leaves, sliced (optional)


Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400. Spray baking sheet to coat and set aside.
2. In a large bowl, toss eggplant with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste, until eggplant is lightly coated. Spread eggplant in a single layer on the baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes.



Eggplant, not hash browns

3. While the eggplant bakes, bring a pot of water to a boil, then cook the spaghetti until it is al dente. Drain pasta, reserving about 1/3 cup of the pasta water. Set aside.
4. While the water is boiling and/or pasta is cooking, pour the other tablespoon of olive oil into a large pot and heat on medium. Add onion and cook for a few minutes, until soft and almost translucent. Add garlic and cook for another 1-2 minutes.
5. Add sausage to garlic and onions, breaking up into chunks with a wooden spoon. Stir in marinara and turn heat down to low.
6. When eggplant is ready, remove from oven and set aside. Turn oven down to 375, spray a baking dish and set aside.
7. Add drained spaghetti to sauce mixture and stir to coat.

8. 

   COAT'D!

   Add eggplant and crushed red pepper, stir to combine. Remove from heat for 10 minutes. 
9. Add mozzarella, 1/2 cup of Parmesan and the 1/3 cup of reserved pasta water, stir until well combined.
10. Pour mixture into baking dish and spread out evenly. Top with bread crumbs and remaining Parmesan.
11. Bake for 25 minutes or until bread crumbs are golden brown and cheese is bubbling.
12. Top with basil leaves (optional) and serve.



Let's eat!

Notes:

1. This is a great recipe to make on Sunday and bring to work for lunch all week.
2. Yowza, this dish was hot! The sausages had enough heat for me, so next time I'll do without the crushed red pepper entirely. I had to add extra cheese and sauce so I could eat without pain.
3. There's debate over whether peeling eggplant is necessary. I did for this dish, but will refrain next time to see if there's a noticeable difference. Plus, the New York Times told me not to.
4. Hey ShopRite, thanks for driving me batshit crazy. Why on earth would you put all of your wheat pasta, including non-organic brands, in the organic section?
5. Get the bread crumbs without cheese to lighten this recipe up further. There's already lots of cheese in here, how much more do you need? Don't answer that.
6. It helps to chop up the onion and garlic prior to starting. I felt rushed getting everything together on the fly, and burned the onion while mincing the garlic.
7. Speaking of rushed, there's a lot of "doing stuff while other stuff is going on" which stressed me out a little. I need to work on time management or just chill out.
8. Use a large pot to saute the onion and garlic.  It'll be easier to add everything else to it later.
9. I used Thin & Trim Spicy Italian Chicken Sausages. I don't think they were encased, but that didn't stop me from trying to remove the casing from one poor sausage anyway. I gave up after that one. Oh, and they're already cooked so no need to worry about disgusting raw chicken.
10. Recipe calls for a 7x11 baking dish. All I had was 9x13. It came out fine, just flatter.

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A Farmers Market Dinner

If you told my 20 year old self that someday I'd wake up early on Sunday mornings to go to the farmers market, I would have laughed at you. Now I look forward to it every weekend.

Every item in this bowl of deliciousness is from the Schenectady Greenmarket, save for the sun dried tomatoes.

• Whole wheat pasta: Flour City Pasta
• Venison chorizo: Highland Farm
• Pesto: Our Daily Eats
• Garlic cheese curds: Palatine Valley Dairy

This reluctant domestic has been busy being a reluctant grad student, hence the lack of posts.  But I've been busy cooking and taking tons of pictures, and it's my spring break, so expect more posts this week!

Relucant Domestic: 1, Broccoli Raab: 0 (cheese & bacon: infinity)

We joined a local CSA, which started up a few weeks ago. So far, we've gotten some yummy vegetables! It's a lot of food for just the two of us, but we make it work. We usually eat salads for dinner, so thanks to our shares, we haven't had to buy leafy greens or other salad veggies.

We work the other vegetables into our weekly lunch routine, which goes like this:
1. Cook a boat load of meat (usually chicken breasts).
2. Cook whatever veggies are on hand (blanch and freeze what we're not going to use).
3. Season appropriately.
4. Bring lunch-sized portions for lunch during the week.

Since we're not going out for lunch, we're saving a lot of money! Unfortunately, it can get boring after a while.

This week, we switched it up. We got broccoli raab and Swiss chard in our share, and I'm honestly not a big fan of either. What to do? The only recipe on allrecipes.com that uses both is Pasta with Greens and Sir Laurier. Pasta, pancetta and cheese? Yes, please!

When you decide to cook something at 9PM on a Friday, your grocery options are limited. The local supermarket had neither pancetta nor the mysterious Sir Laurier d’Arthabaska (which, by the way, WHAT?). I was so hopeful about the cheese, being only 4 hours from Quebec. Anyway, we improvised. We got bacon, and after consulting the internets, Crème de Brie.

We doubled the recipe, and threw in some fennel (also from the CSA). It came out great! It's not swimming in cheese, but it's enough to mask the broccoli raab's bitterness. The bacon helps, too :) So not the healthiest recipe, definitely too much to eat every day for a week, but a well-deserved splurge! Sorry no pics, I'll try to do better next time.

The CSA fruit share starts up next week, and I can't wait! I have a hard time eating fruit from the supermarket, and we've been out of town so much we've been missing the farmers markets. If the strawberries we got our first week were any indication, I think I'm in for a fruitful (har har) summer.