sausage and pumpkin baked pasta

To me, there is nothing more comforting than baked pasta. It's supremely easy, with so many different ways to make it new and exciting.

Just looking at it makes me feel cozy!

After I saw Leave a Happy Plate's recipe, I couldn't get the combination out of my head. Perhaps this had to do with the fact that I've had a can of pumpkin lying around forever. And now was a great chance to use it! Spicy sausage, pumpkin, cheese...it sounded promising. Plus, I think I'm finally succumbing to the fact that fall is here. Denial can only sustain itself for so long.

The dreaded can.

While pumpkin may seem an odd flavor to shove into a pasta, baking in this recipe has the effect of taking a bunch of rowdy, quarrelsome children and making them sit in a corner and make nice with each other. In the oven, something magical happens, and the assertive sweetness of pumpkin dims, the tomato fades into the background, and the cheesiness and creaminess of the pasta is amplified. The poblano and sausage provides some smokiness. When you take it out, you get a totally comforting, totally typically fall dish, and the head-scratch-worthy combination of flavors is getting along like they've always been the best of friends--we just never knew about it.

~*~

Inspired by/adapted from Leave a Happy Plate

4 spicy Italian sausages (or sausages of your choosing), cut into bite-sized pieces

1/2 lb mini farfalle pasta (regular size farfalle or macaroni elbows would work nicely too)

1/2 red onion, diced

1 poblano pepper, seeded and diced

1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced

2 tsp worcestershire sauce

1 tsp fresh rosemary

2 tsp fresh thyme

1 cup water

1/2 a can of pumpkin or about 1.5 cups roasted pumpkin

1 tbsp tomato paste

3/4 cup Daiya vegan shredded cheddar cheese (I like it because it melts into the dish really nicely, but you could use regular cheddar if you want)

2 tbsp butter

salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 365 degrees and put on some water for your pasta.

Slice and dice.

Brown sausages. Remove from pan and add in red onion, poblano and red bell pepper. Once onions are translucent and pepper is soft, add sausage back in.

Once liquid from veggies is almost gone, add in pumpkin and tomato paste. Stir in 1/2 a cup of water. Add worcestershire sauce, rosemary, and thyme.

Start your pasta. I used mini-farfalle, which take about 5 minutes. Keep an eye on your sauce--taste for salt and add some if needed. Once the pasta is still just a little bit al dente, mix it into your sauce. Mix in your Daiya cheese and your butter. Add water, if necessary, until consistency of sauce is smooth but not too watery.

If you have a skillet, put it right in the oven. Otherwise, transfer to a baking dish. Bake 15-20 minutes, until bubbling merrily. Serve hot.

eggless banana chocolate chip cookies

One of the things I hate the most is when you're a good distance of the way through a recipe--like, you've sifted your dry ingredients together and preheated your oven and all that--and you realize you're missing something important. I mean, you can leave out cinnamon, but eggs? Kind of essential.

Of course, there's no one to blame but you. So you resign yourself to going online and you pore over recipes but you're always skeptical of the vegan ones and honestly, how can you make baked items taste right without eggs?!

Okay, so maybe I'm the picky one. But this time we had bananas on hand that were a little past their prime, I didn't really want banana bread (I'd been nursing a chocolate chip cookie craving for a few days), and chocolate and banana are resplendent together, as anyone who has had a banana-and-Nutella anything knows.

I'd always read that bananas were a decent egg replacement. So, even though I had eggs in my fridge, I decided to try my hand at this whole substitution thing anyway...just for funsies.

And you know what? While it's not entirely vegan (I mean, this is me we're talking about--you expect me to skip out on butter?) this non-traditional substitute really holds its own against the original.

Scratch that...it's awesome. The smell alone is worth making it. It only dirties one mixing bowl (no stand-mixer needed) and a few measuring cups and spoons. With the addition of a tablespoon of oil to make up for the fat that the original recipe's extra yolk provides, the cookie doesn't lose any of its body and still yields a lovely, gloriously chewy bite. Plus, it perfumes your whole house with a heavenly banana-chocolate scent.

So in the end, I'm a convert. I might actually prefer this one (after all, when one is tired of plain old chocolate chip, something that's new but still satisfies that craving is always a good thing!) I'm currently plotting a fully-vegan version, so stay tuned.

~*~

Adapted from smitten kitchen

Makes around 36 1.5" cookies

3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter, melted

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1 whole banana, mashed

1 tbsp oil

1 heaping tbsp espresso powder/instant coffee (if you don't have any, cocoa powder works fine too)

1 tsp cinnamon

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Melted butter and the jar of vanilla I made this one time that I will be probably be using for the rest of my life.

Melt your butter in the microwave (about a minute should do it if you melt it all at once), or on the stove if you don't have one. Cream together your melted butter and sugar, til they look something like this.

I would stop here and just eat this, but since consuming melted butter and sugar isn't really socially acceptable, we'll keep going.

Add in your coffee, banana, cinnamon, oil, and vanilla. You can pre-macerate your banana, but mine was really soft so I just tossed it in and mashed it with my spatula.

Make sure your wet ingredients are well stirred and smooth, then add in your dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt). Stir vigorously until everything is well combined.

Now it looks all pretty.

Now add in two cups of your favorite chocolate chips. I like semi-sweet, but you could get creative and do peanut butter chips or even butterscotch.

The batter is so good that you'll be hard pressed to continue with this whole baking nonsense (and it's egg-less, so no worries re: potential sickness!) But again, for posterity, we'll pretend that it's not totally normal to eat a whole bowl of batter yourself and we'll persevere.

I like to use a little melon-ball-sized scoop--you could eyeball the amount if you don't have one, or make giant ones if you feel like. The cookies should be an inch or more apart. Just remember that if you change the size, you'll need to sit by the oven and watch, because your baking time will be different.

