Linguine and sausage

My foray into the kitchen continued, this time with a meal built around whole wheat linguine and sausage.The original was going to be a mushroom and dried tomato mix, but Antonia offered me some fresh Italian sausage from her dinner of the previous evening. She had picked it up at Belmont Butchery, so of course I had to use it.

The meal went together pretty quickly, and the timing was not too bad. The most fun was shoving the tenderized fennel to the edges of the skillet to make a crater, then sauteing in the middle some oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes. I wanted to use a recipe from Karen's cast iron cookbook, so I did a simple sauteed zucchini dish, tossed in a Parmesan and garlic mixture.

There were two major mistakes with this meal. The first was a result of me not paying attention enough to the recipe, and when it came time to prepare the spinach salad I just dumped the oil and minced shallot on the leaves before I realized I was supposed to be sauteing them. I had to pick everything out to try and salvage things. The other issue I had was with timing. I got everything ready pretty much at the same time, but that meant the salad just stood and waited for us to get through the rest of the meal. Next time I will try serving and eating in stages, saving the final prep work on a dish until right before we eat it. It will interrupt the meal more, but the quality should be better.

Something is fishy

I realized that I needed to get cracking on my resolution because I would be in Boston the next weekend. I saw a recipe for spaghetti anchovy and garlic pesto. Normally, I would stay away from anchovies, but Gabriel made a Caesar salad recently that was absolutely delicious. I never realized that one could prepare anchovies by essentially dissolving them, leaving all the taste and none of the slime. Gabriel did it by whisking the anchovies into the dressing. My recipe called for sauteing the anchovies in olive oil with garlic. Together with the pesto, it made a nice complement to the pasta.

In addition to the spaghetti, I also roasted green beans by rubbing them with oil and sprinkling with salt. I didn't time things too well and the beans remained in the oven longer than I intended. They dried out and became more like potato chips. Peter and Darien claimed they were delicious, but I would have preferred a more succulent side dish.

Overall, the dinner was good, but too salty. I found out later one can leech the salt out of anchovies by soaking them in cold water. I'll file this one away for future reference.