Sausage Rolls

For as long as I can remember, Sausage Rolls on the menu meant that it was a special occasion. Birthdays, graduations, and other special days were often celebrated with Mom's special sausage rolls.

Preparation of these little pockets of goodness involved making dough, frying bacon - then draining and crumbling it, cooking sausage - then draining and crumbling that, too - and dicing up romano cheese. The advent of the microwave made the bacon preparation a bit easier, but these were still labor intensive little treats.

As I moved away from home and started cooking for one, I often had the hankering for these little treats - but soon realized that a whole batch was a lot of work, and made way more than one appetite could handle.

Then I started to use the freezer as my friend - I would cook a batch of bacon or sausage when it was on sale and tuck it, crumbled, into the freezer. The romano cheese, cubed up, froze nicely as well. And frozen dinner rolls were pre-portioned, allowing me to make just a few sausage rolls at a time when I had the hankering.

Now that I am cooking for the family, I still use the freezer - although I have chosen to get fresh dough (or homemade when I can get Matt to oblige) - and have opted for pre-crumbled bacon.

I portion out a bit of each of the bacon, sausage (Hot Italian is our preference - but you can use what you like) and cheese into prep bowls - as there is some cross contamination. I add more during the assembly process as needed, but try not to portion out too much, as it can't be put back (it usually gets nibbled in the preparation process, too).

The only things you need are some dough (this pre-packaged fresh from our grocery store is the equivalent of most single batch dough recipes), corn meal, sausage, bacon and romano cheese.

Prepare the pan by sprinkling liberally - very liberally -with corn meal. You don't want these little babies to stick. We prep them onto the pan and then move them to our pizza stone, but you can also bake them directly on a pan.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.


You can make these any size you like, but I find that a "fingers" sized portion of dough allows for a good balance of dough and stuffings - too much bigger and your roll is mostly bread. Too much smaller and your stuffings threaten to poke out of the dough.

Stretch the dough out lightly and lay it on your hand. You don't want it to be too thinly stretched, as the bacon especially can easily poke holes through thin dough.


Add a pinch of bacon.


Then a pinch of sausage.


Then a few cubes of cheese. (You can add these in any order -whatever works for you - this just happened to be the order the bowls were in for me tonight.)


Pinch the sides of the dough together over the toppings, being sure to get everything enclosed. If you have cracks, the cheese will ooze out. If the dough is drying out a bit, you may have a tougher time getting the sides to stick together. Sometimes stretching and pulling it a bit over itself will help. Sometimes you might need to dab on another tiny piece of dough to patch it.

If you are "holding" your rolls on the pan and will use a pizza stone, then spacing on the pan is not a concern, but if you plan to bake these on the pan please be sure they are not too close together, as they will rise and expand.

Bake at 500 degrees for approximately 7 minutes (longer if you are making your rolls larger) - all the inner ingredients are pre-cooked, but you want your bread to bake and your cheese to get warm enough to melt.


Tonight we served these along with a good hearty salad (note the "leftover" romano chunks sprinkled on top of the salad - that's where the extra bacon crumbles ended up, too). These are tasty good on their own, or dipped into pasta sauce. They reheat fairly well and make a good "meatroll" for a bag lunch.

sausage rolls

ingredients:
sausage (Italian recommended)
bacon
cheese (romano recommended)
pizza dough
cornmeal

Cook and drain the bacon and sausage, allow to cool and crumble into small pieces.
Dice the romano cheese into approx 1/4" cubes.

Stretch out small portions of dough into a palm sized circle, filling the center with a pinch each of sausage, bacon and cheese. Pinch closed.

Liberally cover a baking sheet with corn meal and place assembled rolls onto sheet. Bake rolls at 500 degrees for approximately 7 minutes or until brown.

Eat cautiously - insides will be very hot.

Experiment with different fillings and different cheeses - just be sure everything is on the 'dry' side (if you use spinach, for example, wring it out well to get most of the moisture out before adding it to the middle) - otherwise your rolls will be soggy on the inside.

Enjoy.

the pasta toss: variations on a theme

Pasta tosses are a favorite around our house because they are simple, quick, and always delicious. You've already seen at least one pasta toss here, trains, planes, automobiles... and sausage?!?, and I'm sure you'll see many more.

Here are the basic building blocks for pasta tosses.

Pasta
Yup, betchya didn't see that one coming, did you? I like to use "spoonable" pastas, such as rotini, cut fusilli, penne or farfale, in these dishes. They mix better with other ingredients for that "all-flavors-in-one-spoonful" experience. We really like the Barilla Plus mulitgrain pastas 'round here. They are a bit sturdier than standard semolina-based pastas, and better for you, and they actually have some flavor. I used Barilla Plus penne this time out.

Aromatics
Here's where the flavors begin... with your choice of onion, shallot, garlic, celery, carrot, etc. I usually start by dicing a medium-sized onion, and sweating it in olive oil with a pinch of kosher salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Towards the end of the sweat, I'll toss it some minced garlic. I toss it in late so that it doesn't burn.

Protein... or not
There is almost ALWAYS pasta toss-friendly meat frozen safely in our freezer. Chicken is our main staple, but we also have used sausage, and in some cases, we've left out the meat completely, and used portobellos. For the dish (photo) above, I found three links of the pre-cooked Italian sausage leftover from an earlier pasta toss. I bias-sliced it, and added it to the onion and garlic to brown up.

