Flipped Sausage and Apple Cornbread

I was given this recipe a long time ago from a friend and with the abundance of
apples I have, I thought I would try it out again.  I think it is a good brunch recipe.  It is not too sweet and the cornmeal definitely gives it its own texture which got mixed review from my crowd.  I love the idea of this recipe and will definitely play with it in the future to give it a more smooth, cake-like texture as I think that would go better overall with the balance of savory and sweet.  Having said that, I think the recipe stands alone just fine, I would just be tweaking it for my own personal taste.  I do love the combination of apples and sausage though – definitely high on the yum factor scale!  If you are looking for a good holiday recipe or simply went apple picking and find yourself saying, “What am I going to do with all these apples?” you might want to give this one a try!

FLIPPED  SAUSAGE AND APPLE CORNBREAD

Ingredients:

1/2 lb. Sausage Links (pork or turkey is fine)

4 TBS Butter

1/2 Cup Brown Sugar

4 Small Apples (of your choice) – peeled, cored and sliced

1 Cup of Flour

3/4 Cup Yellow Cornmeal

3 TBS Brown Sugar

1 TBS Baking Powder

1 Tsp Salt

1 Egg, beaten

4 TBS Melted Butter

1 Cup Milk

Directions:

1.  Grease 9 inch round cake pan and preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2.  Brown sausage in skillet over medium heat, remove from pan once done, leaving about 1-2 TBS drippings in skillet.  Cut links into small pieces and set aside.

3.  Add butter and brown sugar and stir until sugar melts.

4.  Add apples and saute until soft, about 10-12 minutes.

5.  Add sausage pieces and apples slices in a single layer to prepared baking pan and pour skillet juices over the top evenly.

6.  Let apple-sausage mixture sit until room temperature while you prepare the rest of the recipe.

7.  In a mixing bowl, stir together the flour, cornmeal, brown sugar, baking powder and salt.

8.  Add egg, melted butter and milk and stir until well combined.

9.  Pour batter over apple sausage mixture, smoothing out to cover entire pan.

10.  Bake for 25 minutes, or until your cake tester comes out clean.

11.  Remove from oven and immediately invert onto serving dish.

Mexi-Dog

With the summer upon us and everyone out there grillin’ and chillin’, I’ve noticed a lot of hoopla surrounding hot dogs.  I subscribe to a good amount of foodie magazines and hot dogs seem like a big summer topic.  Not just what brand of hot dog is the best but what kind of toppings to put on your dog.  I have to admit, the first time I saw all the topics on a Chicago style hot dog, I was repulsed.  There was just too much going on for me.  But that was years ago and I’ve gotten more adventurous with my hot dogs since then!  Mr. Foodie and I decided to fire up the grill for lunch and do hot dogs.  He chose to go with a BBQ Bacon Cheese Dog, which is topped with exactly what it sounds like – bacon, bbq sauce and cheese.  I decided to get my creative juices flowing and came up with this Mexi-Dog.  I actually enjoyed it a lot.  It was definitely a step in a more interesting direction than my usual hot dog, which usually has some ketchup on it…maybe.

MEXI-DOG

Ingredients:

Your favorite type of hot dog, grilled

Bun (I suppose you could go really Mexican and use a tortilla but I didn’t.)

Toppings:

Avocado, diced

Onion, diced

Bacon Pieces

Jalapenos (seeded), grilled then diced

Mexican Crema

Cotija Cheese, crumbled

Directions:

1.  Place hot dog in bun (or tortilla) and top with as much or as little of the topping ingredients as you like.

Spicy Sausage Pasta

This is a recipe from Sam the Cooking Guy.  I was turned on to him (and this recipe) by my good pal, Stephanie.  I own both of his cookbooks and I cannot tell you how handy they are.  He has short, simple recipes that taste great.  I have not been disappointed by anything I have tried from his cookbooks.  The premise of his recipes is that anyone can cook good food, you do not have to be gourmet.  He uses real ingredients to create good meals and ANYONE can follow along.  His comedic writing throughout the book is worth the read as well.

We love encased meats here at Foodie Casa so it was a no-brainer that I had to try this recipe.  This has quickly become one of my favorite comfort foods.  I served this to company around the holidays last year and they all asked for the recipe.  My only warning is that this definitely needs to be eaten right away to get the full effect of the dish.  While I like it leftover just fine, it is not a recipe that keeps well over time.

SPICY SAUSAGE PASTA

Ingredients:

1 TBS Olive Oil

1 lb Penne Pasta

1 lb Spicy Italian sausage (casings removed)

4 cloves Garlic

3 TBS butter

1 Cup Whipping Cream

1/2 Cup Shredded Parmesan Cheese

2 TBS Fresh Chopped Parsley

Directions:

1.  Heat oil in skillet over medium heat.

2.  Add sausage, brown and break up.

3.  Once sausage is browned, stir in garlic and cook another minute or 2.

4.  Add cream and simmer on low about 10 minutes.

5.  While the sausage mixture cooks, add pasta to boiling water – when the pasta is ready, so is the sausage!

6.  Drain pasta and add to sausage.

7.  Add butter, Parmesan cheese and parsley and mix well

8.  Sprinkle with a little more cheese and serve immediately.

The 1950’s Revisited – Porcupine Balls

At a recent church group meeting, the conversation turned to these little morsels:  porcupine balls.  I had never heard of them or eaten them prior to our meeting – that I recalled anyway.  I am generally a fan of the meatball and love to try anything once.  I did a little research on this meal and found out that it was a staple for many in the 1950’s.  When I mentioned them to my mother, she even replied, “Wow, I haven’t heard about those in ages.”