Bake for 11-13 minutes or until light brown around the edges. Let cool for a moment (they need to firm up a little, as they'll still be a little soft--if you try to move them now all you'll get is a crumbly mess!) Then move to a cooling sheet and let stand for another 5 minutes.

Each batch had 12 cookies--only this many from the first batch made it to this picture. You do the math.

If you, like most normal people, can't consume (or convince others to help you consume) 36 cookies at once, you can shape out the balls, freeze them on a sheet, toss them in a bag once they're frozen and then cook them whenever you want--just add a little more time to your overall bake time.

But I have a feeling that your classmates, neighbors, etc. wouldn't necessarily hate you if you made them all.

Just sayin'.

chanterelle and brown butter angel hair pasta

I know that chanterelles aren't the most accessible of fungi for those not living in the Pacific Northwest, but given the fact that I just moved here I definitely felt obligated to make the first post in this funemployment-fueled blog about them.

Because really, there's no mushroom better than the glorious golden chanterelle. And Portland is currently inundated with them.

Also inspired by a friend who said the other day that he'd never cooked a mushroom, this recipe is dead easy and showcases the firm, buttery, wonderful qualities of this fungus. It can be made vegan or vegetarian, too, so...what's not to love?

~*~

Serves 2

Ingredients:

2 strips bacon or 2 tbsp vegetable oil
1-1.5 lbs of chanterelle or other mushroom (maitakes or porcinis would work fine)
2 servings angel hair pasta (reserve 1 cup of pasta water)
1/2 a red onion
1 clove elephant garlic or 3 cloves regular garlic
2 tbsp of butter or vegetable oil
1-2 tbsp flour
4 sprigs thyme, 2 sprigs oregano
salt & pepper
parmesan or vegan parmesan (optional)

To clean chanterelles, wet a piece of paper towel and gently wipe off any dirt or pine needles. Chop chanterelles into roughly equal-size pieces--try to expose as much surface area as possible.

Start off your two strips of bacon in a pan at medium heat, or heat up your vegetable oil. If you used bacon, once it's done, remove it from the pan and add 1 tbsp vegetable oil to the pan just to make sure there's enough fat in which to sauté your onions. If you're going the veggie route, just heat up your oil in a pan.

Chop up your onion and move it to your pan. In the meantime, start your water for your pasta.

I had elephant garlic on hand, so I decided to use it. It's a milder garlic with more chive-y spice to it. Photographed to show its indeed-elephantine proportions:

Yep...it's about three inches long.

In my book, more garlic is always better, but you can dial it back if you'd like. I sliced mine into thin but wide slabs but if you'd rather have garlic be a...er...background flavor, you can mince it more finely.

Definitely more slabs than slices. What can I say? I'm definitely not a vampire.

Now your chanterelles can go in!

Don't forget to add salt and pepper to your liking. We want the water from the mushrooms to come out and evaporate--they'll need to cook until there's no liquid left in the pan and they look soft, about 10 minutes.

Angel hair only takes about 5 minutes, so you need to time the arrival of your pasta correctly! You can even wait until your sauce is done until you put the pasta in since it cooks so quickly.

Now that the mushrooms are cooking, you can begin the brown butter process. Basically, what you want to do is create a thickener for your sauce. Tomatoes are acidic and would overwhelm the delicate mushrooms, but cream can muddy the subtle flavors, too. This is a nice way to make a sauce without having to change your flavor profile. (Also, it has the added bonus for me of being cream-free, and since I'm severely cream 'n' cheese intolerant, that would be a big thumbs up!) If you are okay with cream, skip these steps and add it in once your mushrooms are done, and voila! Otherwise:

(This could potentially be made vegan-style, with oil instead of butter, but I've never tried it before--anyone who's determined can give it a whirl and let me know!)

Anyway, if you're committed to following the way I did it...

Start by melting about 2 tbsp of butter. When that's good and melted, add in 1 to 2 tbsp of flour, enough to thicken the butter but not so much that the flour soaks up all of it. It's going to look totally weird, but don't panic--give it a good stir. It should look like the second frame.

If you're a wanderer like me, multitasking and doing other things while you cook, stay put. You need to stir it until it begins to look like the third window--a nice, nutty brown. If you smell it at this stage, it'll actually smell a little bit like peanut butter. Once it's at this stage, you've cooked out the raw taste of the flour and the butter will have taken on a wonderful nutty quality.

Now you can put a little bit of water in the pot, just to make it easier to pour out into your mushrooms to make your sauce. It'll sputter and start to separate a little--don't panic, just keep stirring and it will look like the fourth frame, similar to a nice, brown, nutty gravy-like sauce. If this whole process worries you, when I put the water in my boyfriend shouted from the living room, "What smells so good?"

(I'm trying to inspire feelings of faith here. Hopefully you're feeling more optimistic!)

Now that you've got that ready, you can pour your brown butter sauce into your mushroom mix. If your pasta is done or currently cooking, reserve or siphon off 1/2-1 cup of the pasta water. The water is nice and starchy from the pasta, so it will serve as another way to make your mushroom sauce a little thicker.

Now's the part where you make a judgment call--add the water a little bit at a time until you have the desired consistency--half a cup should do fine. When your pasta is done, place it in the pan so it has a chance to soak up some of the sauce.

Toss quickly, then plate.

My toppings with my reserved pasta water.

Top with fresh herbs (pull the leaves off the stems and rub them between your fingers to release those aromatic oils) and some bits of bacon, if you went the carnivore route. If you're so inclined, you may sprinkle on some dairy or non-dairy parmesan cheese.

Beautiful, innit? Best served hot, so consume fresh. Enjoy!