Veggies
Sorry, Mom always said to eat our veggies, so in they go. In the Summer months, we like to hit the local farm market for fresh zucchini, squash and tomatoes, but canned diced tomatoes and frozen green beans, spinach, broccoli, peas, cauliflower and the like, are terrific and easy to keep on hand. I was lucky to find some young zucchini and yellow squash at our local grocery store (a bit surprised to find nice ones in November), so I had to go with them. To save some cook-down time, I coarse diced them, put them on a microwave-safe bowl, covered them and nuked them for about one minute on high to soften them. I then gave them a quick stir and nuked them for an additional minute. These then went into the skillet with the aromatics and browned sausage and little bit black pepper.

Seasoning
Here's where you pull out your herbs and spices, either fresh, or dried. When we plan ahead, we try to get fresh herbs, but in most cases, I'm punting, so dried herbs work great. Parsley, basil, thyme, oregano, dill, chives, etc. are all great additions. I went simple, and only used dried parsley and oregano, but I added it along with the veggies to give it a bit of time to rehydrate.

A little something special...
Time to go for the "Ooooo" factor. Maybe it's a chiffonade of fresh basil, a few grinds of coarse black pepper, a shake of red pepper flakes, a big honkin' spoonful of feta, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, a bit of lemon or lime juice, a splash of balsamic vinegar... or in this case, a few shavings of peccorino romano. Whatever you choose, it'll help put your dish over the top.

One great thing about pasta tosses is that it is pure creativity with simple ingredients. And the creative part, well, that's where the fun is. Don't be afraid to try something new and unique. If you like a particular combination, scribble it down in your recipe file (future post), and share it with friends... or food bloggers. If you were less than thrilled, think of what you would change to make it an awesome dish of your own.

Enjoy!

trains, planes, automobiles... and sausage?!?

Note: This is a repost from the MattTheWebguy blog, and the post that inspired AnyIdeasForDinner.com. Hope you like it!

There comes a time (almost) every afternoon that I ask my Sweetie these same four words... "Any ideas for dinner?" This roughly translates to "What would you like me to make tonight?", since I do about 90-95% of the cooking in the house.

I cook for the love and challenge of it. I've always had this goal to make someone say, "This is better than my Grandma's!", and hope that Grandma had mad skills in the kitchen. I have no desire to change careers and head off to culinary school and then sweat it out in the kitchen of some tyrannical chef with an ego the size of a Buick. I DO joke around with my Sweetie about moving to a semi-quirky town in the Adirondacks, opening a diner, hiring a middle-aged waitress that calls everyone "Hon" and never lets your coffee cup go dry, and just cook like no tomorrow. Maybe someday...

Sorry, got a bit off-track... back to tonight's creation...

Like most nights that aren't planned (we actually do plan a fair amount of dinners 'round here), I like the challenge of the Pantry Raid. I enjoy rifling through our pantry shelves, fridge and freezer, and seeing what I can create without too many special ingredients. I believe I do a fairly good job at working with what's on hand.

Off track again? sorry.

Tonight's dinner kinda started with a special ingredient, (but it was gifted to us, so it doesn't count): three beautiful homegrown yellow tomatoes from my Mother's garden. The tomatoes, along with the request for a pasta toss type dish got me thinking.... and then the raid began.

Here's what I pulled together...

3 yellow tomatoes, coarse diced (Thanks, Mom!)
1 small yellow onion, diced
2 Tbsp unsalted butter (is there any other?)
1 Tbsp pure olive oil (save the extra virgin stuff for salad dressings)
1/2 bag of frozen cut-leaf spinach, thawed
1 Tbsp minced garlic
3 precooked Italian sausage links, grilled (I broiled them) and sliced on the bias (ours were a local brand that can be ordered from here - they ship!)
dried oregano
dried parsley
kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste.

And then "the pasta". We usually use Barilla Pasta Plus because it actually has flavor. Oh, and it's better for you than straight semolina pastas. But for tonight, we found some motorized vehicle shaped pasta we got for Christmas last year from my Sweetie's folks (CORRECTION: the pasta was a gift from my Sweetie's sister... thanks Sue!) It was the perfect pasta for all of us to enjoy, even Boomper (aka Munchkin). He's not big on the dishes I come up with, but give him some pasta with butter and parmesan ("Shakey") cheese, and he's one happy little boy.

So, here's how I put it all together... (FINALLY!)

1. Cook the pasta (al dente) in a large pot of salted water.
2. Sweat the onion in the butter, olive oil, a sprinkle of kosher salt and a crank or two of fresh ground black pepper. As the onion just becomes translucent, add the garlic to brown slightly.
3. Add the sausage, and brown slightly. The grilling (broiling) adds some great flavor to the dish.
4. Add the spinach and combine.
5. Season to taste with the oregano, parsley, kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper.
6. Once it's all together and warmed through, cut the heat and toss in the tomatoes (so you don't bruise the fresh flavor). Give a quick toss and get ready to plate it up.

Plate up the drained pasta, spoon the sausage-tomato-spinach combination over the top, and finish it off with fresh grated parmesan.

As I placed her pasta bowl in front of her, my Sweetie said "wow" and immediately snapped these two photos. Here's the aerial shot...

A chiffonade of fresh basil would have been killer, but our basil went to seed and is rather bitter now. And "yes", the parsley is for style points.

Almost forgot.... I took a two-day old baguette, sliced it on the bias in 1/2" slices, spread them out on a baking sheet, brushed on some olive oil, sprinkled on fresh coarse ground black pepper and parmesan (some slice also received a slice of fresh tomato and more cheese and pepper, and then under the broiler it went for about two minutes. Nice addition to the meal.

So... any ideas for dinner?