I knew they would go over well with the male Foodies in our household, especially served with mac-n-cheese – might as well go totally 1950’s, right?  Surprisingly, these were yummy and went very well texture-wise with the mac-n-cheese.  The ‘porcupine’ part comes from the fact that there are rice in these meatballs and I wasn’t sure what to serve them with, turns out mac-n-cheese was a good combo!  I made some changes to the original recipe that was given to me, they are noted.

PORCUPINE BALLS

Ingredients:

1 lb. Ground turkey (original recipe called for ground beef)

½ lb. Pork sausage (original recipe called for 1 lb.)

3 TBS Dried, minced Onion (Original recipe called for 1 small onion, minced)

Salt and pepper to taste

½ c. Uncooked rice

½ c. Ritz cracker crumbs

1 Egg

1 Can of tomato soup

Directions:

1.  Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.

2.  In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients but tomato soup.

3.  Shape meat mixture into balls and place in a well greased 9×13 baking dish.

4.  Mix can of tomato soup with 1/2 can of water and then pour over meatball mixture.

5.  Bake for about an hour, turning at least once.

 

Kiss My (Shrimp and Chorizo) Grits

I love good old, down home, comfort food.  For me, grits fits right into that category.  Grits, popular in the Southern part of our great nation, were actually a Native American food – basically, a coarsely ground corn.  Generally, I eat grits for breakfast – either with butter (and milk) or with eggs.  I believe shrimp and grits are popular in what they call the Low Country area of South Carolina.  While it seems to be a breakfast dish there, I prefer to eat it for dinner.  Being so plain makes grits very versatile.  In this recipe, I made white cheddar grits to go along with my shrimp and chorizo mixture.  I make a large portion of the grits so that I have leftovers for different meals and I find that they freeze pretty well.

CHEDDAR GRITS WITH SHRIMP & CHORIZO

For the Grits:

6 Cups Water

2 Cups Half-n-Half (you can also just use milk)

2-3 Tsp Salt (depending on your taste)

1/2 Tsp Pepper

2 Cups Quick Cooking Grits

1 – 1 1/2 Cups of White Cheddar Cheese, shredded

5 TBS Butter (you can use unsalted)

Directions:

1.  Bring first four ingredients to a boil in a medium saucepan.

2.  Add the dry grits and whisk continuously.

3.  Reduce heat to low and continue to whisk until well blended and creamy.

4.  Add the cheese and whisk until melted and smooth.

5.  Remove from heat and let stand.  Once thickened but still hot, add butter and stir until smooth.

For the Shrimp & Chorizo Mixture:

1 lb. Shrimp (medium sized)

3 medium links of Chorizo (I prefer Marca El Rey Brand), diced small

2-3 Cloves of Garlic, minced

1 TBS Butter

Directions:

1.  Brown chorizo in a skillet over medium heat, about 3-4 minutes.  The chorizo will create quite a bit of orangish oil.

2.  Remove chorizo from pan and drain most of oil, leaving a good layer to coat your shrimp.  Add butter until melted and then add shrimp.  Cook shrimp until pink, about 3 minutes or so.

3.  Add chorizo back to pan.  Add fresh garlic and stir until fragrant.  At this point everything is cooked through, so only toss for less than a minute so as to avoid the garlic burning and turning bitter.

4.  Divide grits into serving bowls and top each helping with the shrimp and chorizo mixture.  Serve immediately.

 

 

Chicken Apple Sausage, Spinach and Egg White Frittata

It’s no secret that I am pregnant.  Not just because of the watermelon sized bump in my tummy but because I have mentioned it here before.  I spent the greater part of this pregnancy sick and then when I finally got to a point where food sounded good again and wanted to eat something with substance, gestational diabetes entered the picture.  Baby Foodie is doing quite a number on this Mama!  I can’t just go willy-nilly eating everything in sight and indulging in carb-rich delights like I really want to, so I created this recipe the other night for dinner.  It was actually very filling and satisfying, more importantly, it tasted good.  Mr. Foodie thought it was a keeper, he even ate it cut up in a whole wheat tortilla the next morning as a pseudo breakfast burrito.

CHICKEN APPLE SAUSAGE, SPINACH AND EGG WHITE FRITTATA

Ingredients:

1 TBS Butter

4 Chicken Apple Sausage links (I used the Aidell’s brand)

3 Cups fresh baby spinach, washed and torn

1 TBS Dried Minced Onion

1 TBS Course Black Pepper

1 TBS Salt

¾ Cup Gruyere Cheese

2 Cup Egg Whites

Directions:

1.  Heat oven to 350.

2.  In an oven safe skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

3.  Saute sausage until brown.

4.  Add minced onion and spinach and sauté until spinach is wilted.

5.  Remove from heat.

6.  Add Egg whites.

7.  Season with Salt and Pepper, mix in cheese.

8.  Bake in oven for 10 minutes, or until egg whites are set.

9.  Let cool slightly, about 5 minutes and serve.